What men like me need to do to make women feel safer

Phil Hilton
Updated ·6-min read
Almost every woman will admit to feeling scared when they're out on their own in the dark. How can men help? We explore. (Getty Images)
How to help women feel safer on the streets - a man's guide. (Getty Images)

I think being thoroughly beaten up as a teenager on more than one occasion gifted me with an insight into the fears many women feel walking around after dark – although, to be clear, I’d rather have taken a short course or read a helpful leaflet.

That sense of threat and violent possibility has never left me. I learned early on what men are capable of, what happens when some men start acting out their darker urges. So, when I read that singer and actor Alexandra Burke is afraid to go out alone in the evening, I empathised entirely.

Burke is the star of Curfew – a new thriller that imagines a society with a night time lockdown for men. As a late middle-aged man with a fondness for classic films and toast, I’d hardly notice, but it raises an interesting question: what can men do to make women feel safer?

It's worth pausing and acknowledging that the question is really: what can men do to make everyone feel safer? It’s a rarely spoken truth that men are afraid of other men. Many will claim to stride around urban wastelands at night, carefree and whistling. They’re lying. All men know, just as all women know, that the male person walking towards them, sitting near them on the bus, or leaning against that wall is a potential problem.

What I’d ask men to do initially is to hang on to that fear and use it as a way of connecting with the anxiety women inevitably feel more acutely and more frequently. Picture yourself, however big and capable you are, walking alone on a quiet street with three men walking toward you. Feel that prickle of awareness, remember that wariness, and most of all, hang on to that need to assess their intent.

This could very well be how a woman might feel with any man when there is no one else around. This is the feeling we need to access when we’re out at night. When you see those three men, you will be using their clothes, their stride, and their posture to make survival judgments.

So, I ask, what are you projecting when you share a space with a woman? Have you chosen a hyper-masculine form of dress, possibly one that echoes the clothes favoured by criminals, or at least criminals as they are portrayed in popular culture?

From the hoodie half covering our face to the cap concealing our eyes… everything we wear sends a message. Ever since Marlon Brando popularised the biker jacket, men have worn clothes that hint at danger. Fashion is perverse and loves to play with the dressing-up box of gangs and outlaws, but on a dark night, the woman walking home may not know you’re only playing. Everyone has every right to dress exactly how they wish, but it’s an act of decency and generosity to avoid looking scary, if possible.

Then, I try to think about my walk, my shoulders, and most importantly, what I’m doing with my eyes. Men, we know when we are allowing a glance to linger slightly longer than it needs to, we know when we slow down as though contemplating stopping… and we know how these signals will be read by those around us.

Someone walking with purpose to their destination is a lot less threatening than someone ambling and looking us over with ambiguous plans. Remember those three men coming toward you – you want to feel they’re so intent on their destination that they’ve hardly noticed you.

We also know that how we hold ourselves makes a huge difference in the way people read us. Martial arts fighter Conor McGregor has developed an almost comically masculine and aggressive walk for a reason; it’s his job to project himself as ready to meet physical threat.

An actor immersing himself in a character knows their walk can say so much – I’m fairly sure Cillian Murphy doesn’t prowl around like Tommy Shelby when he goes about his daily life. It is possible to adjust your movement and tell the world you come ‘in peace’.

We have little choice about walking, whereas the decision to speak is entirely in our hands. I tend to avoid any attempt at conversation with a woman I don’t know when there are few people around, particularly at night.

A friend told me about a man on a cross-channel ferry recently who began a conversational thread about workouts and staying in shape and how she looked like she worked out… and as he pulled at that thread, he became more and more unpleasant to be around, more and more of a perceived threat.

Please understand that your intentions are irrelevant. The woman sitting opposite you can have no way of knowing you are ‘just trying to be friendly,’ ‘trying to pay a compliment,’ or ‘only kidding around.’ Remember that most women will have had previous unwanted contact from people who looked a lot like you.

Anything you say will cause them to make calculations, to measure their responses, because they can’t see where that thread is leading. Most men will have found themselves addressed by that stag party on a train platform who insist on asking them what team they support or whether they’re from around here. Harmless questions that require very careful answers. Remember that feeling before you speak.

Finally, I come to this whole question as a father. The lesson for me, seeing my daughter grow into a woman, is that, like most women, she’s a sort of urban soldier. She has a whole set of skills, a pool of knowledge built with the help of the women around her and their shared experiences. She knows where to walk, how to walk, what face to wear, she appraises cab drivers, she knows how to navigate a world filled with men. It would be very satisfying and pleasing, of course, if none of these acquired reflexes were ever needed again.

I respect the armour streetwise women have had to acquire. But I hope Burke’s honest admission might make some men question what they’ve done to inadvertently unnerve a woman travelling solo at night - and above all, what they can do now to put things right.

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