Women should not have to lock themselves away in order to be safe

At around 9:30pm on 3 March, 33-year-old Sarah Everard went missing after walking home from a friend’s house in Clapham. After searching for several days, on 9 March 48-year-old Wayne Couzens, an armed officer in the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command at Westminster, was arrested. He was off duty at the time of his arrest.

It was confirmed on Wednesday that Couzens was being held on suspicion of kidnap and murder. By the evening, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick said that unidentified human remains had been found in a woodland area in Kent.

The week-long search for Everard and its grim finale have left the country in state of shell shock, prompting an outcry of rage from the public asking: what can be done to ensure women’s safety? Or perhaps: what should have already have been done?

In a statement, Home Secretary Priti Patel said, “I am deeply saddened by the developments in the Sarah Everard investigation. My heartfelt thoughts and prayers are with Sarah, her family and friends at this unbearable time.”

“Many women have shared their stories and concerns online since Sarah’s disappearance last week. These are so powerful because each and every woman can relate. Every woman should feel safe to walk on our streets without fear of harassment or violence.”

Speaking on Thursday, Jess Phillips MP, the Shadow Minister for Domestic Violence and Safeguarding, said that “Cressida Dick did a good job. I think she has to be tempered and speak about the rarity of random attacks on the street.” However, she continued: “The reality is that it is not a rare crime. Since Sarah first went missing six women and a little girl have been being reported as being killed at the hands of men.”

She added: “The fear that women live with is an everyday thing. The message which this should be sending out is not what women should or shouldn’t do”.

On Wednesday night, the House of Lords voted in favour of an amendment to the Domestic Abuse Bill which will now be amended to include the criminalisation of the threat to share intimate images. Baroness Nicky Morgan tweeted: “Delighted that the amendment has been accepted and the #DomesticAbuseBill will be amended so #threatstoshare intimate images are criminalised – thank you to @RefugeCharity, everyone who shared their story, support across the House of Lords & from the Government”.

The Lords also voted in favour of The Centre for Women’s Justice’s amendments to the bill. Police action lawyer, Harriet Wistrich tweeted : “Fantastic news just hot off the press: the House of Lords have voted in favour of @centreWJ amendments to the Domestic Abuse bill – creating statutory defences for women driven to offend due to domestic abuse – a moment of hope in a climate of misogyny”.

Other campaigners against sexual harrassment and violence want to go further with extra measures for safeguarding.  In 2017, Chris Williamson, the Shadow Fire and Emergency Services minister, said the idea of women-only train carriages had “merit” and could target rising numbers of sexual offences. Now, Baroness Jones, a Green Party peer, is calling for all men to face a 6pm curfew. She suggests that she might put amendments to the law to bar men from being out after 6pm in order to “make women feel safer and lessen discrimination”.

A YouGov survey for UN Women UK found that almost all young women in the UK between the ages of 18 and 24 have experienced sexual harassment and that 70 per cent of women in the UK have experienced it in public. Of these, only 4 per cent said they had reported incidents to an official organisation, with 45 per cent offering the reasoning that they believed it would achieve nothing. UN Women UK has called on the government to make public spaces safe and inclusive for all, immediately.

Nimco Ali, women’s rights activist and chief executive of The Five Foundation, told Reaction: “Obviously we have the Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy out later this year. But, we keep talking about ‘not all men’. The reality is that it is men who are killing and raping women. Let’s work together in order to raise sons, brothers and men that respect women, as opposed to men jumping on the defence and saying ‘it wasn’t me’. If your first response is to be defensive then you are the problem. We have to work through this together as a society and men do need to take a broader responsibility in that.”

“Women have been told not to feel safe in their homes, communities and bodies for generations. Instead of teaching young women how to defend themselves, we should be teaching men and boys what is and isn’t acceptable.”

Ali believes that these are policies that can be implemented within the education system. “For me, it comes down to when a woman sees a man walking down the street, she doesn’t think ‘oh my god – it’s dark – he could be raped’. When a man walks down the street all he should think is ‘that’s a woman, walking down the street’. That’s what we need to challenge and the equality we are after.”