"This is not about women; it's about power"—Stella Creasy on One Billion Rising

Yesterday, activists in more than 160 countries took part in One Billion Rising, a campaign to end the physical and sexual violence that, according to the UN, is suffered by one in three women worldwide. In the UK, where the Office for National Statistics estimates that one in three women will experience domestic abuse during their lifetime, campaigners took to Trafalgar Square calling for compulsory sex and relationship education in schools and the repeal of visa laws that tie domestic workers to their employers, putting them at risk of exploitation. One of those campaigners was Labour MP Stella Creasy, who told me we should be doing more to tackle the underlying cause of this problem: the unequal distribution of power.

What drives you to stand in Trafalgar Square on a soggy Friday afternoon in support of One Billion Rising?

I’ve been part of the One Billion Rising organising committee since last year... and I’ve stayed involved, trying to support and help it because one of the things I feel very personally and passionately is angry. I look at the slow pace of progress on things like this and I think that actually we should be doing more. Supporting efforts that are universal in trying to raise awareness and to make ending violence against women a priority are, for me, a crucial part of making the case that not only should people think that this is an important thing but also that we could be doing a lot more about it.

I don’t accept the terms of the debate that say you have to pick and choose which issues to work on when you tackle inequality. The first thing a lot of people say to me is, “Haven’t you got bigger things to be worrying about?" or “What about this or that issue?” And I think, “I’m concerned about all of these things, I can do multi-tasking.” One of the great things for me about One Billion Rising is that whatever country you’re in and whatever specific issues you’re working on in that country in terms of inequality and violence against women, collectively, by acting together, we can change the terms of the debate about why it matters to address those issues. It’s not that we shouldn’t be concerned about domestic abuse in the UK because of the rape that’s happening in India; it’s that by linking these things together and being part of an international movement we can actually make progress on both.

Is violence against women sometimes perceived as a problem for less developed countries, rather than one for Britain?

I think that patriarchy works in many different ways and one of the things it does is try to minimise what inequality looks like and what the outcome of it is. I don’t see this as an issue about women; I see this as an issue about power and the way that power is distributed in our societies. And because power is unequally distributed, women bear the brunt of that, and they bear it in a physical capacity as well as in their opportunities, and the economy, and society more generally.

Sometimes people will say—"OK you have to work on issues like FGM, which is happening here in the UK as well as internationally, and you have to say that FGM is bad." And you're like, yeah, but you also have to understand the culture that means FGM happens, because even if we eliminated the practice of FGM another activity would take its place unless we address the underlying inequality that means it’s OK to use women’s bodies in this way and to define them in this way. So people will try to separate these issues out; one of the things I feel very strongly about is linking them together and recognising that this is part of the way that power is distributed. When you look at it in that way, tackling inequalities of power in any country helps tackling inequalities in others, because it changes the terms of the debate about what an equal society should look like.

So are the underlying issues the same?

I think it manifests itself in many ways. [Look at] what’s going on in Congo for example: that rape is used as a weapon of war is emblematic both of the state on the ground there, in terms of the fact they’re at war, and the way that power is expressed; that sexual violence is used to express power. Even if there was not a war taking place in Congo, the idea that power should be expressed through sexual domination would still pertain in an unequal society. Of course people will put a higher value on particular issues, but I don’t want to choose. I don’t want to say that because I’m concerned about what is happening in Congo, I cannot also be concerned about the fact that one in three young girls in this country says they’ve experienced sexual harassment at school. I refuse to choose.

How does this tie in with the problems we’ve seen on Twitter?

What I have experienced on Twitter is not about women; it’s about power, and it’s about trying to silence and oppress people. The fact that sexualised language and gendered language has been used as part of it is about that underlying power relationship, which is that “I can dominate you in this particular way because you are not an equal citizen to me.”

What can politicians do to address these issues?

