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No Country for Women: Examining the death of Sarah Everard and the lack of public safety for women in the UK

By Colette Armitage New Developments Team

PARIS, 23 March 2021

Women in the UK are demanding more protection after Sarah Everard’s death Source: Unsplash The recent disappearance and death of Sarah Everard has created an uproar in the UK. Women across the country have been speaking out about feeling unsafe on the streets of Britain and are calling for change. To make matters worse, police involvement in the case and poor handling at a peaceful vigil for Sarah, have further fueled distrust towards the police and raised questions as to their sensitivity surrounding women’s issues. The combination of these events has sparked protests calling on the UK government to do more to protect women, with advocates hoping this could be a moment of real change for The Green Isle.

The reason why Sarah’s murder has resonated with so many is that it confirms what women had always feared: there is a reason to feel unsafe walking the streets of Britain.

- Colette Armitage

2 IWI BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE IWI: INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S INITIATIVE Clapham, south London 3 March 2021, 9:30pm - The last sighting of Sarah Everard was caught on a doorbell security camera as she walked home after spending the evening at a friend’s house. Past 9:30pm the tragic story of the 33-year-old's death is yet to be revealed. It is uncertain whether she ever made it home to her house in Brixton, but what is certain is that her frightening story has resonated with thousands of women across the UK, who feel that Sarah’s death was a tragedy waiting to happen. What’s more it has, once again, put the police force in the spotlight. The main suspect charged over Sarah’s murder is a 49 year-old man who was a serving Officer. Tensions were further heightened when a peaceful vigil to commemorate Sarah ended in agitated tussles between police officers and attendees, with one woman being arrested. Rather than quelling national outrage, the event did nothing to improve the police force’s reputation, which has already been tarnished by on-going allegations of racist practices, highlighted in the Black Lives Matter Movement in 2020.

#RECLAIMTHESESTREETS

The reason why Sarah’s murder has resonated with so many is that it confirms what women had always feared: there is a reason to feel unsafe walking the streets of Britain. This sentiment is not only felt by many, but backed up by the stats. A UN Women report found that a staggering 97% of women aged between 18-24 had experienced some kind of harassment, while 80% of women across the age categories had experienced it in public spaces. A YouGov Survey found that 96% of women do not report cases of sexual harassment, with 45% believing that nothing would be done if they did. The reports highlighted that women have taken a stoic approach to the issue, believing that the issue won’t be taken seriously, they no longer place their trust in the very institutions which are meant to be there to protect them.

While the statistics can give us an idea of the breadth of the issue, voices from young women who live in the area point out the very real fear they experience going about their daily lives. One young woman, who used to live five minutes from the place where Sarah was last seen, voiced a common concern, “I’ve walked down [poynders road] on my way home many times, calling my boyfriend on the way. It just feels so incredibly close to home and throws off your whole perception of safety.”

Rachel Maitland 27, who lives in London, describes how Sarah’s death has encouraged her to do her own investigations into the reality of insecurity amongst her friendship group. She has been startled by the results, “I did a search through old messages, looking for words like ‘walk dark’ or ‘home safe’. I found that my messages are littered with my female friends planning their lives around potential safety concerns: not walking home alone once it's dark or checking each other got home safe. I realised then that this has become so accepted as normality that we don’t see how unacceptable it is: we’re always the ones making sacrifices to stay safe.”

3 IWI BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE IWI: INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S INITIATIVE Flowers laid in memory of Sarah Everard Source: Unsplash

Sarah’s disappearance has also been a reckoning for businesses, as female employees raise concerns about a lack of sexual harassment policy at their work places. Alison Bate, who lives and works in London, was shocked to discover that hers was one such company. “It’s been a real wake up call for everyone. I have now been tasked with developing a sexual harassment policy which includes doing focus groups with staff to hear their experiences of sexual harassment around the area where we work and what the company can do more to help us. It is also more worrying at the moment because there are less people around (as they work from home) so it is more eerie when you’re walking home. All the anxiety and stress adds up.”

