Sidney Ball Lecture 2026

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We are delighted to welcome Professor Sylvia Walby OBE FBA FAcSS (Professor of Sociology at Royal Holloway, University of London) to speak on: 'What is violence? How should it be measured? What are the implications for policy to halve violence against women and girls in ten years?'
  • Date 6 November 2026 - 5.00 p.m. - 6 November 2026 - 7.00 p.m.
  • Location Auditorium, Garden Quad, St John's College

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According to the metric selected, violent crime is variously going up (police recorded crime), going down (Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), main series), or flat (CSEW, self-completion module). The ONS statistics on violent crime suffer from sex bias; and the reduction of the cap on the number of incidents from 5 to the 98th percentile does not remove that bias, which especially affects female victims of high frequency domestic violence.

The Government has created a new metric to provide accountability for its Strategy to halve Violence Against Women and Girls in ten years, but this has ten flaws. The underlying issues are as much conceptual as technical. They concern the definition of violence, of seriousness, of women, and the decision to create a separate field rather than to correct the sex bias in the mainstream.

There are remedies. These will be proposed. They have implications for the prioritisation of resources supporting interventions to reduce violence against women and girls. Official statistics are powerful instruments in making social issues visible and in crystalising the priorities of policy fields.

Registration is required. More information is available on Oxford Events.

Professor Sylvia Walby

Sylvia Walby OBEN FBA FAcSS is a Professor of Sociology at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is Chair of British Academy Section for Sociology, Demography and Social Statistics and founding President of the Violence and Society Working Group 11 of the International Sociological Association.

She was Chair of the Sociology Sub-Panel in REF2021 and was the founding President of the European Sociological Association. She has held the UNESCO Chair in Gender Research as well as the Humboldt Foundation Anneliese Maier Award. Books include Trafficking Chains; Crisis; Globalization and Inequalities; The Concept and Measurement of Violence against Women and Men; Stopping Rape; The Future of Feminism; Contemporary British Society; Gender Transformations; Patriarchy at Work; and Theorizing Patriarchy.

For more information, visit Royal Holloway's website: https://pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/en/persons/sylvia-walby.