Gendered Violence against Inuit Women

Violence is a gendered phenomenon. Research has shown that females are much more likely than males to encounter sexual violence in their lives. Official statistics confirm that Canadian females are overwhelmingly the most common victims of sexual assault and other sexual violations (such as sexual interference, sexual exploitation, and incest), representing 87% and 80%, respectively, of those incidents reported to police. Girls are more at risk of encountering sexual violence in their homes than boys are. Police-reported data on family violence against children and youth show that girls and boys have similar rates of physical assault perpetrated by a family member, yet the rates of sexual assault against female children and youth are four times higher than they are for males.

Research on domestic violence also shows that while men and women are likely to report some form of physical or sexual violence by a current or former intimate partner, the scope and severity of the violence they experienced differ. Women are more likely than men to report a physical injury (42% versus 18%) or fear for their lives as a result of the violence (33% versus 5%). Women are also more likely to report experiencing chronic violence, that is, eleven or more incidents of violence, than are men (20% versus 7%).

But violence is not only gendered. It is also racialized. The inordinate levels of violence experienced by Indigenous women and girls have become a matter of public record. The statistics documenting this violence are startling:

Indigenous women are more likely to report experiencing intimate partner violence than non-Indigenous women (15% versus 6%). And they are more likely to sustain an injury and to fear for their lives.

Indigenous women and girls are 12 times more likely to be murdered or missing than any other women in Canada, and 16 times more likely than white women.

Police-reported violent crime against young women and girls (aged 24 and under) in the North is nearly three times higher than it is in the South and nearly four times higher than for Canadians overall. Young women and girls in the North are also more likely to be victims of more severe violent crimes and to be physically injured by their assailant. Homicide rates from 2009 to 2017 for young females were more than three times higher in the North than in the South.

Violence against Inuit women is especially troubling:

Women in Nunavut are the victims of violent crime at a rate more than 13 times higher than the rate for women in Canada as a whole.

The risk of a woman being sexually assaulted in Nunavut is 12 times greater than the provincial/territorial average.

In Nunavik, 74% of Inuit women reported experiencing violence in the home, and 46% reported experiencing sexual assault.

In 2016, Nunavut had the highest rate of female victims of police-reported family violence in Canada (3,552). The Northwest Territories had the second highest rate (2,678), and Yukon had the third highest (1,007). The overall rate for Canada that year was 319 per 100,000 population.

The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls has named this gendered and racialized violence as genocide, declaring, “This violence is rooted in systemic factors, like economic, social and political marginalization, as well as racism, discrimination, and misogyny, woven into the fabric of Canadian society.”

Every Inuk woman deserves to live free from the threat and reality of violence. Police play a principal role in advancing and maintaining public safety. In Inuit Nunangat, policing is the responsibility of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), except for Nunavik, which has been policed by the Kativik Regional Police Force (KRPF) since 1996.