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A (NSFW) 2014 YouTube video from social justice fashion company, FCKH8, claims:

One out of every five women will be sexually assaulted or raped by a man.

Is there any truth to this claim, and what is the source?

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    @DavePhD The difference between this question and that question is that this one also includes sexual assault.
    – Laurel
    Commented Oct 8, 2018 at 19:27
  • @Laurel The "1 in 5" study, "The Campus Sexual Assault Study" ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/221153.pdf , of the linked question/answer is primarily about sexual assault. The study found "percentage of undergraduate women who reported being a victim of attempted or completed sexual assault of any type before entering college (1) (n = 819, 15.9%) and since entering college (6) (n = 1,073, 19.0%)"
    – DavePhD
    Commented Oct 9, 2018 at 20:54
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    @DavePhD I highly doubt the validity of that survey for a couple of reasons. Regardless though, this question is not specifically focusing on undergraduate victims.
    – Edna Mode
    Commented Oct 10, 2018 at 1:51
  • There is this question about college women raped skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/20460/5125 ... if this one is about all women and includes sexual assault, of course the number will be higher.
    – GEdgar
    Commented Dec 3, 2018 at 0:34
  • @DavePhD The problem is what their definition of "sexual assault" is.
    – Loren Pechtel
    Commented Dec 4, 2018 at 2:26

1 Answer 1

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FCKH8 is a US-based company, and presumably they are referring to women from the USA.

I am going to take a liberty and substitute in the similar rich Western cultures of UK and Australia, purely so I don't have to leave this site to get answers.

UK

A 2012 question, Have one in ten women suffered rape in the UK? discusses an unreliable survey and compares it to the official figures:

The best data we have, from the British Crime Survey (BCS), suggests this is an overestimate. The latest bulletin on Homicides, Firearm Offences and Intimate Violence, published in January, indicates (Table 3.01) that 3.7 per cent of women report having been raped since the age of 16 (4.5 per cent if attempted rape is included), and 18.6 per cent report having experienced any form of sexual assault

Australia

A 2014 question, Is there rampant sexual assault of women in Australia?, reveals that the 2005 figure in Australia was:

17% (1,293,100) of women experienced sexual assault

and a 2004 survey reported:

12% of women reported experiencing sexual violence by an intimate partner (current or former) over their lifetimes

and

27% of women reported sexual violence by non-intimates such as other close family members, relatives, friends, colleagues and strangers (although a number of women reported violence from both intimate partners and others)

Conclusion

These statistics from previous questions are not identical to the claim in the question, because:

  • They are about UK and Australia, not the USA.
  • FCKH8 claim specifically targets men as the perpetrators, where these statistics include attacks by women.

Nonetheless, they strongly suggest that the one-in-five figure quoted is comfortably within the range found in similar countries.

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