These sentiments have spread across the country as the hashtag #reclaimthestreets went viral on social media, in which women shared their stories of harassment and fear. This hashtag comes as more people demand that the government takes action to make women in Britain feel safer. The message has been received and reciprocated, but mostly by female representatives. Labour MP Jess Phillips on International Women’s Day, read out the names in Parliament of the 118 women who had been killed by a man in 2021. In the House of Lords, the outspoken Baroness Jenny Jones of Moulescoomb even called for a 18:00 curfew for men. It has also renewed calls to make misogyny a hate crime.

While initially remaining quiet on the subject, the damning images that transpired after a peaceful vigil held at Clapham Common in Sarah’s memory, which was interrupted by heavy handed police, the British Prime Minister has since spoken up and “promised” more would be done to make women feel safer. With a Prime Minister on record of saying several damming and sexit statements about women, his most infamous when he was London Mayor once suggesting that Malaysian women go to university to get a husband, it is not surprising that many women have little faith that Boris will do much to solve the issue.

4 IWI BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE IWI: INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S INITIATIVE

'ALL I WANTED WAS TO STAND WITH OTHER WOMEN'

Sarah’s disappearance hasn’t only sparked concerns about women’s safety but has also shone, once again, a negative spotlight on the police, as news broke that the man charged with Sarah’s murder was a serving Metropolitan Police Officer. While the details of Sarah’s disappearance are yet to be revealed, the involvement of a police officer in the case has renewed calls to review police practices. This also comes as Susannah Fisher, a former chief constable for Nottingham Police, denounced The Force’s approach to women’s sexual harassment, describing it as suffering from ‘institutional misogyny’ and a ‘toxic culture of sexism’.

Susannah made her comments after the events that transpired at Sarah's vigil. The gathering was well documented and the distressing image of a woman being tackled to the ground and arrested has shocked the nation. The events on Clapham Common caused national outrage and led to an even bigger protest taking place outside parliament, this time to honour Sarah and protest police brutality. Women who attended the vigil felt let down and disturbed by the police’s actions, with one woman stating, “all I wanted was to stand with other women.” The similarities of these protests and those that took place last summer for the Black Lives Matter movement have not been lost on people, with many calling for an overhaul in police practice which would make minority or discriminated groups regain trust in the institutions designed to protect them.

Protestors denounce police tactics after Sarah’s peaceful vigil was shut down by police Source: Unsplash.com

5 IWI BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE IWI: INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S INITIATIVE All of this comes at a salient time, just as the House of Commons will vote on The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which aims to give police more powers to restrict demonstrations. A Tory policy which Labour fervently opposes, would allow the police to impose a start and finish time on protests, set noise limits and apply these rules to just one individual, with steep fines for those who don’t comply. It also increases jail time for those found guilty of damaging memorials, up to 10 years, which comes as a response to the toppling of the slave trader Edward Colston statue in Bristol.

Supporters of the bill are keen to prevent the mayhem caused by Extinction Rebellion’s protests in 2019, which saw much of central London grind to a halt as protests filled the streets and protesters refused to leave. Critics however, are concerned that this bill may infringe on the right to assembly, enshrined in the Human Rights Act. What’s more, the scenes at Sarah’s vigil have raised concern that if the police are provided extra powers, those scenes could become more common. Given that there is already mistrust between the police and the black and ethnic minority community, which is also growing with the female population as the current events around Sarah’s death unfold, this bill is particularly controversial.

Yet while the controversy surrounding the bill has focussed on the freedom of assembly, other critics have pointed out that now would be the perfect opportunity to use the bill to better protect women, which critics argue, is largely missing from the proposal. The organisation Rights of Women, says that the bill does nothing to address the needs of female survivors of violence and instead “entrenches a reliance on powerful institutions with histories of discriminatory approaches and weak accountability mechanisms.” In effect, it does nothing to address the entrenched systematic abuse of women which is the root cause of the problem.

A SAFER BRITAIN?

