The National LGBTQ+ Women’s Community Survey
LGBTQ+ women are experiencing extremely high rates of disability and intimate partner violence; at higher rates those faced by women in the general population.
The Los Angeles LGBT Center, in partnership with Justice Work and 120 partner organizations, has released the findings from the largest and most comprehensive survey on LGBTQ+ women who partner with women in the United States. Titled “We Never Give Up the Fight”: A Report of the National LGBTQ+ Women’s Community Survey,” the study aims to celebrate the expansiveness of its community, and use its findings to strengthen our movements, shift policy agendas, and increase funding streams where needed.
The Survey Project was launched by the late activist Urvashi Vaid, a champion of LGBTQ+ rights whose work shaped the advances of AIDS advocacy and prison reform for over four decades. Vaid’s long-time collaborator, Dr. Jaime M. Grant completed the report in partnership with the Los Angeles LGBT Center.
The report analyzes the responses of 5,002 LGBTQ+ women who answered nearly 170 questions in a national community survey fielded from June 2021–June 2022. While more than 8,000 respondents engaged with the survey, 5,002 women answered all of the questions posed.
As articulated by Dr. Jaime M. Grant, the report’s key findings include:
- 47% of respondents had experienced intimate partner violence—emotional, physical, or sexual. By contrast, 1-in-3 women in the general population experience IPV;
- Only 20% sought institutional support for experiencing emotional or physical violence;
- More than 1-in-3 reported family members drawing on childhood faith traditions or adopted religious doctrine to justify verbal or emotional abuse against them;
- Respondents are having sex more often (84%) than people in the general population (74%)
- 45%, almost 1 in 2 participants, reported that their sexual life gives them a great deal or a lot of joy and pleasure.