THERE has been a fair amount of discussion this week after some push-back against the idea that men, or society more broadly, should feel any sense of shame in response to the number of women killed in Northern Ireland in recent years.

The argument rests on a familiar line - that responsibility lies with a small number of violent, “exceptional” individuals, not with men as a group.

It is a reassuring position but also an incomplete one.

No-one wants to be told they should feel ashamed for something they did not do, but that is not what this conversation is asking.

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Since 2020, 30 women have died violently in Northern Ireland. In all but one of these cases, a man has been charged or convicted. That is not a coincidence and it is not explained away by describing perpetrators as outliers. Patterns of this scale demand a wider lens.

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Acknowledging this does not mean suggesting all men are responsible. It means recognising that the conditions in which these crimes happen do not exist in isolation.

There is a tendency in debates like this to get caught on language. Words like “shame” provoke defensiveness and discussions quickly derail into arguments about whether it is fair to implicate individuals who have done nothing wrong.

But focusing on that misses the point. The issue is not about assigning guilt. It is about recognising responsibility – not for the acts themselves, but for the culture in which they occur and the response when warning signs appear.

Because time and again those warning signs do exist.

In the aftermath of these cases it is not uncommon to hear that the perpetrator’s behaviour was, at some level, known or recognised. That detail often only emerges after the fact but it raises difficult questions about what is dismissed, minimised or tolerated before it escalates.

That is where the conversation becomes uncomfortable but also where it becomes necessary.

At the same time there are serious questions about whether the systems designed to respond are adequately equipped to do so.

PSNI Chief Constable Jon Boutcher has already raised “significant concerns” about the force’s capacity to deal with violence against women and girls, citing both resource pressures and a wider societal acceptance of misogyny.

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Those concerns sit uneasily alongside spending decisions, including hundreds of thousands of pounds on internal engagement events and tens of thousands on legal challenges, at a time when public confidence depends on visible prioritisation of the most urgent threats.

This is not to suggest simple solutions to a complex problem. Nor is it to dismiss the very real pressures facing policing and the justice system.

But it does point to a broader issue – a tendency to treat violence against women as inevitable rather than preventable.

For many women the impact is not abstract. It is lived in small, daily calculations – changing routes home, avoiding certain streets, second-guessing situations that should feel ordinary. It is a constant, low-level awareness that shapes behaviour in ways which often go unremarked.

To reduce all of this to the actions of a few “exceptional” men is to misunderstand both the scale and the nature of the problem.

The question, then, is not why individuals should feel ashamed. It is whether we are willing to look honestly at what these patterns tell us and what we are prepared to do about them.

Because if the response begins and ends with distancing ourselves from responsibility, then very little changes.

© The Irish News