Three in four Bangladeshi women have faced partner violence — and almost none turn to the law

Introduction

The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) surveyed 27,476 women for its 2024 Violence Against Women Survey, the largest of its kind in Bangladesh and globally. It found that 76% of women had experienced at least one form of intimate partner violence in their lifetime, and 49% had done so in the 12 months before the survey.¹

The figures use a broad definition that includes acts specific to Bangladesh, such as controlling behaviour and economic abuse, alongside the internationally standard acts of physical, sexual and emotional violence.¹ They describe violence by husbands: in the survey, non-partner violence refers exclusively to violence by people other than husbands.¹

49%

Women who experienced intimate partner violence in the 12 months before the 2024 survey, down from about 66% in 2015.

What women are experiencing

Controlling behaviour is the most common form, reported by 68% of women over their lifetime. Physical violence affected 47%, emotional violence 37%, sexual violence 29% and economic violence 20%. Taken together, 54% of women reported physical or sexual violence, or both, from a partner, and 16% of women had experienced it in the past year.¹

Violence does not stop during pregnancy: over 7% of women reported physical or sexual violence while pregnant at some point, and 4% in the past 12 months. Among women who experienced physical violence in the past year, half said it happened several times.¹

Risk is not spread evenly. Married adolescent girls aged 15–19 face the highest rates and account for 62% of all survivors in the past 12 months. Women in urban slums face a 47% higher risk of partner violence than women outside slums, and dowry is associated with a 76% higher risk. Education appears protective: women whose husbands finished secondary school have 17% lower odds of violence, and those whose husbands hold a bachelor’s degree or higher have 32% lower odds.¹ These are survey associations, not proof of cause.

Progress since 2015

Most forms of violence have declined. Past-year partner violence dropped from around 66% in 2015 to 49% in 2024, and BBS reports that most forms of intimate partner violence have fallen since the previous survey round. Outside marriage, past-year physical violence fell from nearly 6% to around 4%, and sexual violence from 2.5% to 0.5%.¹

The decline is real but the starting point was extreme. Women are three times as likely to experience physical violence from a partner (47%) as from anyone else (15%), and more than 13 times as likely to experience sexual violence from a partner (29%) as from a non-partner (2.2%).¹ The home, rather than the street, is where the risk is concentrated.

How Bangladesh compares

The World Health Organization’s modelled estimates for 2023 put lifetime physical and/or sexual partner violence among ever-partnered women aged 15–49 at 48.9% in Bangladesh, against 29.9% in India, 26.1% in Nepal and 24.8% in Pakistan. Only Afghanistan, at 50.9%, is higher.² The WHO estimate is modelled and uses a narrower definition than the BBS survey, so the two should not be read as the same measure; both nonetheless point to prevalence near one in two.

Silence and the weak link to justice

Most survivors never tell anyone. Nearly two in three women (64%) who experienced partner violence never shared it with anyone. The most common reason for not disclosing was that the violence was “considered unnecessary” to report (39%); over 14% feared losing family honour and 13% feared public disgrace.¹

The formal system is rarely reached. Nationally, 13% of survivors reported taking legal action in their lifetime, and only 7% did so in the past 12 months. Local leaders were the most common authority, accounting for 41% of legal actions and contacted by 58% of survivors; police accounted for 25% of legal actions and were approached by 36%. Courts and government facilities were turned to far less often.¹

Awareness and care are also thin. Just 48.5% of women said they know where to report violence. Only 12% knew of Helpline 109 and 45% of Helpline 999, and One Stop Crisis Centres were known by about 2% of those aware of any reporting channel. Only 14.5% of women who experienced violence in the past year sought any treatment, mostly for physical injuries; just 1.5% sought care for sexual violence.¹

Seeking help also costs money. Survivors who sought treatment spent an average of BDT 2,512 on it, and legal proceedings averaged BDT 4,104.¹

A newer risk online

For the first time the survey measured technology-facilitated violence. Over 8% of women with access to technology had experienced unwanted sexual communications, sexual blackmail, image-based abuse or technology-facilitated controlling behaviour in their lifetime, and over 5% in the past year. Prevalence is 16% among women aged 20–24, against 1.4% among those aged 60 and over, and strangers are the largest group of perpetrators (46%).¹ The survey covered only selected forms, so the true burden may be higher.

What it will take

The survey’s own recommendations, drawn from this evidence, point to four areas:¹

• Strengthen the response. Give survivors universal access to health, legal, social and judicial services, integrate protection into the health system, and expand mental-health and psychosocial support and shelters, with services designed to reach adolescent girls, women in slums and women with disabilities.
• Invest in prevention. Tackle dowry, child marriage and harmful gender norms, work with men and boys, and keep girls and boys in quality education.
• Fix the data. Strengthen administrative case data on gender-based violence and repeat the survey every 5–10 years using updated WHO tools.
• Enforce the law. Reform discriminatory provisions and enforce the Domestic Violence Act, the Dowry Prohibition Act and the Child Marriage Restraint Act, and strengthen the response to online abuse.

The gap between prevalence and recourse is the central finding. With 64% of survivors telling no one and 13% ever using the law, the recorded cases a justice system sees represent a small part of what women experience.