The National Community Attitudes towards Violence Against Women Survey developed by VicHealth with the University of Melbourne and the Social Research Centre shows responses from 17,500 people to questions about accepted behaviour of men towards women.  

Bendigo-based Centre for Non-Violence chief executive Margaret Augerinos said people's understanding of violence against women had broadened, but there was a long way to go.

"There have been some shifts in attitudes, certainly around awareness of some issues and violence against women," Ms Augerinos said.

"For example, domestic violence isn’t just about physical abuse, there are other forms of violence women are experiencing."

Ms Augerinos said the results on victim blaming concerned her most. 

The survey found 13 per cent of people agreed that women 'often say no when they mean yes' and 16 per cent agreed that a woman is partly responsible if she is raped when drunk or drug-affected'. 

One in five people believed violence could be excused if later the perpetrator regretted what they had done. 

Eight in 10 said it was hard to understand why women stayed in violent relationships and more than half believed a woman could leave a violent relationship if she wanted to. More than a third of survey respondents believed 'rape resulted from men being unable to control their need for sex'. 

Ms Augerinos said these statistics showed little change in attitudes since the same survey in 1995 and 2009. 

"We have community attitudes that still don’t view women completely as equal human beings," she said.

"That women are property and men have the right to do certain things to women.

"I think a lot of violence that women experience really stems from those beliefs."

Ms Augerinos said many men would not agree that their need for sex was out of control. 

"But I do think that there are some elements in society do have those views.

"I’m hoping we can make some shifts and that we get closer to achieving gender equality which makes it much harder for these views and attitudes to continue."

View the national survey here.