Violence against Women (VAW) is a global phenomenon, to the deep dismay of the citizens in both developed and developing countries. Many women suffer not only from physical, psychological and sexual violence, causing many physical and mental health problems, but oftentimes become victims of economic violence as well in losing rights and access to financial and other resources.

The United Nations (UN) General Assembly called upon the UN Statistical Division (UNSD) to request the UN member countries to establish systems for data collection and analysis for a set of national VAW outcome indicators and other methodological standards by 2015. In this regard and through this survey, Bangladesh has become one of the pioneers through the rigorous efforts of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) and its Statistics and Informatics Division.

This survey was designed by the BBS with sampling assistance from Professor Syed Shahadat Hossain, the Institute for Statistical Research and Training (ISRT) at Dhaka University, particularly on sampling methods. In addition, financial and technical support for this survey was provided by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which had previously provided technical assistance to the BBS to strengthen its capacity in data collection and analysis through the “Strengthening Capacity of BBS in data collection and analysis using GIS Maps” project.