International Violence Against Women Survey: Final Report on Singapore

Abstract

A major impediment to tackling violence against women is the lack of accurate information to formulate and evaluate policies and laws to meet this objective. Meaningful comparisons with data in other countries are also not possible without a common set of indicators.

The International Violence Against Women Survey (IVAWS) is an instrument designed to fill some of the gaps in data collection. Eleven locations have conducted this survey between 2003 and 2005: Australia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, Hong Kong, Italy, Mazambique, Philippines, Poland and Switzerland. Analyses of the data collected from these surveys are reported in a book by Holly Johnson, Natalia Ollus and Sammi Nevala, titled Violence Against Women: An International Perspective (Springer, 2008).

Singapore joined this small group of countries in 2009 when a total of 2006 women aged between 18 and 69 years were surveyed using the IVAWS. This report sets out the findings of the survey.

Keywords: crime, violence against women