WAVE Data Explorer

A national women’s helpline is a dedicated service for women that serves exclusively or predominantly women survivors of violence. It should operate 24/7, be free of charge, and support survivors of all forms of violence against women. To ensure accessibility, the helpline should offer assistance in multiple languages and be available to women across the entire country, with staff who are well-trained, skilled communicators, and knowledgeable about regional contexts and relevant services. Women’s helplines provide crisis counselling, practical support, and referrals to other services, such as women’s specialist services.

Women’s shelters are specialised services that provide immediate, safe accommodation for women experiencing violence and their children (if any). Rooted in feminist, gender-specific, and human-rights-based practice, these shelters offer far more than emergency accommodation: they work to empower women, prioritise their safety, and offer long-term support. Services provided often include counselling, legal assistance, help accessing employment, and support in securing stable housing. To be considered a women-only shelter, the service must exclusively support women and their children. The Istanbul Convention recommends that specialised women’s shelters should be available in every region with at least one shelter place per 10,000 people, where one family place counts as one bed space in WAVE’s methodology.

Women’s centres are non-residential specialist services that support women survivors of violence and their children (if any). Grounded in feminist, gender-specific, and human-rights-based practice, they provide empowering short- and long-term assistance while prioritising women’s safety and autonomy. The term includes women’s counselling and crisis centres, regional domestic violence crisis centres, specialist services for Black and minority ethnic, migrant, or refugee women, specialist services for women survivors of trafficking, outreach services, and services offering independent domestic or sexual-violence advisors. Typical support includes information, advice, advocacy, counselling, practical help, and accompaniment to courts, police, or social services, as well as proactive and outreach support, among other services.

Specialist services for survivors of sexualised violence include rape crisis centres, offering long-term support including counselling and therapy, support groups and help navigating other services, and sexual violence referral centres, specialised in immediate medical care, high-quality forensic practice and crisis intervention. Other specialised services, such as crisis/medical services and helplines specialised in sexualised violence, also form part of this support. Many women’s centres also offer a range of support services to survivors of sexualised violence within their holistic approach to ending violence against women. In some countries, this is based on clear political principles and an operational analysis of the continuum of violence, and specific services for sexualised violence survivors are not present.