How women around the world are using technology to fight street harassment

“He was about three or four steps behind me and he tried to come through my door when I took the keys, but when I asked what he was doing and said my boyfriend was inside, he ran away.”

In Glasgow, Scotland, women are collecting data on their experiences of street violence and harassment. An online map allows women to include their reports of harassment, including threats, intimidation and sexual assault.

This project is led by the Wise Women community safety net and aims to identify the main places where incidents of harassment occur. Dawn Fyfe, strategic development professional at Wise Women, hopes to influence politicians and urban planners to make the city a safer space for women.

“We know that harassment and abuse of women takes place in public spaces,” Fyfe told the BBC. “We can use this to contribute information on strategic approaches to violence against women and influence the realization of some changes.”

Data from Glasgow is being collected for three months until 1 March and initial findings will be published on International Women’s Day (8 March). Those responsible for the project hope that, in the future, the system can be scaled up and even implemented at a national level in the UK.

Several projects in various parts of the world are using technology to change policies, end harassment and make the streets safer for women.

harassment mapping

Collecting people’s geographic data to create an up-to-date digital map — called crowdmapping — has been used in the past to combat street harassment.

In 2010, a group of volunteers in Egypt created HarassMap, which allows women to anonymously report incidents of abuse in public spaces. A survey at the time, conducted by the Egyptian Center for the Rights of Women, found that 83% of Egyptian women and 98% of foreign women had experienced some form of harassment in public.

“Before us, there was no one who linked traditional community work with digital in this sector,” says Rebecca Chiao, one of the founders of HarassMap. “I think we were the first to do this.”

HarassMap was launched just before the Arab Spring in 2011, which coincided with a huge increase in social media participation across Egypt. According to Chiao, this contributed to the success of his platform.

“Seeing people’s reactions when they read the anonymous accounts was amazing,” she recalls. “Some accounts were very emotional or visual and it wasn’t something Egyptian women were comfortable talking about openly — maybe with friends, but certainly not with family or publicly.”

“I was walking alone and a worker kept calling me, looking at me and trying to get my attention. His colleagues also laughed and looked at me,” wrote one user.

Another user reported an experience of indecent exposure and bullying: “I was walking home at night and a taxi driver stopped in front of me, got out of the car, opened his pants and started touching himself. I turned the corner and pretended to get in in one of the buildings. He drove the car slowly to see if I had gone inside.”

But HarassMap no longer collects anonymous reports because Egyptian laws regarding data collection have changed. Therefore, its international arm now advises and supports the installation of platforms in other countries and shares its experience to achieve zero tolerance of harassment in public and private places.

Chiao says that one of the success stories supported by HarassMap is SafeCity, which started in India and has now expanded to other countries such as Nepal, Kenya and Nigeria.

‘World problem’

SafeCity was founded by ElsaMarie D’Silva and her friends in December 2012 in response to the gang rape and brutal murder of student Jyoti Singh on a bus in New Delhi, India.

“We wanted to do something right away,” says D’Silva. “This is a global problem with under-reporting everywhere. Tools like SafeCity are a great way to report your experience anonymously and we believe documenting it is the first step to doing justice.”

The map collects instances of harassment, including photographs, hissing, indecent display and public masturbation.

“Women often instinctively know that what was done to them is wrong, but they don’t always know that they have the right to denounce it”, emphasizes D’Silva. “SafeCity establishes a community of support and sharing of experiences. It is something that is curative, that develops the capacity for situational awareness.”

D’Silva says the data was taken to the authorities, with a positive reaction with a view to increasing the safety of women in problem areas, through new measures that include increasing police patrols and installing closed-circuit television.

“Women and girls feel safer reporting and raising the alarm. That way, they can stay out later and enjoy their time more,” she says. “The world doesn’t stop at 7 o’clock at night.”

That’s exactly why, in response to calls from its users, the global route mapping app Citymapper now offers routes that may not necessarily be the fastest, but the most populated or the best lit. The “main streets” function provides specific options for those traveling after dark.

“Busiest, well-lit streets, easy to memorize and avoiding parks and dead-ends,” said Gilbert Wedam, Citymapper’s project manager. “The ‘best’ route is not always the fastest, depending largely on the context in which people find themselves.”

An initiative in Brazil

In parallel with international initiatives, an entrepreneur from Recife sought to fill the huge data gap on reports of harassment in Brazil and find a solution to make the streets safer.

Simony César is the founder and executive director of NINA, a technology that can be integrated with other apps, including route mapping and ride-sharing, to enable harassment reporting.

César’s mother worked on a city bus and commented on how difficult it was for women to commute to work and back home. When Simony grew up, she herself observed and suffered the reality of harassment on public transport.

“I’ve met many women who would drop out of school or work, simply to avoid fear of public transport,” she says. But “in official government data, it’s as if the problem doesn’t exist.”

In a recent survey carried out by a women’s safety net —the Instituto Patrícia —Galvão/Locomotiva—, 81% of women reported having suffered some type of violence in Brazilian cities. The NGO Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública estimates that there is a case of harassment every four seconds on Brazilian public transport.

NINA works by integrating with other apps and providing a button to easily report incidents of harassment or assault, providing data to Simony and her team.

“The data we collect is used to demonstrate that there is a real problem,” she says. “We take this information to the authorities and promote the development of policies that make cities safer, more inclusive and liveable, especially for women.”

In Scotland, Dawn Fyfe highlights the same need to listen more to women’s voices. According to her, “we want women to be included in decision-making so that their experiences are at the center of urban planning solutions. This is misogyny pure and simple and we need to react to nip it in the bud.”

“We want to make the change now. Enough!” concludes Fyfe.