It’s a finding from the just-released OECD Better Life Index that has stuck with me this week.
While Australia ranked highly for life expectancy, personal health and a lower homicide rate, just 63.6 per cent of women feel safe when walking home at night.
This is well below the OECD average and much lower than other countries such as the US (74.1%), the UK (77.4%) and Canada (80.9%).
To put it in perspective, only women in Chile, Mexico and Hungary feel less safe.
And for every 10 Australian men who say they feel safe, there are only 6.3 women who would say the same – the worst gender difference in the OECD.
These figures should shock me. But they don’t. Why?
The common thread of #MeToo
Someone asked recently if I had ever experienced sexual harassment in light of the #MeToo campaign (which just took out TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year) that has engulfed the US media and politics and now the Australian media.
I had to say yes. The majority of my friends can say the same.
I also know from speaking to my friends – and other women – that most have an ‘escape plan’ – an idea of what we will do if we are walking home at night and someone approaches us.
This is simply not good enough. Australian author and journalist Benjamin Law recently set up a new hashtag #IWill to encourage people to not only acknowledge this culture of sexual harassment, but say what they will do to change it.
Let’s make it the first step toward having a community where we can all feel safe.
