In July 2022, Women's Aid launched its Come Together to End Domestic Abuse campaign, ahead of their 50th birthday in 2024. The campaign emphasises that everyone has a role to play to end domestic abuse and make it intolerable in society.

As part of the campaign, Women’s Aid issued a survey to determine UK adults’ attitudes to domestic abuse and to better understand where and why domestic abuse is ‘tolerated’ in our society.

Key findings of the survey include:

• UK adults are likely to see perceived ‘poor behaviour’ by the victim as an excuse for the abuse they experience. For example, there was a 17% drop in those who think it’s extremely wrong for the husband to control what his wife wears to the gym if she’s previously been unfaithful.
• UK adults also see the abuser’s perceived wellbeing or repentance as an excuse for abusive behaviour. There was a 15% drop (from 81% to 66%) in those who thought the husband was really wrong to slap his wife when he later apologised.
• 34% believe domestic abuse is the result of just ‘bad people’ rather than a reflection of sexism in wider society enabling it. Findings indicate that those with a belief that the root cause of domestic abuse is in the individual rather than societal inequality are less likely to see the harm caused by abusive behaviours or understand it as a pattern of behaviour.
• Men are more likely to view domestic abuse as a private matter to be resolved within the relationship or family (7% compared to 2% of women).
• Only 9% of UK adults believe it’s likely that they will be a victim of domestic abuse in the future (10% of women and 8% of men). Yet a much higher percentage, 37%, reported they had experienced one or more types of abusive behaviour in the past (46% of women and 27% of men)
• Those behaviours classed as emotional/psychological abuse, controlling behaviour or stalking are perceived as less harmful than others. This indicates a need to increase understanding of the escalatory nature of domestic abuse and the harm caused by coercive control.