Progressive candidate for Warsaw mayor: It is important that children do not absorb harmful patriarchal patterns

Paulina Januszewska, Krytyka Polityczna: How do you intend, as a candidate for mayor of Warsaw, to ensure the safety of women?

Magdalena Biejat: The first issue is, of course, to increase patrols and reduce vacancies in the city guard and police. Although I realize that the police do not report to City Hall, but to the Ministry of the Interior, but their problems are also pressing in Warsaw. I am referring here not only to low wages, but also to other conditions for making a living.

Unions have repeatedly said that service housing would be an important element in encouraging male and female citizens to join the police. We want to meet these needs, and as part of our investment in the construction of rental housing, we would like to allocate 10 percent. of these properties for official housing, including for police officers and city guards, but also teachers and employees of other public services provided in Warsaw.

What about women?

We know that many of them are afraid to go home in the evenings, especially on weekends, so we need changes in individual passenger transportation. I am referring to platform cabs, whose operations are under-regulated and in which there has been sexual abuse of female passengers.

However, not everyone wants or needs to use these services, which is why we want to reintroduce all-night subway service on weekends and also introduce nighttime streetcar service on major routes so that women will have a choice between public and private transportation and so that they can feel more secure in these modes of transportation.

Another issue that is important to us is the restriction of night alcohol sales first in Downtown, then throughout Warsaw. Where alcohol is sold around the clock, neighborhood residents feel threatened, complain about brawls and littering with glass, and are waiting for solutions.

The executioner of Liza, who died as a result of the rape and assault, was not an Uber driver and was not under the influence of alcohol at the time of his crime. What preventive measures would you respond to this particular case?

As I mentioned at the beginning, it is necessary here to increase the staffing of the city guard and police. Patrols are needed for both Downtown and the rest of Warsaw. It can’t be that the city reacts only when a tragedy happens. After all, we had a similar situation on Nowy Swiat, where a man stabbed to death died.

I remember because that crime happened next to my apartment and I wrote about the issue of security in the city center .

Regular patrols did not appear there until after the man’s death. Warsaw authorities today hide behind statistics, pointing out that the city is relatively safe compared to other European capitals. This is true, of course, but at the same time it is settling down.

In a situation where a woman has now been killed in the center of the city, it doesn’t seem to me to be an appropriate tactic to invoke past safety indicators, because that safety has been seriously compromised.

I also believe that we should also think about illuminating some parts of the city. After Liza’s death, the Internet was flooded with a wave of women’s stories about walking home through dark streets. These are all needs that must be taken seriously and simply answered.

And how would you respond to the argument that police and municipal guards are part of rape culture and misogyny?

I agree that sexism is a big problem here, which is why when we learned about the tragedy on Zurawia Street, and when I was already talking about increasing patrols, I also pointed out that decent and effective anti-discrimination training and courses were needed in addition to increased staffing in the police and municipal police. One that will be repeated regularly until the police are able to respond adequately to cases of violence against women, but also against members of the LGBT+ community, because we have plenty of cases of assaults on non-heterosexuals in Warsaw documented by the media.

Here, too, the other side of the coin is the unpreparedness of the police and municipal police, their inability to recognize violence, to understand what it is, and their lack of respect for those who are victims. This needs to change. The city – at least in part – has the tools to change this, not only as an entity that employs city guards, but also as an authority in dialogue with the Metropolitan Police Department.

We talk a lot about women’s safety, how to take care of them, but what can be done to make men stop raping?

Here, we must place a priority on education conducted from an early age, emphasizing learning respect and empathy for others, including girls and women, non-violent conflict resolution, anti-discrimination attitudes. This should happen both in sex education and in parenting lessons. Curricula must move away from building in girls the belief that they must remain in a state of emergency preparedness at all times. That doesn’t mean they aren’t supposed to learn the basics of caring for safety. Along with it, however, must go beliefs reinforced especially among boys that no one’s boundaries should be crossed.

Above all, it is about ensuring that regardless of gender, children do not absorb patriarchal patterns that are harmful to all. We need to change this trend. There is no better way to do this than to do it precisely through the school, with this being the responsibility of both the Ministry of Education deciding on the shape of the core curriculum and the local governments organizing activities at least in day care centers.

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Magdalena Biejat – deputy to the Sejm of the 9th term, senator of the 11th term, from 2022 co-chair of the Left Together party, from 2023 deputy speaker of the Senate of the 11th term. Candidate for mayor of Warsaw in the 2024 municipal elections.