Strategy to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls

Part of Private Members' Business – in the Northern Ireland Assembly at 4:30 pm on 23 March 2021.

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Photo of Gerry Kelly Gerry Kelly Sinn Féin 4:30, 23 March 2021

I welcome the fact that a number of Members tabled the motion, and I am glad to be able to speak on it.

Over the last short while, I have heard a lot of the discourse about the issue. One of the things that really stood out for me was how women are taught to protect themselves, and Emma Sheerin shared some of the ways of doing that, which I had heard about on the radio. Many women walk home alone at night carrying keys between their fingers in case they have to fight someone off. They have to plan their route home to make sure that they are on busy roads with plenty of lights and cameras, just in case. They are taught to tuck their long hair into the backs of their coats, and they get male taxi drivers to drop them off a few doors away from their home as they worry about those taxi drivers knowing where they live.

Members talked about statistics, and I was struck by those in the recent investigation by UN Women UK. It found that 97% of women aged 18 to 24 had been sexually harassed and that a further 96% did not report those situations because they believed that it would make no difference at all.

What are we to do? I firmly believe that, as men, we need to listen to the voices of women and to amplify their voices. We need to change the attitudes that feed that violence. We know that men suffer violence too, and a number of Members said that, but this is about women and girls, and the research and statistics show that the overwhelming and vast majority of victims are women and that men perpetrate the majority of that violence. World Health Organization statistics show that 82% of the victims of intimate partner homicides are women.

The discussion should not be focused on how women can protect themselves but on how men challenge and change their behaviours. That does not just mean avoiding being a perpetrator but challenging other men and calling out insulting or inappropriate behaviour. Often, misogynistic comments are passed off as jokes. However, what starts as jokes about women are insults. Those insults feed into a culture of misogyny, which leads to more serious incidents of violence. We need to have the uncomfortable conversations, because the longer that we go on without tackling the fundamental problems of misogyny and sexism, the longer that levels of violence against women will remain unacceptable.

A YouGov survey that was carried out by UN Women UK found that only 4% of women reported incidents of sexual harassment. That is a shockingly low figure and a damning indictment of how the criminal justice system has failed women for too long. There is a responsibility on the police to take complaints of sexual harassment and other forms of violence seriously. As a member of the Policing Board, I know that moves have been made in that area, but they have not been enough, by any stretch of the imagination. The police need to be given sufficient training to allow them to effectively investigate claims of violence against women and girls and to spot offences and gather evidence so that those cases can be effectively prosecuted. There also needs to be training in the Public Prosecution Service and the judiciary. When the retired judge John Gillen spoke in the media yesterday, I think it was, I noticed that he mentioned specifically that the judiciary needs that training also.

I was pleased to see mandatory training for police officers in the Domestic Abuse and Civil Proceedings Act in order to allow them to police the newly introduced domestic abuse offence. Training needs to be rolled out on all forms of violence against women and girls, including issues such as harassment, stalking and sexual violence.

I finish by emphasising what I said earlier: there is an imperative on men not just to listen to women but to amplify what they say so that we can all reduce misogyny and violence drastically until it becomes a thing of the past.