This Thursday will mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Every year, we mark this day, but still every year, more women are killed by male violence.

I spoke in the Senedd recently about the myriad ways in which women have to modify their behaviour in order to avoid being attacked or killed – that might sound extreme, but any woman reading this will know that there are everyday calculations we have to make in order to stay safe.

Should I take this route home? Will it be safe if I walk instead of getting the bus? Will wearing this dress get me unwanted attention?

From when we’re young girls, we’re taught to change the things we do, and to limit the space we take up, as though the onus should be on women to keep themselves safe, instead of on men to stop attacking women.

And I realise, of course, that we are talking about a small minority of men.

But surely any percentage of men attacking women is too high.

And the figures are horribly stark: 97 per cent of women between the ages of 18 and 24 have already experienced harassment in their lives, four out of five women experience workplace harassment, and at least nine women are suspected of having had their lives taken by male violence in the last year in Wales.

We had a debate recently in the Senedd about protecting women in nightclubs and bars, and the motion we were debating talked about introducing bottle stoppers and drinks covers to stop the problem of spiking (whereby women’s drinks are spiked in order to incapacitate them).

Of course, we should be taking steps like this to help women feel safe.

But women won’t actually be safe until our society confronts why it is that a minority of men grow up to harass women, to catcall them in the street, to attack them, and to silence them.

The changes have to start in education, but there’s so much more that should happen through addressing how women are portrayed in the media and magazines, and confronting the ingrained societal problem of male violence.

The issue is too often framed, passively, as violence “against” women.

As though it is an action that just happens, without a perpetrator. The attacker isn’t mentioned in the phrase. I refuse to accept that navigating danger should be a normal part of life for women, and language is important: so let’s start name-checking the problem too – so that we eliminate male violence against women.