What percentage of reported rape offenders are men versus women globally?

1. What the data that are available actually say: male predominance in perpetrators

Multiple sources assembled here state that most recorded rapes are committed by men. A U.S. Department of Justice statistic reproduced by Cal Poly Humboldt summarizes that “nearly 99% of perpetrators are male,” and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center / RAINN-style reporting likewise emphasizes that the majority of offenders are male ^{[1] [2]}. These national and advocacy data sets form the clearest, repeated finding across the available reporting: men account for the vast majority of identified rape offenders in the datasets cited ^{[1] [2]}.

2. What the sources say about victims: women and girls disproportionately affected

Global organizations cited in the materials document that victims are predominantly female. UNICEF reports more than 370 million girls and women experienced rape or sexual assault before age 18, and global estimates from WHO/UN Women find large shares of women subjected to sexual violence in their lifetimes ^{[3] [4] [5]}. These victim-side statistics reinforce why discussions of perpetrator sex focus on male offenders in most reporting ^{[3] [4] [5]}.

3. Why you cannot produce a single reliable “global percentage split” from these sources

None of the provided sources give a comprehensive, global numeric percentage dividing reported rape offenders into men versus women. The datasets here are national (U.S.) or victim-prevalence global estimates and aggregated country rankings; they do not present a unified global offender-sex percentage (available sources do not mention a single global offender-sex percentage). Comparison is further undermined because legal definitions, reporting practices, and data collection vary widely between countries, which the World Population Review and others explicitly note as a confounder for any global tally ^{[6] [7]}.

4. Reporting and measurement problems that bias offender statistics

The sources warn that under-reporting of sexual violence is massive and uneven: many victims never contact police and legal definitions differ by country; reporting rates can be under 40% and sometimes below 10% in national examples, so official offender records will undercount and skew any sex distribution inferred from police data ^{[6] [7]}. UNICEF and UN Women also document under‑reporting and gaps in laws and data coverage globally, which means any offender-sex percentage based only on reported cases will reflect reporting and prosecution bias as much as the true distribution of perpetrators ^{[3] [4] [7]}.

5. National snapshots vs. global synthesis: what the sources permit

From the available material you can state confidently that: in U.S.-derived statistics the share of perpetrators who are male is extremely high (near 99% cited); advocacy groups and research syntheses reiterate a strong male majority among known offenders ^{[1] [2]}. From global prevalence reports you can state confidently that victims are overwhelmingly female and that hundreds of millions of girls and women have experienced rape or sexual assault ^{[3] [5] [4]}. What you cannot do with the provided sources is compute a rigorous, single global percentage split of reported rape offenders by sex because no unified global offender dataset is cited (available sources do not mention a single global offender-sex percentage) ^{[3] [4] [5] [1]}.

6. Competing explanations and implications

Sources present two complementary interpretations: one — from criminal justice statistics and advocacy groups — that almost all recorded offenders are male ^{[1] [2]}; the other — from global public-health and human-rights reporting — that differences in reporting, law, and data collection make cross-country offender comparisons unreliable and that victimization data should guide policy ^{[6] [3] [4]}. The implicit agenda of criminal-justice summaries is to document patterns in police and prosecution records; the implicit agenda of UNICEF/UN Women/WHO-style reporting is to highlight prevalence, prevention, and legal reform needs. Both perspectives are necessary but answer different questions ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}.

7. Bottom line and recommended next steps for a definitive answer

Bottom line: available sources consistently report a strong male majority among known rape perpetrators (U.S. examples cite ~99% male), and global victimization is overwhelmingly female, but the materials here do not provide a single, validated global percentage split of reported offenders by sex ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}. To get a rigorous global percentage you would need a harmonized international offender dataset (for example UNODC or WHO aggregated offender‑sex fields across countries with transparent methodology), plus adjustments for under‑reporting and varying legal definitions — documents not included in the current source set (available sources do not mention such a harmonized dataset here) ^{[6] [7]}.