Violence Against Women Isn’t About Women

One of us had their daughter call from Hong Kong last weekend to say she is rethinking her next career move back to London. “I feel safe here,” she said, “and the news from the UK fills me with fear.” She is not alone. The news of Sara Everard’s terrible death – at the hands of a policeman – has met the media’s appetite for ghastly to become a global, front-page story. Women are marching, police are over-reacting, and calls for Cressida Dick, the head of London’s police force, to step down are multiplying.

So is London a scary, unsafe place for women? Is it worse than other cities? And are women around the world increasingly at risk of violence? Are men perennially violent and misogynistic? And is dumping Dick the right reaction? The answers are complex and make for pretty depressing reading. But good solutions always require good analyses. And we desperately need both men and women designing them. Because the problem with violence against women is that it has very little to do with women – and almost everything to do with men – and cultures – that skew male.

Culture comes in all kinds of shapes and sizes and each has a powerful – and unavoidable – impact on both men and women. There are national and institutional cultures, including the attitudes and practices inside police departments. They are reflections of each other, put in place by one to mirror the values and priorities of the other. All need to be adapted if you want people to be liberated from the shackles of their respective sex. Looking at data about violence to women is like a window into the dark side of the world. It’s also a report card on how humanity is evolving towards civilisation, or failing to do so…

Global Context – UK vs World

Of the 87,000 women worldwide killed last year, Great Britain’s share was a comparatively low 207. In terms of female homicides, the UK is also among the least lethal countries in Europe, which may not bring much reassurance to women’s frayed psyches. We’re not just afraid of death, of course. There are a million horrible experiences between a wolf whistle and annihilation. Reported rapes in the UK have skyrocketed since 2013 to over 60,000 cases a year (interestingly, 2013 is also when reported rape numbers in the US began to increase after a steep, two-decade drop). So while some 80% of murders in the UK are of men, many more women than men face life-changing sexual abuse.

But still, men are killed four times more, also at the hands of other men. Why would men feel any safer on streets than women? Do they? A recent report on BBC Woman’s Hour suggest they share women’s fear, which we should harness in the hope of pushing for solutions.

Home is Where Hell Begins

However, that is just the tip of the iceberg of male violence against women. The worst part of this phenomenon is that while most women are on high alert walking about town at night, the majority of women murdered in the UK – some 57% – die at the hands of their (ex-)partners or family members. More than nine out of 10 killers were men. The horror of supposed love turned lethal.

The global picture is even more shocking; 80% of those 87,000 women murdered around the world each year are killed by an intimate partner or family member. Often murder is the culmination of an extended period of increasing sexual or other physical abuse. So while we may shiver as we hurry home at night, the real nightmare for many starts when they turn the key in the lock, a phenomenon hugely exacerbated during the pandemic.

The vast majority of these ‘intimate’ murders are in Asia and Africa (almost 20,000 each), Europe counts 3,000. But these numbers underestimate the total violence against women. As Mara Hvistendhal documented in her extraordinary book Unnatural Selection, 163 million girls are missing from the world because of sex-based abortion (and this figure is now 10 years old). China and India, which in 2018 was awarded the dubious title of most dangerous country in the world for women, lead the way. And when you have an unnatural selection of boys over girls, you end up with a significant surplus of men, which in turn increases rape, violence, and abuse against women, as well as crime in general.  

Protect Women By Educating Men

The continuing toxic culture of masculinity that sees physical violence as innate to the male psyche is as pertinent to male victims as to female ones and needs to be continually challenged through education. Recent initiatives include Promundo, which works globally to engage men in gender equality pushes, and White Ribbon, a UK-focused organisation working with boys and men to prevent violence towards women. Education works. Even in countries like India, studies have shown teenage boys are less likely to abuse wives years later if coached in non-sexist attitudes.

More typically, remedies over-focus on women. An Australian military general recently told his young female cadets how to dress and behave to protect themselves. How much more useful if he had educated his male cadets on how to respect women as colleagues – and leave them alone. The challenge of violence against women isn’t women – it’s men. And the cultures they create in organisations and countries where they dominate. That’s why there is such a push for more gender balance in the military. But we also need more gender balance in police forces, something urgently needed everywhere they are perceived to be a part of the problem.

It’s hard work gender balancing any male-dominated organisation, but militaries and police forces, where physical force, veering potentially into violence, is almost unavoidably part of the job, are particularly tricky – and absolutely essential. If the people who are meant to protect us are actually a threat, then we are obviously not safe. Indications of toxic masculinity in the UK police force trickle out regularly. Women don’t bother reporting rape because 99% of cases aren’t prosecuted. This depressing reality led Sky News to ask if rape hasn’t become ‘the perfect crime’ (sic!) which certainly doesn’t help to discourage men from violence – it almost incites them.

Cressida Dick, the Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police since 2017, started pushing to recruit more women early in her tenure, but progress has been slow, given austerity constraints and staffing cuts. It’s harder for female leaders to push this kind of culture change.

It’s easier for men to tell other men it’s time to balance. But that is no reason to call for her to step down. She needs shoring up, not media abuse. And the UK’s white, male-dominated police force urgently needs to better reflect the community it purports to serve.

We may also want to spend more time helping our children learn the early identification of abusive people – whether partner, colleague or family member. Let’s get women away from abusers after a first date, not a first punch. And create systems that help both men and women identify and suggest treatment to the 1% of psychopaths (this is probably an underestimate) that lurk amongst us, largely and destructively undetected, bullying us into submission when not pummelling us to death – or leading some of the world’s nations.

5 Steps to Addressing Male Violence

1. Flip the Script: Focus on the issue by naming it. Stop talking about ‘violence against women’ and start talking about violent masculinity and how to address it.
2. Gender Balance Governments: represent 100% of the population and their interests. Johnson’s cabinet is one of the most male-dominated in decades. Male dominated governments don’t and won’t prioritise women’s interests. Nor will they do Step 3.
3. Gender Balance Police & Security Forces: The UK police force is overwhelmingly run by men. Progress has been painfully slow. Accelerate it. Balance in police forces is linked to better understanding and connections with communities.
4. Gender Balance Teachers: Pay attention to gender ratios at all levels of education. There are too many women teachers at young ages (75%) and too many male professors dominating key roles in universities, police and military academies. Make faculty gender balance a priority to build relevant educators and role models for all genders.
5. Get It on the Curriculum: Educate men (& women) about masculinity early. Help everyone learn how to manage relationships across genders. Build relational and self-management skills to help men manage emotions in ways other than beating up on the person closest to them.

Freedom vs. Safety (conclusion)

The goal, let’s be clear, isn’t simply the ‘safety’ of women. It’s the ‘freedom’ of women and men not to have to have to think about their safety as they walk the dark streets home alone – or once they get there. And it’s not just women, of course, it’s humans of every hue, difference and orientation. But women are the canary in the coal mine. A culture’s treatment of women is a quick shorthand for their treatment of any out-of-power group.

The vast majority of victims of violence are men. That’s why they should be partners in designing our collective escape from fear. We’ll only find freedom together.