Make Roads Safe Again!
"She's asking for it" is widely used as an excuse for sexual harassment around the globe. Wearing a short skirt or a crop top is considered an invitation to catcall, and make indecent noises and gestures. Talking politely is considered as a way for women to flirt. Honestly, women are objectified no matter what they do or wear. Staying safe while walking on streets has reduced to a privilege for women when it should be a right.
#MeToo movement has shed light on sexual misconduct across all the industries and populations. If you are a woman, there is a great chance that you have been harassed at least once. One of the online studies conducted by Stop Street Harassment[1] indicate that 99% of women has been victims of some form of harassment e.g., catcalling, sexist comments, and stalking etc. It can result in more heinous crimes such as sexual assault and rape. According to research by Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) School at Cornell and Hollaback, 85% of girls in the United States, one of the most progressive countries in the world, experience street harassment before the age of 17[2].
Women with disabilities have it worse when it comes to sexual harassment. They are more vulnerable because of their unawareness of rights for privacy and respect, and also because the predators know that it would be harder for them to raise their voices and be heard. Human Rights Watch state that the likelihood of women with disabilities being physically abused or assaulted is three times more than able-bodied women [3]. Data from Justice Department shows that people with intellectual disabilities experience sexual assault more than seven times when compared to people without disabilities [4].
Experiencing street sexual harassment can leave long-term effects on the victims. It can take away their confidence to go to school or work and back. Women begin to subconsciously doubt every man that passes by. It can hinder them from making meaningful long-term connections with human beings especially with the opposite gender.
Despite the efforts of law enforcement, NGOs and other government institutes, this problem is not anywhere close to be solved. What are we doing wrong? How can we help? What is the reason behind harassment? Can we chalk it to human nature? How can we shape human behavior to get rid of this evil? How the technologists, computer scientists, and engineers can leverage the technology to reduce street harassment? These are the questions that we should be asking. As an HCI researcher, I turned to the existing applications and web services tackling this problem round the globe. Here, I briefly analyze effectiveness of these tools by looking at various features. I propose a new design for application taking into consideration the marginalized population of women with disabilities.
Applications Targeting Sexual Harassment
Sources: Time[5] and NewYork Magazine[6]
Circle of 6
+ This application allows you to set a group of 6 people as your safe circle whom you can ping and send your exact location to if you are in a risky situation.
+ It also allows you to connect to hotlines.
- Not much can be said about how long will it take you to access these features on the app in time critical and panicky scenarios.
- You cannot rely on circle of 6 people to be always available.
- There are no features for women with disabilities specifically.
Bsafe
+ Your guardians can tag along via live streaming wherever you go. You can send alerts to your networks as well.
+ You can send SOS signal with a recording of what is happening.
+ Voice activation is a great feature to activate alarm by using a phrase. This is a useful feature for people with motor disabilities.
+ Fake call and timer alarm features help you stay safe without informing others beforehand.
Crowdsourced Mapping Platforms
Apart from applications that help women navigate safely in the streets, some platforms target collecting data through crowdsourcing reports of sexual harassments and assaults. SafeCity launched an app that utilizes public abuse reports from anonymous individuals and highlight the hot areas around your location to help you stay safe.
"The idea is to make this data useful for individuals, local communities and local administration to identify factors that cause behavior that leads to violence and work on strategies for solutions" [9].
"Since our launch on 26 Dec 2012 we have collected over 10,000 stories from over 50 cities in India, Kenya, Cameroon, Nepal, Nigeria and Trinidad & Tobago and directly reached over 400,000 people" [9].
Concerns of Victims
Major issue faced by the platforms that take extra steps such as crowdsourcing real data from victims to prevent harassment in public spaces is that most of the victims do not feel comfortable reporting cases due to concerns of privacy and negative effects on their personal lives. Many young girls and women are unaware of their rights. They are not educated about their options to report and take legal action against the harasser. Many are unaware of what categorizes as appropriate behavior and what falls under sexual harassment. Catcalling, derogatory remarks and staring are overlocked by many women because these happen so often that it has, sadly, become the new normal. Another concern of the victims is that what good would it do to report these cases since most of the times no legal action is taken to rectify the situation due to lack of evidence. Filling a police report is challenging and, at times, even traumatizing for the affected women. WalkFreely proposed to transmit the collected reports to police to bypass the hassle of official reporting process but the organization lacks the necessary funds [6].
