Spousal violence trends in Canada, 2019

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Release date: October 6, 2021
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Infographic: Spousal violence trends in Canada, 2019
Description: Spousal violence trends in Canada, 2019

Spousal violence trends in Canada, 2019

In 2019, women continued to be overrepresented as victims of spousal violence in Canada.

In the five years preceding 2019:

432,000 women (4.2%) and 279,000 men (2.7%) experienced spousal violence perpetrated by a current or former spouse or common-law partner. This included violence that was never reported to police.Note 1

Among victims, women were more likely than men to be physically injured (39% versus 23%), fear for their lives (29% versus 3.8%) and experience negative emotional impacts:


Table 1
Table summary
This table displays the results of Table 1. The information is grouped by Emotional impacts (appearing as row headers), Men and Women, calculated using percent of victims units of measure (appearing as column headers).
Emotional impacts Men Women
percent of victims
Suicidal thoughts 5.6 13.3
Afraid for children 8.6 17.6
Ashamed, guilty 15.1 29.1
Isolated 11.2 36.7
Fearful 11.0 37.8
Depression, anxiety attacks 15.5 38.8
More cautious, aware 14.4 40.3
Shock, disbelief 14.6 41.9
Sleeping problems 16.8 42.7
Lowered self-esteem 21.7 41.1

In the provinces, spousal violence decreased 54% from 1999 to 2019.Note 2 The decline was larger for men (-60%) than for women (-49%).

Over the past two decades, the proportion of spousal violence victims who said the violence they experienced was reported to police declined from 28% in 1999 to 19% in 2019.

In the provinces, declines were noted over the same period for all types of spousal violence measured:

Most severe type of spousal violence experienced

beating, choking, threatening to use or using a gun or knife, sexual assault

kicking, biting, hitting, hitting with something that could hurt

pushing, grabbing, shoving, slapping

threatening to hit with a fist, throwing something that could hurt

Source: Statistics Canada, General Social Survey on Canadians’ Safety (Victimization).

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