More than 1.5 million Portuguese have been victims of physical or sexual violence.

According to the National Institute of Statistics, more than 1.5 million Portuguese have been victims of physical or sexual violence as adults, showing that women are the main victims of sexual violence in an intimate context.

The data comes from the Survey on Safety in Public and Private Premises (ISEPP), published this Monday, and is the result of 11,346 interviews conducted between July and October last year to collect statistics on gender-based and domestic violence.

According to INE, 20.1% of people aged 18 to 74 have been victims of physical or sexual violence in adulthood, with women more likely to experience violence in an intimate context, in contrast to men, who are primarily victims of physical violence outside of the context proximity. .

INE explains that violence in adulthood is the result of a combination of all the violence that people experience in both private and public contexts, taking into account “the type of violence observed that is common in both spheres, that is, physical and sexual violence.”

According to INE, “the proportion of women who have experienced sexual violence in adulthood is almost three times that of men (6.4% and 2.2% respectively)”, with men showing “a higher prevalence of physical violence, which is higher than among women”. by 5.3 p.p. (from 18.5% to 13.2%).”

“It follows that the total proportion of people who have become victims of physical and/or sexual violence in adulthood is 20.1%, while the proportion of women and men is very similar – 19.7% and 20.6% respectively,” explains he is in INE.

Specifically regarding violence in intimate contexts, INE reports that more than 1.3 million people (20%) who have or have had a partner have experienced some type of violence, with this proportion higher among women (22.5% ) than in men (17.1). %).

It also states that women account for a higher proportion of all types of intimate violence than men in a separate analysis: “21.8% of women reported experiencing psychological violence, comparable to 16.8% of men; 7.0% were victims of psychological violence. physical violence but not sexual (3.3% in men) and 10.3% physical or sexual violence (3.8% in men).”

This last figure (10.3%) means that almost 500 thousand women have been victims of physical or sexual aggression from their partner, in addition to the fact that INE highlights that “the proportion of women who are victims of sexual violence is twice that observed among men (3.8%).”

Given the findings, INE believes that “only a fraction of cases of violence are reported to the police and officially registered,” taking into account that administrative data recorded 37.7 thousand victims of domestic violence crimes in 2022, when the study identified 214.4 thousand.

Outside the context of intimacy, physical violence stands out the most, especially among men, but even so, “the proportion of women who are victims of sexual violence is twice that observed among men.”

The survey data, however, shows a different picture from that observed in intimate violence, as the proportion of male victims (19.3%) is higher than that of females (13.1%), “especially supported by the highest proportion men who experienced physical rather than sexual violence (17.4%), compared with 9.3% among women.”

“However, the proportion of women who became victims of sexual violence outside the context of intimacy (3.9%) is twice as high as that observed among men (1.9%),” he emphasizes.

INE also looks at the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace and finds that there is also a gender gap, as “more than twice as many [das mulheres]compared to men, claims to have been a victim,” and more than 76,000 women reported situations that occurred in the twelve months prior to the survey.

This phenomenon is especially noticeable among young women, and the majority of identified bullies are men, especially colleagues and bosses.