Keys in one hand, pointed until reaching the portal at dawn.
An application to transmit the location in real time to friends.
A simulated call to the mobile.
A longer (but safer) route taking a detour to the widest avenue ... From the dark streets of Mediterranean Barcelona to the most quarrelsome neighborhood in Mexico City, from the Paris metro to the Buenos Aires city bus, women they agree on the methods and formulas they use to move forward calmly when they walk alone at night or at dawn.
The recent assassination of executive Sarah Everard, 33, in London while on her way home, has rekindled the debate about their safety, but with a turn that feminism has been demanding for decades: it is not women who should limit their freedom, watch how they dress, when they go out or finally decide not to go out to avoid danger - as the policemen asked the Londoners when Everard disappeared - but society in general, the forces of order and men in particular who must give the return to that violence.
Thousands of Londoners mobilized after the murder, for which a police officer has been arrested.
"Let's reclaim these streets" became his battle cry.
This is how six women from six capitals of the world claim them.
Some are in their twenties and some are in their thirties, the oldest of whom is past 50. All have been afraid when coming home at night.
/ PILAR ÁLVAREZ
EUGENIA PONCE / Mexico City
"My mother taught us that whoever hits first, hits twice"
When night falls, the street is a skeleton of disarmed market stalls, yellow awnings that drain rainwater, and the only lighting that works is that of some taco and Mexican snack bars.
If there is a place where a woman — and probably a foreign man — would not walk alone at night in Mexico City, that place is called Tepito.
But for Eugenia Ponce, 52, this mystery of alleys set up for the illegal trade of any merchandise, from plasma screens to weapons or drugs, is the only strength that resists in Mexico.
Ponce grew up in this neighborhood.
And like most women in a dangerous and brave area of the capital, she learned from a very young age that the only way to survive is to move like them, talk like them, walk with her head high and without fear.
Inside one of the most dangerous places in the capital, she feels safe.
"My mother was a bitch, she taught us from girls that the one who hits first, hits twice," she recalls.
His daughter hides a baseball bat under the miniature cupcake, pancake and candy business that she keeps open until late in the morning.
The only business that lights up the dark Matamoros street after 11pm.
“You shouldn't grab the bat and hit the guy.
Because they can grab it and you were worth it.
The joke is that you push it, ”he warns.
In a country with 10 women murdered a day and with 80% who declare having suffered some type of sexist violence in their lives, feeling safe in any corner of Mexico is reduced to the least possibility that they will be killed, raped, or done. disappear.
Everything else, for many Mexican women, implies having run with luck: “Unfortunately we have normalized violence.
We say, it's good that nothing happened to you.
When it really did happen to you, but you are alive, you can tell it, ”says Ponce.
Outside the Tepito fortress, Ponce remembers running when leaving work.
In the neighborhood she has the support of the neighbors, those who could attack her are the children or grandchildren of acquaintances, but in the rest of the monstrous Mexico City she feels unprotected.
Eight years ago his nephew and 12 other young people were kidnapped in a nightclub one block from the Angel of Independence, known as the Heavens case.
Only a few bones were handed over to them after three months of searching.
“From then on I did feel that something had changed.
I no longer believed myself to be such a chingona, I saw closely everything that can happen to you and that nobody does anything ”.
Every night, he picks up the shirt stall that his daughter will turn into a street cafe until dawn and drives through the twilight of Matamoros to a taxi stand.
It lets her know that she stays with her partner and not alone.
And as if it were an unwritten rule in Mexico, any woman who fires is asked to write when she gets home.
The heart in a fist every time that message takes longer than expected.
But the high forehead and the well-guarded fear: "The street is also ours."
/ ELENA REINA
SOFÍA FARELEIRA / Barcelona
"I prefer the long journey to the short and lonely one"
The interview is over.
The photo session is just beginning.
Sofía Fareleira, 40, looks at her reflection in a shop window and fixes her hair well.
At that moment, three men cross behind her.
As if it were written in the most predictable script of his life, one of them gets very close, and says in his ear: "Don't look at yourself, you look gorgeous."
"And above all, you are supposed to be happy because they tell you those things," Fareleira resigned.
Those things, - "men who bother you, who do not respect your privacy, who tell you dirty things, who touch your ass without you asking ..." - have always made me take precautions when going out on the street, during the day or at night.
“In general, you don't feel safe,” sums up this Portuguese fashion designer who has lived in Lisbon, London and, since 2006, Barcelona.
In Spain, 57.3% of women have suffered some type of violence, from touching to rape, according to official data.
The first measure you apply is to look at how you dress.
“I always wear a long coat, or a trench [a kind of raincoat] in case I go with a skirt or a miniskirt.
It is more comfortable.
If you go short from the bottom and cut from the top, you see looks, they tell you something… ”, he assures.
“I do it naturally, without thinking much.
It is rooted, ”he explains.
"You live like a gymkhana, juggling," he adds.
She, like many women, also avoids walking alone, especially at night.
“I prefer either to stay at a friend's house to sleep or, if not, always by taxi.
I don't care if it's only for an apple ”, he describes.
