Kate Byng-Hall shares her thoughts as women’s lack of safety on the streets is marked by the tragic murder of Sarah Everard.
Photo by Erik Mclean
Disclaimer: The views expressed and experiences shared within this article are entirely the author’s own and cannot be attributed to Tru. as a whole.
If you’re a woman, you know what it’s like to feel unsafe by yourself in public. This collective experience has made the recent kidnap and murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard while walking home near Clapham Common on March 3rd all the more tragic, and has affected many of us deeply.
The saddening (but unfortunately not shocking) statistic going round is that 97% of British women aged 18-24 have experienced sexual harassment, and 80% of women of all ages have suffered harassment in public. The general feeling among young women is a heart-breaking and unnerving one – Sarah could have been any of us.
A Universal Experience
I was first catcalled by a group of men leaning out of a car on the way home from school when I was 13. It was about 3pm and I was wearing my uniform. I remember my heart thumping for the rest of my walk home, concerned that they might’ve somehow followed me and were going to pull up beside me at any moment, and simultaneously disgusted that a group of lads had shouted obscenities at a young girl in her school uniform.
This story might sound shocking considering my age, but research has shown that the majority of women globally first experience sexual harassment on the street between the age of 11 and 17, and after that first time, most of us experience it pretty regularly. It’s impossible to escape.
Some people struggle to conceptualise why it’s so wrong to shout or stare at women and girls on the street, but this must be telling: it’s highly threatening and scary, and makes us wary of our presence in public at all times. And it’s definitely not a compliment. It makes us scared that it could lead to something far more sinister.
As women, we are constantly aware of any threat there may be to our safety in public, even in broad daylight. We’ve been conditioned to prevent sexual harassment or violence against us since we were girls, but it’s time boys and men were educated too – sexual harassment is a problem for all of us.
What Men Can Do
When women are walking alone, especially at night, we often take precautions to stay safe like taking a detour to remain in well-lit areas, visibly staying on the phone, carrying our keys as a potential weapon and wearing comfortable shoes in case we need to run from an attacker. However, a key way for men to support women so we don’t have to feel so wary is to ensure we feel as safe as possible in their presence. Here are some tips for a man wanting to make a woman feel confidence in their safety:
Not approaching her, even politely
Not blocking alleyways or underpasses
Crossing the street away from her
Non-threateningly overtaking her so she doesn’t feel followed
Engaging in a phone call so he’s conspicuous
Offering to accompany a female friend walking somewhere at night, especially if she asks, even if he would feel safe taking the same journey
Intervening in situations in which it appears a woman may be in danger
Calling out other men on discourses implying violence against women, even if they’re joking, and telling them to stop if they catcall
Talking with female family members and family on their experiences (if they’re comfortable discussing it).
This isn’t to say that men cannot experience sexual harassment too. In fact, a 2018 BBC survey found that 20% of men have experienced harassment, ranging from inappropriate comments to assault, but 79% of male victims keep silent about it: many, unfortunately, feel that it is their responsibility to deal with the inappropriate behaviour on their own. The shame around this experience is evident here, and this is not always any easier for men to deal with than women.
The main difference which must be recognised is that most women are hyper-aware of the threat of sexual assault against us at practically all times, while most men seemingly become aware of it when they become victims themselves. This does not belittle male experiences, it merely highlights how wide-ranging female fear is, and how crippling the experience of our gender making us inherently vulnerable can be.
Men need to speak up about the issue of sexual harassment and violence – if women are the only ones voicing their concern, it doesn’t help us feel any more confident that our struggle is being taken seriously by those who must help prevent it, nor does it help men feel less ashamed about experiencing it themselves.
Structural Changes
One of the most shocking elements of Sarah’s case is that the suspect in her murder, Wayne Couzens, is a police officer – one of the very people meant to protect us. And further, that crime reports were filed of him exposing himself in McDonald’s twice just three days before her disappearance; a report is currently ongoing as to whether the incidents were dealt with using sufficient severity. Here, the police seem to have failed in detecting an individual who was a potential threat to women.
The police are under further scrutiny surrounding their response to a peaceful vigil held on Clapham Common in Sarah’s memory on March 13th. The Reclaim These Streets event was initially cancelled due to lockdown breaches, despite organisers’ proposals to make it Covid-safe, but hundreds of people (mostly women) still flocked to her memorial on the Common at 9:30pm to mark the last time she was seen alive ten days prior.
The crowd organised without incident and stood in an orderly manner to pay their respects and listen to guest speakers, but some of the police in attendance proceeded to tackle some women to the ground, handcuffing them and forcibly removing them from the Common.
As a result, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Cressida Dick, has been accused of allowing actions which oppressed women and made them feel unsafe in public in a sick form of irony, with many calling for her to resign. She has since responded by saying she will not step down because the officers acted “quite rightly” considering the vigil was an “unlawful gathering” which posed “a considerable risk to people's health”. The Home Secretary Priti Patel has called for an independent investigation into the Met's handling of the event, with Mayor of London Sadiq Kahn calling the police’s actions “unacceptable”.
Some are taking the incident as a sign that the police and its key decision-makers see people speaking up about sexual assault and violence against women as unjustified, despite the fact that the right to freedom of expression is enshrined in the Human Rights Act.
It seems evident that the issue of women’s public safety needs to be given more attention and credence within the deepest corners of the state as well as of the population’s general consciousness. Now is a scary time to be a woman, and women are not the ones who need to change that.
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