Injury among women 2022–23

Injuries are a significant health concern for Australian women. In 2023, injury was the 7th ranked cause of disease burden in Australia for females, accounting for about 10% of their fatal burden (AIHW 2023). Falls, suicide and self-harm, and accidental poisoning were the largest external causes of injury contributing to the burden of injury for females in Australia.

Females aged 19 and over (women) experience distinct patterns of injury due to various physiological, social, and environmental factors including family, domestic and sexual violence, pregnancy, ageing, and mental health challenges. The effects of injuries in adulthood can extend far beyond the initial trauma and cause long-term physical disabilities or psychological damage (AIHW 2008). These effects can include: 

• anxiety and depression (Kruitho et al. 2020)
• chronic pain and early onset of osteoarthritis (Hoffman et al. 2014; Anandacoomarasamy & Barnsley 2005; Gameiro et al. 2021)
• reproductive issues (Hoffman et al. 2014)
• difficulty returning to work (Cancelliere et al. 2016)
• for caregivers, reduced ability to provide care and increased household costs (Maher et al. 2013).

In 2022–23, injuries among women accounted for:

Scope

This report describes injuries among females aged 19 years and over (women). The technical notes accompanying this report detail inclusions, exclusions and categories use in this analysis. For injuries in females aged under 19 years, please refer to AIHW report on Injuries in children and adolescents. For injuries among adult males aged 19 years and over, please refer to recent AIHW report Injuries affecting men in Australia.

For the financial year 2022–23, this report presents information on hospitalisations, deaths and emergency department (ED) presentations among women across Australia. External causes of injury are described for hospitalisations and deaths but not ED presentations as external cause information is not readily available in ED presentations at this point in time.

A time series analysis of injury hospitalisations and injury deaths by financial year between 2013–14 and 2022–23 is also presented in this report. Due to variation in diagnosis coding over time, injury ED presentations are only included from 2017–18 for the time series analysis. 

This analysis is limited to cases where age was recorded as 19 and over, and sex specified as female, in each year of data analysed. Records with missing and/or unspecified age or sex are therefore excluded. We note that the ‘sex’ variable currently available for national hospitals reporting only comprises of 4 categories – male, female, intersex or indeterminate, and not stated/inadequately described – and is referring to the biological sex only. It is acknowledged that this report excludes some persons who identify as a woman and includes some persons who do not identify as a woman. This may include women, transgender men, intersex people, non-binary and gender diverse people. Work is underway to include more comprehensive coverage of sex and/or gender within future reporting. For this report, only records with sex specified as female have been included.

This report does not include information on injuries that did not result in an ED presentation, hospitalisation or death. There are many more injury cases that are treated by general practitioners, allied health professionals or outpatient clinics that are not presented in this report. This report uses information collected in administrative datasets which allows for description of patterns of injuries but not investigation into why these patterns occur. The methodology for identifying injury cases, and description of the data quality can be found in the technical notes accompanying this report.