The Reclaim the Night march is a safe and empowering event about women having the right to walk the streets at night, without the fear or reality of violence.
Organised by NUSW Women’s Campaign & Wales Women’s National Coalition, the march attracted a variety of guest speakers at the event including, Naomi Brightmore (Director, Wales Women’s National Coalition), Paula Hardy (Chief Executive, Welsh Women’s Aid) and Cathy Owens (Director, Amnesty International Wales).
Women only
Reclaim the Night marches are traditionally women-only marches, originating in the UK during the 1970s. The marches became increasingly significant during the late 70s when Peter Sutcliffe - the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ - began murdering women in and around Leeds.
Feminists in the area were angry that the police response to these murders was slow and that the press barely reported on them. It seemed that it was only when young student women began to fall victim to this serial killer that the police started to take the situation seriously.
Still a problem
Things have not changed today; women are still afraid to walk the streets at night, and women are continuously told not walk alone in the dark. A survey by a young women’s magazine in 2005 found that 95 per cent of women don’t feel safe on the streets at night, and 65 per cent don’t even feel safe during the day, with 73 per cent worrying about being raped and almost half say they sometimes don’t want to go out because they fear for their own safety.
Women cannot claim equal citizenship while the threat of violence restricts our lives as it does. We demand the right to use public space without fear. We demand this right as a civil liberty; we demand this as a human right. Reclaim the Night is about taking back the right to walk our streets whenever we want to, without the fear or reality of violence.
Challenging perceptions
One of the key themes of Reclaim the Night Cardiff was to challenge people’s attitudes towards women who fall victim to sexual violence. In 2008, the NUS Wales Women’s Campaign worked with Amnesty International Wales to survey students with regards to their experience of domestic abuse and their attitudes towards sexual violence. The results were worrying, with 36 per cent of respondents answering that a woman is totally responsible or partially responsible for being raped or sexually assaulted if she has acted in a flirtatious manner and 23 per cent of respondents saying that a woman is totally responsible or partially responsible for being raped or sexually assaulted if she is wearing sexy or revealing clothes.
Reclaim the Night – Cardiff also touched upon the appallingly low rape conviction rate, which is below the UK average of 6.1 per cent for all four Welsh police force areas. In Dyfed-Powys, there is a less than one in 30 chance of a rape conviction, and South Wales Police saw the second biggest fall in conviction rates in the UK, down from 12.18 per cent in 2004 to 5.9 per cent in 2006.