What are global statistics on sexual violence by offender gender over the last decade?
Executive summary
Across multiple global datasets and reviews from the last decade, sexual violence is overwhelmingly experienced by women and girls and overwhelmingly perpetrated by men; international estimates put lifetime prevalence of intimate‑partner and non‑partner sexual violence among women in the tens of percent and specialist reviews report that nearly all recorded perpetrators are male, though precise, comparable global offender‑gender tallies are limited by underreporting and inconsistent data collection [1] [2] [3].
1. What the headline numbers say: victims and perpetrators
Global prevalence studies repeatedly find that women and girls constitute the majority of detected victims of sexual violence and that male perpetrators dominate incident reports — for example, UN Women reports that almost one in three women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime (global estimate), and UN Women/UN datasets show women and girls made up about 61% of detected victims in 2022 in trafficking/exploitation data [2] [4]; U.S. Department of Justice–derived summaries quoted by campus resources show as much as 91% of recorded rape and sexual assault victims are female and that nearly 99% of recorded perpetrators are male, illustrating the consistent pattern in jurisdictions that collect offender sex [3].
2. Child sexual violence: both sexes affected, offender gender patterns
Major child‑protection analyses find high lifetime exposure for both sexes but higher prevalence in girls; a global modelling study estimated age‑standardised prevalence of sexual violence against children in 2023 at about 18.9% for females and 14.8% for males, underscoring that boys account for a substantial share of victims even as girls remain more affected overall — many of these child‑victimization incidents, like adult sexual violence, are predominantly perpetrated by males according to datasets and programmatic reporting, though offender‑gender breakdowns are less systematically reported in child‑specific global products [5] [6] [7].
3. Intimate partner vs non‑partner violence: where offender gender is clearest
WHO and large systematic reviews distinguish intimate‑partner sexual violence (where the offender is by definition a current or former partner) from non‑partner sexual assault; the WHO estimated about 30% lifetime prevalence of physical and/or sexual partner violence among ever‑partnered women and about 7% for non‑partner sexual assault, a division that in practice makes the offender predominantly male in the vast majority of recorded cases because partners are usually men in heteronormative samples and surveillance systems [1].
4. Trends and geographic variation over the last decade
Trend analyses using Global Burden of Disease inputs and other reviews show variation across regions and over time from 1990 through 2017 and into recent updates, with prevalence rising or remaining persistently high in many regions and spikes in conflict or displacement settings; these studies focus on victim prevalence more than offender demographics, so while regional prevalence patterns are documented, precise decade‑long global shifts in offender gender proportions are poorly mapped [8] [9].
5. Data limitations and why a precise global offender‑gender percentage is elusive
Global reporting systems differ in definitions (rape vs broader sexual violence), in whether they record perpetrator sex, and in the extent of underreporting — estimates note very low reporting rates for incapacitated victims versus forced‑violence victims, and many surveys and administrative databases do not capture nonbinary genders or male victims comprehensively, which biases simple offender‑gender tallies; several authoritative sources therefore report clear victim prevalence figures but stop short of a single, globally comparable offender‑gender percentage because the underlying data are inconsistent [10] [3] [1].
6. Balanced interpretation and alternative perspectives
The consistent, cross‑national signal is strong: most recorded sexual violence is committed by males against females, particularly in intimate‑partner contexts and in trafficking/exploitation data, a finding repeated by UN Women, WHO reviews and justice statistics [4] [1] [3]. Alternative perspectives emphasize that male and nonbinary victims are undercounted, that some contexts (e.g., same‑sex abuse, conflict‑related actor patterns) complicate the male‑perpetrator majority narrative, and that prevention and survivor services must account for these blind spots; several sources caution against assuming uniformity across geographies or conflating detected cases with true incidence because of wide variation in reporting and measurement [1] [9].