Although women are disproportionately harmed by intimate partners or family members, general statistics on the topic of violence against women are not widely known. The goal of this infographic is to raise awareness of the prevalence of violence against women by visualizing the data in a way that is easily understood.
View a full page PDF version of the infographic here.
As shown in the World Health Organization (WHO) infographic on the right, 1 in 3 women will experience some kind of physical/sexual violence in their lifetime. While the percentages are higher in certain areas, the US and other high income regions are not above these statistics.
In the wake of movements that highlight the sexual assault and harassment of women, such as #YesAllWomen and #MeToo, I knew I wanted to delve into the research surrounding the prevalence of violence against women. This is not to say that men do not experience violence. Moreover, I do want to acknowledge that #NotAllMen are out to harm women. This infographic is in no way meant to point fingers at men as a whole.
The chilling fact that remains, however, is that while men are most often harmed by another man unknown to them, women are overwhelmingly harmed by men they know. In other words, the closer a woman becomes to a man, the higher the probability that she will be harmed by him.
The raw data on the Violence Against Women by GBD region is broken down into two categories: intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence. The sources for these datasets is shown below.
- Intimate partner violence prevalence Data by GBD region
- Non-partner sexual violence prevalence Data by GBD region
For this project I used GBD region, as opposed to WHO region, because the areas are broken down into smaller chunks and reveal a more accurate depiction of prevalence.
The data on Female Homicide Victimization by Males is an annual study conducted by the Violence Policy Center examining the rate of female homicide victims in the US since 1998.
While looking at raw data can be informative, visualizing the data makes it much easier to digest and can often highlight something that was not apparent before. What I wanted to achieve with these visualizations is an immediate sense that violence against women is, not only prevalent, but often the perpetrators are men that the women know. The visualizations below were created using the tool Datavisual.
After collecting the data, synthesizing and organizing it, and then creating some rough visualizations, it was time to pull everything together into a single infographic. After several iterations on the design, I eventually settled on the design guide on the right.
I learned a lot about the creation of data visualizations in making this infographic. At the beginning I found myself "lost in the weeds" because there was just so much data! I found it challenging deciding what data points to highlight and how to present them. I was given the following advice when it comes to data visualization: it depends on the story you want to tell.
Once I decided on an idea I wanted to convey, it became much easier. I am proud of how the infographic came out, even if the topic is grim. My hope is that shedding light on the prevalence of violence against women will raise awareness.
Let's connect over art, design, tech, and crafts.
