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Gender-based Violence (GBV) against Indigenous Peoples in Canada: A Snapshot

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Description: Gender-based Violence (GBV) against Indigenous Peoples in Canada: A Snapshot

Many Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+Footnote 1 people experience higher rates of GBV. Legacies of colonialism, historical trauma, intergenerational transmission of violence, and anti-Indigenous racism can exacerbate violence against Indigenous Peoples.

Sexual violence

Indigenous women are more likely than non-Indigenous women to have experienced sexual assault since age 15.Footnote 2

Indigenous womenFootnote 3 : 43%

Non-Indigenous women: 30%

In 2018, rates of sexual assault in the previous 12 months against Indigenous women were more than 3 times higher than among non-Indigenous women.Footnote 4

Intimate Partner Violence

Indigenous women are significantly more likely than non-Indigenous women to have experienced intimate partner violenceFootnote 5 since age 15.

Indigenous women: 61%

Non-Indigenous women: 44%

A significantly higher proportion of Indigenous than non-Indigenous women have experienced either physical or sexual abuse by an intimate partner since age 15.

Indigenous women: 44%

Non-Indigenous women: 25%

In 2018, 17% of Indigenous women said they had experienced intimate partner violence in the previous 12 months.

Indigenous women account for approximately 5% of all women in Canada but accounted for 21% of all women killed by an intimate partner from 2014 to 2019.Footnote 6

Due to interesting forms of discrimination and inequality, some groups of Indigenous womenFootnote 7 are at even greater risk of experiencing GBV.

Intimate partner violence since age 15 among groups of Indigenous women

Women with disabilities

74%

Women without disabilities

46%

LGBTQ2 womenFootnote 8

86%

Non-LGBTQ2 women

59%

Women aged 25 to 34

72%

Women of all age groups

61%

Sources : Unless otherwise indicated, all data are from the Survey of Safety in Public and Private Spaces (SSPPS), 2018. Some SSPPS data are from custom tabulations that are not available online.

This infographic was prepared by Women and Gender Equality Canada as part of the Workplan of the Federal-Provincial-Territorial Task Team on Gender-Based Violence and Access to Justice 2021-2023. It was shared with the federal, provincial, and territorial ministers responsible for the status of women in December 2021.

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