More holistic approach needed to make the streets safe for women

WITHIN our local park is a dog park — a large fenced off area where one can bring one’s dog to ‘run wild and free’ or, in other words, off the lead. It’s a good idea as it allows dogs to do their thing without compromising the safety or enjoyment of the main park for non-dog lovers. Dogs, after all, are.... well, dogs, and even though I am a dog lover and owner, I think that this is exactly how it should be.

So why then was I immediately reminded of our local dog park when I heard the mayor of Melbourne, Robert Doyle, telling us, rather proudly, that Melbourne was hoping to introduce designated ‘safe havens’ for women in his city? Mr Doyle was speaking on Morning Ireland on RTE Radio One.

It was almost a year ago that Irish woman Jill Meagher suffered an appalling attack on the street after a night out in Melbourne which resulted in her death. There was huge worldwide publicity around this crime and the subsequent charging of her killer.

So my first reaction to hearing about this rather odd plan to make Melbourne a safer place for women was that this was a PR damage limitation exercise. The good burghers of Australia’s second city clearly were trying to undo some of the obvious negative publicity the city had suffered in the aftermath not only of Jill Meagher’s death but other recent attacks on women in the city. From his interview it wasn’t entirely clear as to how these safe areas would work. Mayor Doyle says he wants to create safe spaces where women can wait late at night to be picked up, or from where they can get a taxi.

PR aside, what worries me about this whole, albeit rather half-baked concept is the notion that women should be corralled into designated areas in order to assure their safety. By implication it means that once a woman moves out of these ‘safe havens’ she is more likely to be attacked. This puts the onus for staying safe on the victim, in this case, women.

Violence against women in cities is not a new phenomenon. Back in the mid-70s, across the world, cities had ‘Reclaim the Night’ marches where women took to the streets to protest against violence against them. In Dublin 5,000 women marched in 1978 in protest against the gang rape of a 16-year-old girl in the inner city. This event led to the setting up of the Rape Crisis Centre the following year.

Our cities should be safe places for all citizens — both male and female. Sexual predators are the problem and so the solutions should start with them, not with the victims.

In 2010 the “Don’t Be That Guy” campaign was launched in Canada with a series of posters, with tag lines such as “just because she isn’t saying no doesn’t mean she is saying yes” against an image of a young woman seemingly passed out on a sofa surrounded by wine bottles. The message was clear — sex without consent is sexual assault. The city of Vancouver claimed the following year that the rate of reported sexual crime had gone down by 10%. It’s a good start on changing the culture of putting the responsibility on women to stay safe.

But if we really want to make our streets safer for women (and men) we need to take a more holistic approach. We need to ensure that all streets have proper street lighting; we need widespread CCTV coverage which may act as a deterrent and can also help hugely in prosecuting a case. We also need the political will and the money to put far more police officers on our streets, coupled with a zero tolerance for anti-social behaviour, including severe drunkenness.

But most of all, if we are serious in addressing sexual violence against women we need to ensure that perpetrators face the full weight of the law when they are found guilty in court.

Too often in this country we hear of men getting off with very light sentences for sexual crimes, especially if they are a position of making a payment to their victim.

I applaud Melbourne for wanting to make their city a safer place, but designated ‘safe areas’ for women gives out a totally wrong message. It reduces women to second class citizens — something we are, most definitely, not!