January of this year recorded the killing of two young women – Paulina Dembska and Ashling Murphy. One in Malta, the other in Ireland.  They shared several things in common. Both were young, educated, well-liked and smart.  Both had promising lives in front of them. No more.

Together, they now become additional statistics in the ever-lengthening list of women victims of gender-based violence. World Bank figures suggest (conservatively, for much of the violence is not reported or catalogued) that one in every three women worldwide experiences such violence at some stage in their life. According to the World Health Organisation, most of that violence is at the hands of an intimate partner.

Overwhelmingly, across all regions of the world, this violence is perpetrated by men on women. No amount of indignant commentary and abusive verbalising can alter this reality. Violence by men against women is of epidemic proportions. 

Without any doubt, there are many instances of female violence against men but there is no consistent reporting that makes it in any way comparable in scale or impact. 

Violence takes many forms from the physical to the mental, the verbal to the cultural, the religious to the visual, the political to the financial and on… it involves raping and killing, coercive economic and financial control, aggressive groping and invasive touching, catcalling, jokes, and inappropriate sexualised ‘banter’. 

The violence has many everyday locations – the home, school, church, police station, army compound, company office, government department, nightclub, pub, sports club, newspaper, and social media site and on…

The scale and sheer evil of it is everywhere evident online from the pathetic claims of some men that they are really ‘the victims’ to the detailed sexual threats to individual women or to groups of women - especially those deemed to be ‘feminists’.

While we are shocked by its high-profile manifestations (allowing us to distance ourselves), we routinely shrug off and accept its everyday occurrences, offering excuses.

Violence against women is primarily and immediately a problem for women – they suffer its horrendous consequences, often lifelong consequences. As a result, women have learned from birth the skill of navigating the realities of ‘being a woman’ in a world of male hard and soft power. 

Women are forced to become expert geographers of gender. Where to go or not go, what to wear or not wear and where, what to say or not say, how to avoid predatory men (and boys), how to protect young women and girls etc.

It becomes such a part of everyday life, that many forget they are even doing it; it becomes second nature.

Overwhelmingly, men have no need for a similar geography. Men fear the occasional threat, even occasional acts of individual violence (usually by other men not women). By contrast, women live with ongoing threats, lurking barely below the surface.

In such a context, violence against women is clearly a ‘man’ problem; it is a challenge for all men, not just some ‘violent’ men. Meaningful progress on the issue will remain impossible while we deny this.

Violence against women in all its form needs to make us individually and collectively uncomfortable, very uncomfortable.

We urgently need to change the story from focusing on what women do that puts them ‘at risk’ or what they can do to ensure ‘their safety’. The focus needs to shift to men – our self-awareness, our attitudes, and our behaviours. Men need to be less at ease with the issue and far more questioning and disturbed.

Legislation and the enforcement of it are certainly important but insufficient on their own.  Convicting high profile perpetrators after the fact amounts to social and moral failure. Prosecution is important, so too protection but far better prevention.

Men need to act as allies to women in the creation and delivery of an entirely different moral framework around the subject. Men need to ‘own’ the problem in a fundamentally different way.