Sarah Everard’s disappearance should shock us into overturning centuries of inequality

Editorial: The problem of male violence is difficult to solve or it would have been dealt with by now, but this terrible case must act as a spur

Sarah Everard disappeared while walking home in south London last week (PA)

The disappearance of Sarah Everard has touched off many people’s deeper fears. Nearly every woman has felt the anxiety that they imagine she must have felt, walking home alone in the dark. We do not know yet what happened in this particular case but it is like a siren going off, telling us that something is wrong.

Decades on from “Reclaim the Night”, the demand for an equal right to public spaces, it seems as if we have progressed too little, and it is damning that so many women have felt compelled to share stories of their own experiences this week.

A YouGov opinion poll for the UN Women UK’s Safe Spaces Now project finds that almost all young women in the UK have felt threatened – 96 per cent of respondents say they did not report incidents of sexual harassment, with 45 per cent saying they thought it would not change anything.