One in five Australian women experience sexual violence

One in five Australian women have experienced sexual violence and stalking in their lifetime.

The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics personal safety report also reveals an estimated eight million Australians in total have encountered violence since the age of 15.

About 22 per cent of women have been exposed to sexual violence, one in four of them at the hands of an intimate partner or family member.

Rates of intimate partner violence against women have dropped from 2.3 per cent in 2016 to 1.5 per cent in 2021-22 but experts are cautious about the decline.

"The forms of intimate partner violence are evolving and we're not necessarily capturing all of the different forms of abuse in our current measures," Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre director Kate Fitz-Gibbon told AAP.

"It's really important for the survey questions to evolve with perpetrator tactics to capture things like technology-facilitated abuse.

"We also know that all forms of intimate partner violence are under-reported. The survey relies on self-reported victimisation data so that's something to keep in mind."

About 42 per cent of men have experienced physical violence since the age of 15 while 6.1 per cent have been exposed to sexual violence.

Men were more likely than women to experience violence by a stranger (30 per cent compared to 11 per cent), while 35 per cent of women have encountered violence by someone they know.

One in six women have also witnessed parental violence in childhood, with about 14 per cent seeing violence towards their mother.

Eleven per cent of men saw their parent experience violence but it was still more common to see abuse perpetrated against their mother than their father (8.9 per cent compared to 3.7 per cent).

The latest data shows gender-based violence is a "national crisis" that needs increased funding and attention, Professor Fitz-Gibbon said.

"We've seen the federal government in the last week asked significant questions about their commitment of over $300 billion to submarines.

"Less than one per cent of that has been committed to tackling violence against women. 

"If we have a government that's committed as they've said they are ... then we need to see a significant increase in the funding commitment."

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