The murder of Sarah Everard and the shadow pandemic

Safe spaces for women are shrinking, but increased policing will not solve the problem.

On March 3, a 33-year-old British woman, Sarah Everard, disappeared in London. A little over a week later, her remains were discovered in woodland in Kent and a police officer was charged with kidnapping and murdering her. It was amid this tragic news in the United Kingdom that we marked International Women’s Day as well as the first anniversary of the World Health Organization’s designation of the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic. Everard’s murder comes on the heels of a massive increase in violence against women across the globe in the past year. This and the countless other violent attacks on women should be a wake-up call for societies.