In the small section that is forced to go unaccompanied, she carries her mobile phone and keys in her hand, in a state of alert.
"I walk very fast and I am attentive in case I hear footsteps, a bike, a motorcycle or anything that I do not anticipate."
If you come across a man, change the sidewalk.
More than dark streets, avoid lonely ones.
"I prefer to do a long and busy journey, to a short and lonely one."
And with their friends they always have the same slogan: "As you get home, let them know."
If it is late and someone says that she will walk alone, they recommend that she take a taxi.
“I don't live in fear either, I just act with caution.
If I can avoid going alone, well I avoid it.
If I can avoid being told things, it saves me annoyance.
But it is at the cost of my freedom ”, he sums up.
“I would like men to understand that it is nothing personal towards them.
And I know that not everyone is like that.
But, in my opinion, he lacks a bit of empathy on his part.
A little involvement to see how we fix this, ”he laments.
The problem, he repeats, is that they are the ones who must take action.
“I don't ask women to behave like I do.
We must educate so that these situations do not happen, not tell us how to avoid them, ”she insists.
"Or if not, what?
Do we cover all of ourselves so that men are not tempted? "
/ REBECA CARRANCO
BELÉN ÁLVAREZ / Buenos Aires
"The blame is always on our side"
Belén Álvarez, like most women in Buenos Aires, changes her way of touring the city according to the time.
The same streets where you walk quietly with the sun up high become threatening at night.
“During the day I wear headphones, but at night I take them off because if not, I don't know if someone is coming behind.
I walk faster and I am not at all calm.
I'm not worried about being robbed but being sucked [kidnapped] out of a car, ”says the 29-year-old poet and writer.
Álvarez says that he tries to avoid the streets of low, tree-lined houses, where at certain times not a soul passes by.
After living all his life in Avellaneda, on the southern outskirts of Buenos Aires, a few weeks ago he moved to the capital.
“There more or less I know who the neighbor is and they know me.
Here you don't know.
A car door opens and you get a heart attack until you see that nothing happens ”.
According to the latest official statistics, from 2014 to 2018, sexual crimes doubled, from 1,009 cases to 2,020.
Her family never let her go out alone at night as a child.
"If I went out to a bowling alley [disco] or wherever, my parents came to look for me or if they couldn't, the neighbor would come, who was a driver [taxi driver]," he recalls.
“I didn't start going alone on the colectivo [bus] until I was 16 and we couldn't drink [drink] because we knew it was dangerous.
There was the discourse that if you drink, the boys could do something to you, that something happened to her because she was drunk or because of the clothes she was wearing.
The blame was always on our side and not on the other, ”he says.
The irruption of feminism in 2015 shook that macho scaffolding.
There were advances, such as the street harassment law that punishes harassment on public roads with economic sanctions, which claim to have suffered more than 90% of Argentine women.
"Now, the guys take much more care of themselves.
They look at you lustfully, but they don't tell you anything.
When I was younger, I did experience cases such as being called to ask for an address and see that they were jerking off ”.
She turns to friends.
“We have a WhatsApp group, and there we send each other the location in real time when we go out.
We let us know who we are with, if we are going to see someone we have never seen before… ”, he explains.
When saying goodbye: "Let us know when you arrive."
Neither lies down until reading on the other's screen: "Friend, I arrived."
/ SEA CENTENERA
KATHIE PAN / Berlin
"Sometimes I pretend I'm talking on my cell phone"
Kathie Pan, a 20-year-old nurse, arrives on time for the appointment at the Zoologischer Garten station, the main transport hub in the western part of Berlin.
He has just gotten off work in a nearby orthopedic practice and usually takes the commuter train at this station to return home, in the Friedrichshain neighborhood, east of the city.
It is six in the afternoon and there is still light, but it is already possible to understand why this area tends to appear among the worst when polls ask women where they feel unsafe in their city.
Several homeless people live under the bridge where the tracks pass and it is common to come across men drinking alcohol in the vicinity.
"If I leave work late and it is already dark, sometimes I prefer to walk a little more and get to the next station on my line so I don't have to go through here," says Pan.
Compared to Spain and other European capitals, Berlin is a very dark city.
Except for the commercial streets, most of the roads are very poorly lit.
Despite this, in general women say they feel quite safe, but Pan and her friends take several precautions when they go out at night.
“I always text my boyfriend or my mother to tell them I'm on my way home.
I also share my location with my best friend, so she can see at all times where I am walking ”, explains this future medical student of Vietnamese parents who emigrated to Germany.
It is common, he adds, that if they pass through poorly lit areas or where they feel a feeling of discomfort or danger, they call each other and talk on the phone that stretch.
"Sometimes we just pretend we are talking on the cell phone without calling anyone," he adds.
Pan says that he has suffered some episode of street harassment and that since then he has been even more afraid at night.
She remembers that on one occasion, when she was driving home from work, four men in a car began to yell at her why she was going alone and if she wanted to be taken somewhere.
They wouldn't let her cross the street.
"I was passing Ghent, and I think they saw that I needed help, but they ignored me," he recalls.
