'' NIGHT PROTESTS NIGHT '' : GLOBAL MASTER ESSAY

 

INDIA'S ' reclaim the night ' protests should go very, very global and very, very soon.

ONE WEDNESDAY LAST - crowds of women marched in the Indian state of West Bengal, protesting the brutal rape and murder of a female doctor trainee.

While these demonstrations were a reaction to a week-old crime, the protesters chanted '' reclaim the night,'' a relic of an older protest movement - one that women across the world should revive.

'' Reclaim the Night '' began in 1977 in England, where the so-called Yorkshire Ripper had mutilated women after dark, and the police in response, instructed women to stay home after sunset.

English women, questioning why they should be restricted when dangerous men were the problem, responded with marches and placards that read '' No curfew on women - curfew on men.'' Since then, movements to ''reclaim'' or ''take back'' the night have waxed and waned.

According to a 2018 study, more than 80 percent of American women have experienced sexual harassment; worldwide about a third of women have been subjected to intimate partner violence, social violence, sexual violence by a nonpartner or both at least once. Much of that violence happens after dark.

Women learn about night's dangers from one another. Mothers warn their daughters never to walk alone at night, and TikTok is rife with violence of young women who share safety tips. [ For example : hiss at threatening passerby.]

In places where the sun sets in the afternoon [ such as New York during the winter], it would be perfectly rational for a woman to feel the need to refrain from making after-work plans and immediately hunker down at home.

IN INDIA, gender based violence routinely makes the news, both for its impunity and brutality. One of the country's best-known cases, popularized internationally by the Netflix drama '' Delhi Crime '' is that of Jyoti Singh, a woman who died after a brutal nightime gang rape.

As Indian law prohibits the publication of the names of rape victims, the press began calling her  Nirbhaya, or '' fearless. '' This is the sort of nice, empty sentiment that does not make it safer for women to exist after dark.

Why should women be expected to be fearless when violence against them continues to rise?

One-half of the world's population shouldn't be afraid of one-half of each day - which, by some simple math, adds up to one-half of each life.

India's protests, then are a chance for women around the world to say that their entire lives, not just the daylight hours, belong to them.

Nighttime is a fact of life. Violence against women shouldn't be.

The World Students Society thanks Valerie Pavilonis.