What can we expect from the Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy (VAWG)?

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At the end of last year, the UK Government unveiled their long-awaited strategy to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG) in a decade. With its publication being delayed three times in the past year, the strategy’s release has been much-anticipated. What exactly does this strategy aim to do and how will it be carried out?

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According to the government publication, VAWG is defined as crimes and behaviours which are “disproportionately experienced by women and perpetuated by men”. This includes cases of sexual assault, stalking, and domestic abuse. In fact, in the year ending in March 2025, the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimated women to be 4.3 times more likely experience sexual assault, 2.2 times more likely to experience stalking, and 1.4 times more likely to experience domestic abuse, in comparison to men.

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This is highlighted whilst also recognising the need to support all victims and survivors subjected to such crimes and behaviours, recognising that VAWG crimes and behaviours can affect various individuals of different social identities such as gender, race, or age.

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The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has announced a new measure produced to track the progress of the VAWG strategy, which combines the three crimes, domestic abuse, sexual assault and stalking. This is aimed to quantify the number of people who have experienced one or more such crime types within the past year.

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Although the direct application of this measure is only expected to be implemented in the CSEW for the year ending in March 2026, ONS has developed a method to produce an estimate for this measure using the information available from previous surveys. In the years ending in March 2024 and March 2025, roughly 1 in 10 people aged 16 and over were estimated to have fallen victim to at least one or more of the crime types mentioned in the combined measure.

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Amidst such a landscape, the strategy aims to achieve its goal based on three areas of action.

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The first focal point is the tackling of the issue at a root level, which the government anticipates to achieve by intervening at an early stage. This includes a community and society-wide approach, such as by building an environment where misogynistic attitudes and other harmful behaviours and beliefs are challenged.

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Specific plans include investments into teacher training and external providers to better young people’s understanding of healthy relationships, and other related educational interventions to prevent the development of harmful ideas. Social services are also expected to receive funding so that they can intervene and families can access tailored support to end intergenerational abuse.

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Accountability of perpetrators is also identified as another pillar of this strategy. The government recognises its current failures within the justice system which have allowed perpetrators to dodge justice, hence its aims to create a socially and legally punitive environment against those who engage in VAWG. Countless victims have had to live on knowing that their offenders run free, and others have lost their lives to VAWG.

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Responding to such systemic weaknesses, the strategy declares the prioritisation of tackling VAWG within the police, particularly through centralising VAWG operations to the National Centre for VAWG and Public Protection (NCVPP), newly launched in April 2025. With the Home Office investing £13.1 million, the centre is expected to play a leadership role amongst the VAWG and other public protection threat specialist teams.

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These actions to enforce accountability will be assisted by new technology, for instance the recently launched facial recognition. The potential to help bring justice to VAWG victims through this technology will be consulted alongside the legal frameworks in which it will be deployed.

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Supporting victims and survivors firmly stands as the third pillar. The strategy aims to address the inconsistencies and patches within pre-existing support networks. Over the next three years, victim support services will be expected to receive a £550 million investment. This will be combined with a further per annual £5 million investment into the Department of Health and Social Care.

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Funding will be put into reinforcing public services at local levels to redirect more support to multi-layered vulnerabilities, such as homelessness, addiction, or mental health issues. In addition to strengthening social services and welfare networks, the strategy also includes an aim to implement new measures within criminal courts to increase timeliness and overall enhance the victims’ experiences in court to avoid revictimisation.

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However, despite many having welcomed the release of the long-awaited manifesto, equally, others have criticised the issues and anxieties that remain.

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There are doubts on whether the funding as proposed in the strategy are enough, especially as the strategy’s multiple delays have contributed to the pre-existing problem of insufficient funds for the specialist VAWG sector. In fact, specialist groups have cried out that £550 million will barely be enough. From the previous years, they estimate a 2% uplift per year, yet this may imply “real-terms cut in funding”, especially considering the current 3.2% inflation and increase in other costs. Despite the strategy encouraging victims and survivors to reach out to support services, it leaves the risk of them ending up in places where resources have already dried up.

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Besides funding, some also point at how the strategy’s approach which focuses on education and criminalisation does not adequately acknowledge tech companies’ lack of counter-measures against harmful beliefs and abuse online. Without relying on the “companies’ goodwill”, groups highlight the urgent need to actively introduce and enforce regulatory measures to prevent harm done online.

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More concerns remain regarding its implementation. It has been warned that despite the strategy addressing an important issue, it has the potential to be hijacked by political ideologies to reinforce certain narratives.

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Precedents of such exploitation of narratives have been seen in the anti-immigration riots that took to the UK’s streets last year. A large coalition of women’s rights groups have called on the government to take action against such weaponisation of VAWG to fuel far-right racist agendas.

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This narrative has also been deployed recently by Conservative Party MP Kemi Badenoch. She criticises the approach taken in the VAWG strategy and emphasises how we should “stop pretending that all cultures treat women equally”, and that “we need to crack down on immigration from cultures that don’t respect women”. Along the course of ending VAWG, attention should be paid to the potential of such hijacking rhetoric used to enforce classic anti-immigration narratives of “migrants as sexual predators”.

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As the new year begins after the publication of the VAWG strategy, further implementations of the plan are expected. Despite the grand proposal, there are many obstacles and risks that ought to be dismantled. This coming year, the UK will see whether the long overdue strategy was worth the long wait and accumulated anticipation. Visible impacts on the daily life of the public should determine whether the government is successfully taking strong steady steps towards halving VAWG in the coming decade.