They started to follow her with the car, so she had to run away and take refuge in a tent.
Although he was near his portal, it seemed safer that they did not see where he lived.
Following the example of Sweden, where the police are in charge of the service, a German NGO has set up a telephone number to call in case of needing such accompaniment on the way home.
It is attended by a hundred volunteers, who talk to the women - they are the majority but also men use it - until they arrive at its door.
They generally contribute eight hours a month of their time.
And they receive an average of 220 calls a week.
During the talk, they ask where their interlocutor is and if a dangerous situation occurs, they notify the Police.
Pan claims to walk calmer in the city since the pandemic began.
“I have the feeling that there are more police on the streets and that makes me feel safer.
Or maybe it's just that I hardly go out at night anymore, ”he jokes.
/ ELENA SEVILLANO
GENESIS MAYEN / New York
"There are girls who seek refuge in my store"
Génesis Mayen arrived in New York three years ago to meet her husband, hoping to leave machismo behind in her country, Honduras.
Three years later, in which everything has been rolling for her ("I arrived in January and in February I was already working," she says), the fear of walking alone on the street at night, or of being attacked, has not abated.
On the contrary, he says, "I thought that here I would find security and protection, but there is the same machismo as in Honduras."
Mayen, who works in a clothing store in Queens and studies Early Childhood Education, is forced by her chores and schedules to spend a lot of time on the streets.
"Between 45 minutes and an hour back home, whenever I can by bus, because the seats are further apart and the subway tends to be more crowded, it is more exposed," he explains.
He also raffles, although this forces him to prolong the journey to the next one, "a bus stop right in front of the store, because it is in a park and at night it is very lonely."
Mayen admits that she is always “very alert on the street”, day or night.
When they coincide, several co-workers usually go out together, but most of the time she returns alone.
“Some colleagues carry pepper spray in their purse, I don't.
What I always do is send my husband the number of the bus and the time I leave, or the number of the subway car if I choose this transport ", details Mayen, mother of a seven-year-old boy, whom he educates" so that he respects women ”.
Mayen, who admits to having experienced only one serious incident (“one night on the bus a drunk man messed with me, and all I could do was change my seat”), follows other basic precautions, such as “dress decently, because if you don't they say things ”.
It is true that her neighborhood is very mestizo, and that her main fear comes from “the drunken men and the bars [gangs]” that populate the streets, but she is aware that her exposure to risk is multiplied by the fact that she is a woman.
“The store where I work is an example of this: girls often come in to seek refuge from someone who follows them down the street, some have even gone into the changing room.
Sometimes my colleagues and I have accompanied them back ”, she explains.
/ MARÍA ANTONIA SÁNCHEZ VALLEJO
JUSTINE FEVRIER / Paris
"My friends wait for my message to arrive"
In the ten years she has lived in Paris, Justine Fevrier, a 28-year-old lawyer, has never been attacked when coming home alone at night.
But she knows the danger is there: 81% of women in France say they have been victims of sexual harassment in public places, according to an Ipsos survey in 2020. According to the Secretary of State for Equality, 42% of women women say they are often afraid on the street, 40% on public transport.
The metro is precisely the place where Fevrier has always felt least safe.
Before the pandemic wiped out nightlife - bars, restaurants, cinemas or theaters have been closed for almost five months in France - Fevrier used to go out "until any hour of the night", especially when he was a student.
She has never used any of the applications developed - generally by young women - in recent years in France such as AppElles or Garde ton corps, which allow sending emergency messages and even propose "safe places" - bars, shops - on the route of round trip.
Still, Fevrier was taking his precautionary measures.
"He asked the friends he had gone out with to be attentive until he sent them a message saying that he had gotten home safely."
Sometimes, to cover the journey from his stop to his house, always with the keys in his pocket to get in quickly, “I would talk to someone on the phone until they arrived.
It made me feel more secure knowing that I was on the phone with a friend who, if something happened to me, could alert the police and give him my address. "
With the pandemic, the problem is still there, although different.
“I work late and always come home after curfew (at 7:00 p.m.) and the subway is almost deserted.
It's the first time since I've been in Paris that I don't feel totally safe when I return from work by metro ”, she admits.
The young lawyer would never define herself as a fearful person.
Nor did he grow up with preventive stories in his native Rennes.
"My mother also studied in Paris at university, so when I arrived I did not feel apprehensive about a big and dangerous city, they just told me to pay attention, that's all."
Even so, she says, like all her friends, she knows of someone who has had something wrong, usually an attempt to drug her drink in nightclubs.
France has had a law since the end of 2018 that punishes sexual harassment in the street.
But for Fevrier, the important thing is to combine the laws with education, "from home, but also at school."
There is a problem, she says, when girls are told how to dress in class, such as the length of their skirts.
"That shows that everyone feels entitled to have an opinion on the way I dress, it is not normal," he criticizes.
“And it implies that a girl should not show her body too much, when it is men who should get used to not treating girls like a piece of meat.
Education is the base ”, he insists.
/ SILVIA AYUSO