Steps We, Technologists, Can Take
Proposed App design
The existing apps have some great features with potential to make streets safer for women. Some of the features that I found impactful are:
Alert your trusted circle of your whereabouts in risky situations
Recording audio and video as evidence while sending SOS call
Safe word to automatically call for help. This feature is particularly significant for differently-abled women
Report your experience anonymously
Hot area maps to plan a safe path to your destination, and for uncovering mob groups involved in street harassment
Sharing events in surroundings to spread awareness about sexual harassment
Although these features are beneficial for personal safety, more can be done to ensure safety of women around you. There are some breaking points for above mentioned features. For instance, these applications only provoke reporting the incident when something noticeable happens to the user specifically. Most of the apps require the user to have a guardian angle amongst family or friend watching over and report if something very serious happens. That is not always possible and plausible because women probably would not report catcalling and staring. Also, there is no way of telling who the harassers are and how dangerous they are since there is no method of keeping record of their identities. Taking any significant action becomes hard. Moreover, directly reporting or calling the police might not be effective in case of minor offenses because it is hard to press charges against the harasser in many countries. Some additional features can help resolve this issue further. Here, I propose some of those:
Anonymous reporting for minor offenses can include an option to upload a picture/video or add a description of the probable harasser to the app with location tag to maintain a database for authorities to verify later on. Anyone should be able to upload geotagged video or images as a proof to increase credibility of the report. Similar to some of navigation apps e.g., Google maps and Waze, the app can ping people in proximity of the incident to confirm and add further proof. Women can search through the database of hotspots to avoid interaction with these individuals. Rating system can be maintained based on frequency of reports against one individual. Sharing this database with local law enforcement can help them make stronger case against them if an official report is filed. A solid check and balance should be in place to avoid false and fabricated reporting.
Option to file a police report through the app directly could save extra effort and facing the police officers in person.
Option to contact expert lawyers anonymously through the app to seek legal advice initially can encourage victims to file complaints against the offender. Once the victims are comfortable, they can identify themselves to the lawyers. This feature can be helpful to women who face domestic violence and are reluctant to reach out to lawyers in person. Similarly, for counseling psychologists and experts for people with disabilities can be suggested when user reports an incident.
In many parts of the world, it is not safe for women to walk alone at night or late hours and they might not want a trusted circle watching over because of privacy concerns and availability. A feature to have app verified "guardian angel" walking with you virtually or in person depending on user's preference. Strong background checks must be done for guardian angels. This concept is similar to Uber and Lyft drivers. The Johns Hopkins University provides similar escort services for security reasons[11]. This feature can specifically assist differently-abled women to roam freely and go about their business without being scared. It will grant them privacy from their friends and family as well.
Relevant content in multiple languages to educate women about their rights and options is crucial to make such initiatives work.
The proposed features require resources and collaboration between multiple departments, and from general public, above all. Extra measures need to be taken to ensure privacy of users. Extensive background checks shall be run on volunteers or paid officials e.g., guardian angels, psychologists and lawyers.
I present a low fidelity prototype to show what these added features may look like.
Final Thoughts
To make a large population of this world feel safe in public places is everyone's civic and moral duty. We need to openly discuss these issues across all genders, We need to call predators out even if they are dear friends or family members. We need to speak up and give the victims a safe space to tell their story without disrupting their live. We need to eradicate victim blaming and shaming altogether. Law enforcement and government offices need to collaborate with technologists, psychologists and other experts actively to reduce these heinous crimes and take every report seriously. Women, especially differently-abled, need to be educated about their constitutional rights and legal options to get justice that they deserve.
Let's work together to reclaim our streets!
References
[1]. Statistics for Stop Street Harassment. Retrieved November 05, 2020, from http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/resources/statistics/
[2]. Street Harassment Statistics Research by ILR Professor. Retrieved November 05, 2020 from https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/news/street-harassment-statistics
[3]. The Disability Community & Sexual Violence. Retrieved November 05, 2020 from https://now.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Disabled-Women-Sexual-Violence-4.pdf
[4]. The Sexual Assault Epidemic No One Talks About. Retrieved November 05, 2020 from https://www.npr.org/2018/01/08/570224090/the-sexual-assault-epidemic-no-one-talks-about
[5]. 3 Apps That Will Help Women Stay Safe on Campus. Retrieved November 05, 2020 from https://time.com/3177910/apps-campus-safety-women/
[6]. Sexual-Harassment-Reporting Apps Help Stop Abuse in Global City Streets. Retrieved November 05, 2020 from https://nymag.com/developing/2018/10/safecity-walkfreely-ushahidi-sexual-harassment-abuse-reporting-maps.html
[7]. Circle of 6. Retrieved November 05, 2020 from https://www.circleof6app.com/
[8]. Bsafe. Retrieved November 05, 2020 from https://getbsafe.com/ and https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bsafe-personal-safety-app/id459709106
[9]. SafeCity App Retrieved November 05, 2020 from https://apps.apple.com/in/app/safecity-app/id1281880382
[10]. #WallFreely App. Retrieved November 05, 2020 from http://iwalkfreely.com/
[11]. Escort Services, the Johns Hopkins University. Retrieved November 05, 2020 from https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/security_parking_transportation/security/escort_services.html