(Editor's Notes: The following is a guest post by Keshet Bachan, a gender equality activist and manager of the Because I Am A Girl report. The article originally appeared on Linda Raftree's ICT4D blog. It is reposted here with permission.)
Can mobile ‘apps’ really prevent or discourage instances of violence against women? This question has been on my mind since a colleague shared this video from Voice of America about a mobile app called ‘Fight Back’, marketed as ‘India’s first mobile app for women’s safety’.
The video sparked an email discussion that raised some interesting questions that deserve a closer examination.
The VOA story provides a holistic view of violence against women and the developers of the mobile phone application admit that they are but one element in a broader system that needs to respond to instances of violence. They discuss the involvement of police and other duty bearers, such as municipal bodies, which need to address reports women make and do more to reduce their risks. I applaud this approach and the way in which the developers acknowledge the limitations of their application, which I find refreshing.
At the same time I feel this application distracts attention away from more prevalent (and deadly) issues. According to the World Health Organization 10-69% of women stated that they had been physically assaulted by an intimate partner at some point in their lives. The WHO also reports that 40-70% of female murder victims were killed by an intimate partner. A recent survey in the UK showed that one in three girls aged 13 – 17 reported sexual abuse from a partner and one in four had experienced some form of physical partner violence. The UK police receive a call for help regarding relationship abuse every minute.
The degree to which this mobile phone application promotes the notion of ‘stranger danger’ distracts attention from the urgent and more prevalent issue of family and intimate partner violence. Moreover, the fact that the application has a GPS tracker to trace a woman’s route home could inadvertently contribute to both increasing women’s fear of violence in public spaces as well as playing into the hands of those who seek to control women’s mobility by pleading the need to ‘protect’ them by knowing their whereabouts at all times.
In this context a colleague commented that a GPS enabled function could allow ‘even a moderately tech-savvy user to trace the woman in question’ – which could serve to increase traditional control over women who dare to step outside the confines of convention (and the home) even further.
Earlier this month the Boston Police Department started sending out text messages and emails to tell residents about crimes happening in their neighborhoods. The goal isn’t to instill fear in residents; it’s to get them involved in solving crimes. Police think that this system will make it easier for people to send in leads on cases since they can do so quickly and electronically, and that it will put more people on the lookout for suspects when they’re most vulnerable – soon after they commit crimes. The alerts also keep people better informed on the specific crimes happening in their neighborhoods, enabling them to better protect themselves. Most people are more inclined to lock their car doors if they know that two cars have been stolen within a few minutes of where they park.
Crime alert systems that use SMS and email messages are becoming more common. Citizen Observer, the company that runs Boston’s system, works with police departments in more than 300 U.S. and Canadian towns and cities. Singapore police have been sending out SMS alerts on local crimes for more than a year, and subscribers receive SMS messages like the following that tell them about local crimes and what they can do to help:
