10 hot stories, including our fight for a safer world for women and how Covid has changed those on the frontline
The death of Sarah Everard was an horrific end to a terrible 12 months for women, says Labour MP Jess Phillips
INTERNATIONAL
WOMEN’S DAY (8 March) started the week off. On Monday we all thought that Sarah Everard, 33, was missing. I conned myself into thinking she might turn up, although something about those images of appeal notices reached inside me to the bit that stores all the sad stories I’ve had to absorb over the years, working at Women’s Aid and Westminster. I knew she wouldn’t come back.
I did IWD talks and events. I spoke about empowered women, role models, fighting for fairness. I tried to inspire and be upbeat.
Six days later, I slumped on the sofa after a media round about the grotesque levels of violence against women and girls in the UK. From 6am, I’d spent Mother’s Day talking about the 20% of adults who have suffered sexual assault, about the tens of thousands of rapes that are reported but lead to no charge, no court room, no justice. I talked about the 2.3 million victims suffering from domestic abuse in the UK. I talked and talked about the way women were feeling in the wake of days of hoping and praying that Sarah would turn up alive.
She didn’t. Sarah had become the 118th woman in the UK believed to have been killed by a man* in the year since the last IWD. She could have been any of us. She was simply walking home when she was abducted off the street. A Met Police officer has been charged with her kidnap and murder, while her death ignited an outpouring from women online sharing their experiences of harassment, violence, assault and abuse.
The case of Sarah Everard has ignited something in women. As with the killing of George Floyd at the hands of US police and
the Black Lives Matter movement, it was nowhere near the first incident of its kind, yet it has lit a spark. The everyday normality of Sarah’s actions has created both fear and defiance that has fuelled action.
And so, a week bookended by two days designed to celebrate and care for women felt like one of the worst of my life. I’m tired in my bones of begging people to care about the abuse and fear that every woman has suffered at some point. I’ve been fighting this stuff for years. But I and many women have lost our resilience, because that terrible week came at the end of a terrible 12 months of women being dealt a really crappy hand.
Domestic abuse soared in the pandemic, as lockdown for some meant imprisonment of the worst kind. Women are more likely to have been made redundant and mothers in particular have lost wages, given up jobs and seen their economic security threatened. Women have done the vast majority of key working and care work, and they have picked up the burden of unpaid care in the home as well as home-schooling duties.
During the pandemic, the Government suspended the requirement for companies to report their gender pay gap, so we have absolutely no idea what is currently happening to women’s pay (something that Grazia has campaigned on; companies will have to resume reporting this year, at least). It was too onerous for businesses to have to pay women equally in the pandemic, apparently. Well, not as onerous as being paid much less than your male colleagues.
Womankind was already exhausted, battered and bruised from the pandemic, even before a week where we were reminded that we are not safe on our streets, many of us are not safe in our workplaces, and millions of us are not safe in our homes.
After#metoo, the debate quickly became men vs women and we can’t let that happen again. I’m pleased that men have been concerned to learn about how much tiring effort women have to put into keeping safe. This is not a men vs women issue; if I were to survey 50 men and 50 women in my constituency, every one of them would say they wanted the streets to be safer for women, we are on the same team. Now I hope we see sustained action from men.
Women don’t want candles at vigils, they want safety. Mothers don’t want praise from Government ministers, we want to be remembered in economic strateg y. Women don’t want claps for our care work, we want better pay and recognition of our worth. Enough is enough.