Violence and harassment against women in Glasgow on the rise
By Jamie Shovelin
March is Women’s History month, and we are seeing history repeating itself with the country’s largest city facing a concerning rise in reports of harassment and violence against women and fem presenting people throughout the city.
The country is seeing the highest levels of reported sexual crimes since 1971, with statistics showing around one in three women are subject to violence in their lifetime, this experience is not exclusive to in person experiences either with 1-in-10 women having experiences online violence as well.
Communications and Engagement managers for Engender, an organisation dedicated to equal rights between men and women, Jade Stein said: “Global evidence suggests less than 40% of women will seek help of any sort, while less than 10% of those who do seek help will report their experience to the police.”
In the past few months, the city’s newspapers have been flooded with reports of rape, assaults and murders of women around the city centre. The most recent reporting being a rape that took place at an underpass in the Cowcaddens area of the city centre on the 3rd of February.
Not only is the city seeing multiple reports of women being assaulted in the news but the city it also seeing a surge woman coming forward to speak about how unsafe the feel at night and even more about their assaulters being let out of prison and trying to contact them.
According to a survey done by Wise Women UK, a charity dedicated to improving women’s safety and self-esteem, 41% of women said they o not go out in Glasgow after dark.
The violence against women and girls act (2023) was passed to help tackle these issues, and aims to help women struggling with domestic violence, rape and assault, and brought new training to the local police on the issues. Although all the issues raised in this act do occur with men and boys as victims as well, there is a very big difference in numbers compared to women victims.
But with the rise in figures and new experiences being shared every day, many people think the government and police are not doing enough.
Dawn Brennan from Wise Women UK said “We need new creative approaches to the safety of our streets and an honest assessment of what is going. We also need a robust criminal justice service that protects women and responds to the criminal behaviour of perpetrators.”
Many people feel the money and awareness going into the act is not still not enough.
Jan Macleod, Manager for Women’s Support Project said: “Whilst there has been a great deal of investment to raise awareness of male violence and to improve aspects of the police response, the system as a whole is still not achieving justice for victims.”
A Survey conducted by the Glasgow Standard showed that all women that answered felt unsafe in the city at night, with many responders calling for more safeguarding in areas such as street lighting, transportation and police presence.
The rise in cases have made many scared or uncomfortable to be out in the city alone, especially at night, and this isn’t just an issue in Glasgow, but a bigger problem across the UK. Just last week MP Jess Phillip, the minster of violence against women and girls, took four minutes to read to parliament
the list of 95 women killed in the past 12 months, afterwards she called for the government to cut these numbers down by half in the next 10 years.
Many Glasgow based Charities are calling for this and a overhaul of the already in place systems.
