Canberra, Oct 16 (IANS) One in five Australian women have experienced stalking, new data has revealed.

According to the data, which was published on Wednesday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2.65 million Australians, 2 million women and 653,400 men, have experienced stalking since the age of 15.

The agency 2021-22 Personal Safety Survey found that 20 per cent of Australian women and 6.8 per cent of men have been stalked.

"We found one in five women and one in 15 men have been stalked," William Milne, head of crime and justice statistics at the agency, said in a media release.

"Women were almost eight times more likely to be stalked by a male than by a female, while men were stalked by a male and by a female at a similar rate."

Among almost 1 million women who experienced stalking by a male in the last 10 years, 78 per cent were stalked by a male they knew, and in 45 per cent of cases, the stalker was a current or former intimate male partner, Xinhua news agency reported.

"Half of the women who were stalked by a male intimate partner were assaulted or threatened with assault by that same partner," Milne said.

Half of the women who were stalked by an intimate male partner were stalked for more than a year.

The most common stalking behaviours women experienced by an intimate male partner were unwanted contact online or by phone, loitering around their location and following in person or tracking them electronically.

Young women, those who were studying or renting, and those under financial stress were the most likely groups to experience stalking.

--IANS

int/jk/sd