I don’t see this as about 650 people in Westminster or even the UN, although I do think they have a role to play. I think it is about: how do we achieve both the legislative and the cultural change that needs to happen? Because as much as we need to have strong measures to be able to tackle violence against women as a criminal activity, we also need to tackle that underlying culture, and that requires cultural leadership as well as legislative leadership. Within that, I think politicians could play a much wider role. I stood there [at One Billion Rising] and I spoke out alongside activists from the grassroots up to the international level, because we’re all identifying the different ways in which power is expressed. Foucault talked about the many different ways in which control and power were exercised on people—it’s the way in which the society you live in is underpinned by both the legal framework and the cultural framework and the social framework. We have to address and engage with all of those different arenas.

Now within that, I think that political leadership, because it’s ideological to me, has a strong role to play... I know how difficult it is to complain, how difficult it is to stand up; it’s very difficult to ask people to do that. One of the things I've been really hacked off about is people diminishing the experience of women on violence issues by saying "you’ve got to be a tough old bird." A lot of that is to do with trying to control and define people's behaviour and I don’t want anyone to feel that they have to be strong and formidable; I don’t want them to have to put up with this stuff in the first place. So in order to be able to create that culture we have to have a supportive environment where people can come forward and say "this is happening to me."

I think what’s so powerful to me about One Billion Rising is that we are trying to show support for women around the world, and men who support our aim for an end to violence, so that they don’t have to fight that fight on their own; so that through what we do in Trafalgar Square we link in with people in Afghanistan, Delhi, the Philippines and say: you’re not alone in wanting the world to work in a different way.

Is there a risk that you'll only reach the people who already support the cause?

That’s a challenge for every campaign, for every political and social movement. That is about the cultural change. I would define it as two things: first, there’s the kind of outright hostility, and outright agreement that violence against women is an acceptable thing to do; the second thing is the unconscious expectations about how women should behave, about control and about power. That’s where Foucault comes in for me because being observed is one of the ways that you control women. Challenging that is about how you engage people in that debate.

One of the things I hear all the time about the Everyday Sexism Project, for example, is “I didn’t realise that it was so widespread or that this was happening on such a regular basis.” That, I think, is changing the terms of the debate. As with every campaign, every political movement, you are making a case. I think what One Billion Rising does so well is to organise and mobilise people in a very distinctive way to highlight that case. I don’t accept that it’s only reaching people who already agree with it; it’s doing something different, it’s saying "Do something about this." It’s that unconscious majority who do not realise how slow the pace of change is, who do not realise they may be unconsciously supporting and continuing some of those messages of control over women—about what women should be like, about what role they should play, about how they should be seen and not heard—that are part of it.

One Billion Rising refers to the number of women worldwide who will be physically or sexually abused during their lifetimes. Do you think that risks ignoring the one in six men in the UK, for example, who experience domestic abuse?

No, I don’t, and I don’t think it’s an "either/or". That’s why you have to see this as a question about power and not about men or women. Because it’s about how power is unequally distributed. It's that women bear the brunt of that, rather than that men aren’t affected by it as well. Those people who want to argue that these campaigns set men versus women are part of the issue in terms of changing that unconscious expectation that you have to have trade off. If we could end violence against women we would have a much less violent society that would benefit all of us. That’s about changing the power balance that says that these things are not as important; or that these things are acceptable; or that it’s “inevitable.” It’s not about an end to violence against women, or an end to violence against men; it’s about an end to violence. It’s not that there’s a limited amount of pie and you’ve got to pick who gets a bit of pie; it’s that if we were a more equal society we’d be more prosperous, we’d be more successful, men would do better as well—the pie would get bigger.

You mention the argument that male violence against women is "inevitable"—what is your response to that?

I love men. I live with one, I’m related to some, I adore them, I think they’re wonderful human beings. I don’t think they should be generalised any more than women should be generalised. This is part of a society where power is imbalanced; tackle the imbalances in power, everyone benefits. We’d stop thinking men are inevitably violent in the same way that we think women are inevitably submissive. It’s difficult to do on your own because it’s going against the perceived wisdom which has filtered down through society and shaped our social, economic and legislative structures. Ultimately, One Billion Rising is meant to be part of a revolution, and a revolution is about a reorder.

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