It's not just a clock change 🕰️ 🌙
What will it take to persuade them that our safety matters? That we matter?
When was the last time you felt completely, unquestionably safe walking alone in the dark?
I can’t remember there ever being a time where I felt comfortable on our streets at night. In the midst of the Yorkshire Ripper murders in Leeds in the 1970s, women were told by police to ‘stay out of public spaces’ at night to avoid being another name on the list of victims; in response, they organised the very first Reclaim the Night marches to reclaim their right to walk freely and safely on the streets and place the onus back on the perpetrators of violence against women and girls to change their behaviour.
In 2024, we’re still marching - Reclaim the Night events happen around the UK every year, including in Kent, where
and I organised the first Reclaim the Night walk in the county in 2022. If you’re local to Tunbridge Wells and would like to join us, mark your calendars for the evening of Monday 25th November. More details will be on our Instagram page soon.The dial is moving at a glacial pace, and women are still experiencing harassment, intimidation, stalking, sexual assault, abuse and violence at an alarming rate. Violence against women and girls is an epidemic, a national emergency, and it’s not a surprise to any of us because we experience it every. Single. Day. Misogyny is baked into our society; it starts at home, in the jokes that we don’t call out, in the expectations we place on women to be everything to everyone, in the conversations we don’t have about sex and gender and inequality.
The misogynistic joke made on the playground. The teachers and parents who don’t have the vocabulary to call it out. The friends who don’t know any better. The boy who grows up believing that women owe something to him. This is where it all begins. Before we know it, boy becomes man. He strikes up a chat with girl on a deserted bus. They both know he won’t take no for an answer, so she doesn’t refuse. She makes polite conversation, heart pounding in her chest, mouth dry, hands clutching a set of keys like tiny weapons. She gets off the bus at the next stop, praying that he doesn’t follow. Deep breath. Potentially safer on a busy well-lit street, even at night. She’s still six stops away from home but can’t risk getting on another bus, so she calls an Uber and she calls her mum and she accepts that this is the price women must pay for being women.
The scale of the threat that we face is more extreme than ever, and with the changing of the clocks, the window in which we can walk freely on our streets decreases. It’s dark when we walk to work or school and it’s dark when we return. Do we really want to live in a world where it’s normalised and accepted that women simply aren’t safe in public spaces? Do we really want to raise the next generation of girls to carry the same burden that we carry?
It’s not just a clock change, it’s a routine change, a behaviour change. Every woman I know will instinctively think differently about the way she travels home when the sun sets earlier; choosing to take buses or trains or driving instead of walking, calling friends or family or partners on the way home, walking along the main road instead of quieter country lanes or pathways.
We exist in a near-constant state of vigilance against potential threats, both real and perceived. It’s imagined conversations in the shower where we say all the things we wish we had said to the man who touched us without asking in a club, or the train conductor who didn’t step in when we were being harassed. It’s finding ways to say no without damaging his ego or having to lie about our martial status or sexuality. It’s the weight of responsibility for our own safety, in a world where it isn’t taken seriously by those who can make a difference.
This piece feels very heavy to write, perhaps even heavier to read, and yet I am not overstating any of it. This is the way we live, the challenges we face, and there isn’t a happy ending or a neat resolution to make it more palatable. It simply is.
I’d love to hear from you. How do you feel walking alone at night in your area? Do you find yourself avoiding going out in the evening at this time of year because you feel unsafe being out and about? How does the clock change impact you and your freedom? Leave a comment and let’s talk about it 👇
I already feel like I’m subconsciously returning home earlier, like a teenager with a curfew (I’m 26!). Or find myself reaching into my pocket more to pay for a bus because I’d rather not walk back - and this is when the sun hasn’t even fully set. If street lights are on then it’s like clockwork to me
Kind of assumed that my mood gets lower at this time of year because of mental health reasons and the whole ‘not getting enough sunlight’ narrative. But reading this has made me realise that actually, part of it is the limitations we face when the nights are longer
Thank you for writing this 🫶🏻✨
Amazing piece Lauren. My office doesn't have a car park, so I have to walk through an alleyway to get to my car. When the clocks change, I go the long way round so I don't have to do that walk or I park somewhere different entirely. I'd never really consciously realised *why* I was doing this before.
As for leaving the house alone in the evening - we live in the centre of a town with anything you need within a 5 minute walk. If it's dark and late, I'm absolutely not going.