National GBV baseline for public research context
This page translates the first South African national GBV study into a public baseline layer for NGO Finder. It is designed to add trustworthy national context to the research app without overstating what the report can say about individual municipalities.
Lifetime physical and/or sexual violence
35.5%
Estimated 7,847,438 women aged 18+
Recent physical and/or sexual violence
7.0%
Estimated 1,536,729 women in the last 12 months
Lifetime physical and/or sexual IPV
23.9%
Among ever-partnered women
Lifetime emotional abuse
25.1%
Among ever-partnered women
Lifetime economic abuse
13.1%
Among ever-partnered women
Lifetime controlling behaviour
57.6%
Among ever-partnered women
Important limit
Use this as national context, not local prevalence
The HSRC study is a strong national baseline and a useful subgroup benchmark, but it is not a municipality-level prevalence dataset. In NGO Finder, these figures should be used to explain the broader GBV context, inform service-design choices, and support future research layers, not to claim exact GBV prevalence for a single municipality.
Violence prevalence
National baseline prevalence estimates for women aged 18 years and older.
Lifetime physical violence
33.1%Lifetime sexual violence
9.8%Recent physical violence
6.1%Recent sexual violence
2.0%Lifetime non-partner physical and/or sexual violence
27.0%Recent non-partner physical and/or sexual violence
3.7%How survivors seek help
Patterns reported by women who experienced physical and/or sexual IPV.
Told family
64.2%Told friends or neighbours
31.1%Told authorities or services
17.1%Did not disclose to anyone
23.1%Visited police
30.7%Visited hospital or health centre
21.6%Visited court
10.8%Used social services
6.2%Visited a shelter
0.8%Intersectional vulnerability
Examples of groups and contexts that showed elevated risk in the report.
Women with disabilities reporting lifetime physical violence
40.4%Women with disabilities reporting lifetime sexual violence
15.3%Women with disabilities reporting lifetime physical and/or sexual violence
42.5%Urban women reporting recent non-partner physical and/or sexual violence
4.3%Family members identified as non-partner physical violence perpetrators
31.1%Cohabiting women reporting lifetime physical and/or sexual IPV
30.6%Why this matters
What this baseline can help explain
- Childhood exposure to violence and intergenerational trauma
- Poor mental health, including anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation
- Hazardous alcohol use, substance use, and associated risky sexual behaviour
- Food insecurity and economic vulnerability
- Harmful gender norms, controlling behaviour, and unequal power relations
- Higher burden among younger adults, cohabiting partners, and some marginalised groups
Product uses
How NGO Finder should use this layer
- Add trustworthy national benchmark cards to research pages without claiming municipality-level prevalence from this report alone.
- Improve directory journeys around police, hospitals, courts, shelters, social services, and counselling because those are the pathways survivors most often reported using.
- Strengthen disability-aware and family-aware discovery experiences, since the report highlights elevated lifetime burden among women with disabilities and significant family-perpetrated non-partner violence.
- Use these findings as explanatory context for service-gap research, especially when combining local service supply with future demand or risk layers.
Methodology note
Source and reading guidance
- Source: Human Sciences Research Council, The First South African National Gender-Based Violence Study, 2022 (published 2024).
- Design: population-based household survey across all nine provinces using a multi-stage stratified cluster sample.
- Population: adults aged 18 years and older living in households; figures are national and subgroup estimates, not municipality-level rates.
- Important limitation: the report is a strong national baseline, but it should not be used to assign exact GBV prevalence to specific municipalities without an additional local estimation method.
Official source report: HSRC full report (PDF)