WHEN DID WE STOP FEELING SAFE?

Wendy Atieno Ouma

4 min read

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Just now

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A reflection on how safety, trust, and freedom have become luxuries for women.

A powerful reflection on women’s safety, gender-based violence, and how freedom has become a luxury. Inspired by the pain of South African women and the global cry for justice.

There’s something deeply unsettling about being a woman in this world today.
We are alive, yet every day feels like survival. We walk faster at night, check over our shoulders, share our locations with friends, and pray we make it home safely.

Somewhere along the way, safety became a privilege not a right.

We used to believe that home was safe, that schools were safe, that relationships were built on love and trust. But today, women are dying in places they once called “safe.”

The Cry of South African Women

In South Africa, women are dying every single day because of gender-based violence. The numbers are more than statistics they are daughters, mothers, sisters, and friends. It’s heartbreaking how normalized it has become, how society has adjusted to reading about another woman’s murder as if it’s just part of the news cycle.

These are not strangers. These are women who loved, trusted, and believed they could find peace in their relationships.
But instead, their names become hashtags. Their stories end with a candlelight vigil and a promise that “things must change.”
And yet, they don’t.

When Marriage Becomes Legalized Abuse

Across the world, in places where law should protect, men are legalizing the marriage of young girls children who haven’t even discovered who they are yet.
They call it “tradition.” They say it’s “culture.” But no culture that destroys a child’s future deserves to be protected.

What kind of world allows a grown man to take a child as a wife and still sleep peacefully at night?
What kind of system signs those papers and calls it legal?

A girl of 12 or 13 should be worrying about her schoolwork, her dreams, her laughter.
Not about her husband’s anger or how to survive another night.

This is not culture this is control.

A World Built for Men

Let’s be honest the world is built by men, for men.
The laws, the leadership, the systems they’re shaped by those who rarely have to live in fear.
Men walk at night without second thoughts.
Men raise their voices without being called “too emotional.”
Men make mistakes and are forgiven easily.

But a woman’s mistake?
It’s used against her forever.

We’ve been told for centuries that women must protect themselves from men, instead of teaching men to stop being dangerous.
We’re told to dress decently, to avoid walking alone, to be careful what we say.
Yet even the women who do everything “right” still end up victims.

When did we agree that it was normal for women to live this way?

The Emotional Weight We Carry

Every woman carries a quiet fear.
Even the strongest, most confident woman knows what it means to feel unsafe physically, emotionally, or mentally.
You can’t measure that kind of exhaustion.

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We teach our daughters to be careful, but we never stop to ask why the world isn’t careful with them.
We teach women to endure, but not men to respect.
We applaud women for being resilient, but not men for being kind.

Some nights, I sit and wonder how we got here.
How safety, trust, and freedom became luxuries instead of guarantees.

The Silence Around Violence

There’s something else that hurts the silence.
When a woman speaks out about abuse, people say, “What did she do to provoke him?”
When a girl is raped, they say, “Why was she out so late?”
When a wife leaves, they say, “She destroyed her home.”

We’ve built a world where victims carry the blame, and abusers carry excuses.

And this silence this deadly silence protects the wrong people.
The ones who harm, not the ones who heal.

When Men Choose to Be Better

Not all men are violent. Not all men hurt women.
But all men live in a system that allows those who do to thrive.
Silence is a choice.

If men want to prove they’re different, then they must stand up loudly, clearly, and consistently against gender-based violence.
They must stop laughing at jokes that degrade women.
They must call out friends who harass or hit.
They must believe women when they speak.

Being a man of integrity isn’t about power.
It’s about protection, empathy, and action.

The Freedom We Deserve

Women don’t want much.
We want to walk home safely.
We want to be believed when we speak.
We want to raise our daughters in a world that doesn’t break them.

We want to exist without fear.

Is that too much to ask?

Freedom shouldn’t be a privilege we have to fight for every day.
It should be our birthright.

A World That Must Change

To every woman who has felt unsafe you are not overreacting.
To every girl who has been silenced your story matters.
To every survivor your courage speaks louder than your pain.

And to the men reading this change begins with you.
You can build a different world.
One where women are not just surviving, but truly living.

Because one day, our daughters shouldn’t have to say,

> “When did we stop feeling safe?”
They should be able to say,
“We finally are.”

This story is for every woman who has ever looked over her shoulder and every man brave enough to help change the narrative. We deserve a world that values women’s safety and freedom as non-negotiable rights.

#EndGenderBasedViolence #WomenDeserveSafety #HerBraveStory #StopChildMarriage #WomenEmpowerment #WomensRights #Feminism #SouthAfricanWomen #BreakTheSilence #ProtectWomen