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Academics discuss gendered violence, safety and the Joanna Yeates homicide

12 January 2011

Lois Bibbings, a senior law lecturer, and Tanya Palmer, who is researching sexual violence, have spoken to the Bristol Evening Post and The Guardian about the recent safety advice for women in Bristol in light of the Joanna Yeates murder.

Lois Bibbings, a senior law lecturer, and Tanya Palmer, who is researching sexual violence, have spoken to the Bristol Evening Post and The Guardian about the recent safety advice for women in Bristol in light of the Joanna Yeates murder.

Following advice from Avon and Somerset Police that women should take ‘the usual safety precautions’ and not go out alone after dark, Bibbings and Palmer felt that it was important to emphasise the impracticality and unsoundness of this direction.  They point out that women have a need and a right to live their lives (working, socialising, looking after others) – whether in the hours of darkness or light. Also, they argue that the advice provides a dangerous distraction to the real problem of violence against women and men. Whilst women are most likely to be harmed behind closed doors by someone they know, it is men who are more likely to experience violence in public. Moreover, without evidence as to the existence of a specific threat to anyone – let alone women – in Clifton or elsewhere in Bristol, the advice, while undoubtedly well intended, is both discriminatory and unfounded."

 

Further information

Please contact Lois Bibbings for further information.
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