Don’t---- and other instructions for women

In her victim impact statement, Sarah Everard’s mother said, ‘In the evenings, at the time she was abducted, I let out a silent scream, “Don't get in the car, Sarah. Don't believe him. Run!”’ On 3rd March, Sarah Everard was falsely arrested and handcuffed, kidnapped, raped, strangled to death and her body burnt by a serving police officer. On 17th September, a 28 year old teacher, Sabina Nessa, was murdered by a stranger, on a five minute walk across a park to a pub. Her sister said, ‘I urge everyone to walk on busy streets when walking home from work, school or a friend’s home. Please keep safe.’ Just earlier this summer, the bodies of two sisters, Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, were found in a park in the early hours of 5th June 2021- they had been stabbed repeatedly by a stranger. They had been celebrating Ms Henry’s birthday. 

Two sisters celebrating a birthday, one woman walking to a pub and one woman returning home- ordinary things that all humans do all the time but all four women were murdered by male strangers. In the UK, 8% of women were murdered by male strangers in 2018, so it appears that ‘stranger dangers’ are on the rise, following the Covid pandemic. As a woman born and brought up in Delhi, the instructions on how to stay safe were plenty- don’t walk alone, don’t come back late, don’t drink alcohol, and many more. I was sexually assaulted in a park as a child, and also by a cousin. Bus journeys meant regular groping, walking meant catcalling, ‘eve-teasing’ and flashing; and studying meant regular demeaning comments from male teachers. In 2012, the horrific gang-rape and murder of Jyoti Singh in Delhi, provoked world wide outrage. But I was shocked to find that in the UK, there wasn’t any less violence against women. End the Violence against Women (EVAW) 2020 report, The Femicide Census, published on UK femicides in 2018 found men who had already killed women were killing again – three men had already killed women before – and over half of perpetrators (52%) had a history of violence to women. There have been 2,075 female victims in England and Wales in the last decade. Over 9 out of 10 killers were men. Statistics from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) report that 98.5% of rapists in the UK are men.

Image: Does texting after women return home keep them safe when a majority of violence against women happens at home?

Worldwide, women and girls are the victims of various forms of violence- from rape, torture to murder. According to the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC, from a report published in 2019, a total of 87,000 women were intentionally killed in 2017. Nearly 60% of them were killed by intimate partners or family members- this means that each day across the world, almost 140 women are killed by a member of their own family. More than a third of the women intentionally killed in 2017 were killed by their current or former partners. The annual number of female deaths worldwide by family or partners seems to be on the increase. The largest number (20,000) of all women killed globally by partners or family members in 2017 was in Asia, followed by Africa (19,000), the Americas (8,000), Europe (3,000) and Oceania (300). 

War, civil unrest, famine, pandemics and climate crisis have created conditions for more inequality for women- and they suffer from indirect violence from those too. According to Greenpeace, women and indigenous peoples, along with people from poor countries, are far more likely to experience the extreme effects of the climate crisis. In the UK, RESPECT, the national domestic violence charity, reported a large increase in cases and in the first three weeks of lockdown, 14 women and 2 children were murdered (3 times more than usual).  Female fetuses are also aborted in many parts of the world, causing a demographic imbalance. In the UK, 102 femicides (68%) in 2018 took place in the woman’s house – which may (35%) or may not (33%) have been shared with the perpetrator. 

This means that over half of the world’s population is unsafe, regardless of where they live. They also can’t use public spaces such as parks and toilets, while workplace harassment is widespread. More women than men use public transport and walk, yet facilities for them are poor, including lack of toilets and seating. The London underground stations, many of which were designed by men for men in the early 19th Century, when women did not go to work, still remain difficult to access for women and anyone with disabilities; and those with small children. This year, a Spanish judge caused outrage by dismissing a case brought by women’s rights groups that involved 80 women being secretly filmed in 2019, urinating in side street because of lack of facilities; and the videos then posted on porn websites (the same wouldn’t happen for men urinating in streets).

It is clear from the history of feminist movements that violence against women in the public realm has increased as they have become more visible there. Reclaim the Night began in 1977 when women in Leeds took to the streets to protest the police requesting women to stay at home after dark in response to the murders of 13 women by Peter Sutcliffe. Placards read ‘No curfew on women – curfew on men’. Reclaim the Streets , which was founded in 1995, is a collective that promotes community ownership of public spaces and includes an environmental aspect. In 2017, the ‘Me Too’ movement against sexual violence was revived (it was initially used on social media in 2006, by sexual assault survivor and activist, Tarana Burke). Each year, the world celebrates an ‘International Women’s day’ in March and there is also a Women’s march in October. On a positive note, Barcelona has spaces designed for women by a feminist collectives, encouraged by a deputy female mayor for urbanism. The popularity of the concept of the 15 minute cities might help too. But legislation and design won’t by themselves, solve the problem of violence against women, especially those occurring in women’s homes and at workplaces. Reclaim these Streets (separate from Reclaim The Streets), which began after Sarah Everard’s murder, says that British streets should be safe for women ‘regardless of what we wear, where we walk or what time of day or night it is. It’s wrong that the response to violence against women requires women to behave differently’. They are right- one can’t live with a set of ‘don’t instructions’ in life.

(Image credit: Tim Dennell, Wikimedia commons)

I wonder why the pace of change is so slow? I think it is because men have yet to become a vocal part of this movement. At present, men hold a disproportionate amount of power in all aspects of society. So they have to recognise that they have a vital part to play in this societal shift, especially if they are fathers of girls. The White Ribbon Campaign (WRC), a global movement of men and boys working to end male violence against women and girls, was formed in 1991 after the ‘antifeminist’ mass shooting in Montreal in 1989 at an engineering school where fourteen women were murdered and 10 women and four men were injured. But more needs to happen with more visible support. I noticed a lack of men at the recent London protests and vigils (as opposed to the 2012 Delhi protests against Jyoti Singh’s murder) and tweeted, ‘We need more men to condemn such acts and attend vigils’. Talking and teaching about misogyny is important at schools- a large numbers of teachers are also women (Sabina Nessa was one). There are plans to launch safety apps to help women in the UK that will track their movements but that gives rise to issues of privacy and hacking. So, rather than having the ‘don’t instructions’, why don’t we start with women and girls having more ‘do’ instructions? Especially when we know that a space that is safe and accessible for women and girls is most likely to be safe and accessible for all.