80% of women face harassment.

Our finding

Why we rated this “Misleading”

What the 80% figure measured

The number traces to a 2016 ActionAid UK/YouGov survey, which found that 79% of the women it polled had experienced some form of harassment or violence in public spaces. [2]

Two features of that survey matter for how the figure should be read.

Its sample was 502 women, drawn from a small number of major cities. That is a legitimate size for the study it was, but it is not a national measurement, and it was never presented as one.

It is now a decade old.

Neither point makes the finding wrong. Both make it the wrong thing to quote as a current, countrywide rate.

What the more recent survey reports

The NARI 2025 survey covers 12,770 women across 31 cities — a substantially larger sample and a much wider geographic spread. [1] [3]

It found that 40% of urban women felt "not so safe" or "unsafe" in their cities.

The two surveys are not measuring the same thing

This deserves care, because comparing them directly is where analysis on both sides tends to go wrong.

The 2016 survey asked about experience of harassment or violence in public spaces over time. The 2025 survey asks about feelings of safety in a woman's city.

Lived experience and perceived safety are related but distinct. A woman may feel reasonably safe day to day and still have experienced harassment at some point; the reverse is also possible. Treating 40% as a straightforward replacement for 79% overstates what the comparison can support.

What can fairly be said is narrower: the specific 80% figure is dated, drawn from a small non-national sample, and the largest recent survey of urban women's safety reports a considerably lower share on its own measure.

What has been built in the interim

Two pieces of national infrastructure now sit behind this issue.

Women Helpline 181 operates across almost all states and union territories, having handled over 2.1 crore calls and assisted more than 84 lakh women. Emergency Response Support System 112 runs in all 36 states and union territories and has handled over 43 crore calls.

On the legal side, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, in force since 1 July 2024, carries death or life imprisonment for gang rape of a minor, criminalises obtaining sex through deceitful means, and strengthens provisions on trafficking and offences against women.

Historical comparison, with a caveat

Earlier city-level surveys recorded higher figures still. A UN Women-supported Delhi survey in 2012 found 95% of women and girls felt unsafe in public spaces. [4] A 2013 Times of India survey reported 96% of women polled in Delhi did not feel safe on the city's streets or in Metro stations after dark, with two-thirds reporting misbehaviour on the streets. [5]

The caveat: those were Delhi-specific surveys, and Delhi is not representative of urban India. They indicate that very high figures were being recorded a decade and more ago; they do not establish a clean national trend line.

Where the claim goes wrong

Presenting 80% as the current national rate rests on a small 2016 survey of 502 women in selected cities, offered without that context and without reference to the far larger 2025 survey.

What this does not settle

Harassment of women in Indian public spaces remains widespread, and 40% of urban women reporting they feel unsafe in their own city is not a reassuring number. It is a serious finding in its own right.

The correction is about provenance and currency of a specific statistic — not a claim that the underlying problem has receded to acceptable levels.

In short

80% comes from a 2016 poll of 502 women in a few cities. The 2025 NARI survey, covering 12,770 women in 31 cities, finds 40% feeling unsafe — a different measure, a much larger sample, and a lower figure.