Sarah’s death could be the catalyst that Britain needs to seriously rethink its deeply entrenched systems of sexism which manifests itself in inconsiderate police tactics and street harassment. Britain, like the rest of the world, may be facing a Covid pandemic but for many women misogyny and sexism are a virus of equally threatening proportions. Like Covid, this virus claims the lives of hundreds of women every year, with many more experiencing harm or injury as a result.

However, unlike Covid, it is a health risk that gets little political attention. The tragedy of Sarah’s death could be the wake up call needed to finally tackle this epidemic. Boris Johnson has smelt the whiff of change and has loosely joined the bandwagon by now declaring himself ‘a feminist’. He has also set up the Government’s Crime and Justice Task Force which has proposed to place more uniformed and plain clothed police officers in bars and nightclubs, as well as pledging £25 million for better street lighting and more CCTV.

6 IWI BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE IWI: INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S INITIATIVE Whether Johnson has conviction in his pledges remains to be seen. Whether these proposals will improve the security of women is also dubious, since the measures have been highly criticized for doing nothing to address underlying and structural issues of sexism. Nevertheless, Sarah’s death has opened up the dialogue by giving women a tragic and dark example of the threat that they have always known to exist. Perhaps the biggest tragedy in all of this, is that it took the death of a young, white woman to give space for this conversation, when women from many ethnic backgrounds have been shouting about this issue for years. It shouldn’t have to take a woman’s death to create this dialogue; to really honour her life and her sacrifice the government should use its power to ensure that her death is the last.

“She was walking home” - Sarah’s disappearance has resonated with many young British women Source: Unsplash.com

IWI BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE IWI: INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S INITIATIVE NOTES: (REFERENCES)

[1] Alexandra Topping (2021) ‘Almost all young women in the UK have been sexually harassed, survey finds’ , 10 March. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/10/almost-all-young-women-in-the-uk- have-been-sexually-harassed-survey-finds [2] ‘Sarah Everard: How a woman's death sparked a nation's soul-searching’ The BBC, 14 March. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-56384600 [3] ‘Sarah Everard: New safety measures after killing’ The BBC, 17 March. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-56410943 [4] Luke O'Reilly (2021) ‘MPs listen in silence as women killed in last 12 months remembered amid Sarah Everard disappearance’ The , 11 March. Available at: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/jess-phillips-list-violence-against-women-parliament-sarah-everard-disaapearance- b923588.html [5] 'Toxic culture of sexism' in police, says former police chief’ The BBC, 17 March. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-56427167 [6] Rights of Women, ‘We express deep concern over plans to introduce police officers in pubs, bars and clubs in a bid to tackle violence against women’ 17 March 2021. Available at: https://rightsofwomen.org.uk/news/we-express-deep-concern-over-plans-to-introduce-police-officers-in-pubs-bars-and- clubs-in-a-bid-to-tackle-violence-against-women/ [7] Rights of Women, ‘POLICE, CRIME, SENTENCING AND COURTS BILL DISMISSES THE REAL NEEDS OF SURVIVORS’ 15 March 2021, Available at: https://rightsofwomen.org.uk/news/police-crime-sentencing-and-courts-bill-dismisses-the-real-needs-of-survivors/ [8] Catherine Bennett, ‘Boris Johnson a feminist? Well, apart from his policies, his antics and his jokes…’ The Guardian, 13 March 2021. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/13/boris-johnson-a-feminist-well-apart-from-his-policies-his-antics- and-his-jokes [9] ‘Misogyny as a hate crime: 'Law would help women know they will be believed’’ BBC News, 16 March 2021. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-politics-56399863 [10] ‘In Pictures: Sarah Everard vigils held across country’ The BBC, 15 March 2021. Available at:https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-56392512 [11] ‘What is the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill and how will it change protests?’ The BBC, 16 March. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-56400751 [12] George Bowden, ‘Sarah Everard vigil: 'All I wanted was to stand with other women' The BBC, 16 March. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-56402418

IWI BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE IWI: INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S INITIATIVE GLOBAL POLICY REVIEW No Country for Women Report Examining the death of Sarah Everard and the lack of public safety for women in the UK Published 23 March 2021

BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE IWI: INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S INITIATIVE