Technology to keep women safe

Demand for women’s safety apps shows we still have a long way to go in eliminating gender-based violence.

Following high-profile coverage of the brutal gang rape and murder of a 23-year old student in Delhi, India has placed a renewed focus on the issue of women’s safety.

This case, and others like it, which have rarely been reported in the international media, have sparked a drive by Indian technology companies to find innovative ways to keep women safe.

The BBC reported last week that the Indian government is working on a GPS watch, designed specifically to help in its fight against rape.

The watch, which could cost from £13-£32, includes a GPS system to pinpoint the wearer’s location, a built-in video camera with the ability to record for up to half an hour, and a ‘panic button’, which sends a message to the nearest police station or a relative.

Indian technology trade group Nasscom has launched a competition to encourage firms to develop apps specifically designed to keep women safe.

Even Indian students are getting involved in the drive; one group of children has designed a sandal which acts in a similar way. With two stamps of the foot, an alarm is sent by SMS to a predetermined number, along with the location of the wearer.

The rape-alarm sandal is unlikely to make it to market, but technology developers across the world have been quick to identify demand for a whole host of apps designed essentially to protect women, from men.

Gone are the days of carrying a bog-standard rape alarm, and with it being illegal in the UK to posses pepper spray or a pink stun gun which can discharge eight million volts (yes, really) it seems today’s women and girls aren’t protected unless they have an app for it.

Available in the UK, Stay Safe bills itself as a personal safety tracker app.

It alerts your emergency contacts if you don’t check in – so you have to  remember to check in – and provides your location via GPS – and has a panic button function.

The free version will only send an email to one contact, but for £4.99 a month you can have up to five emergency contacts who will be notified by text message if you fail to check in. This paid-for version however is currently only available on iPhone.

Bsafe is another GPS-based safety alarm app.

Originally designed for use in the US the premium version costs £1.49 a month. As well as the SOS alarm and GPS positioning, it has sound and video recording and lets your friends follow you home with live GPS tracking.

Circle of 6 is a free app which lets you send pre-programmed text alerts to up to six friends, pinpointing your location. Originally designed for students, you can even request a call from one of your contacts to help get you out of a tricky situation.

Of course, safety comes at a price, and while you can access some free apps, the most sophisticated inevitably demand a fee, and you also need to have a smartphone, which, according to recent  figures over 50 per cent of Britons do.

But what about the other forty-something per cent who don’t?

The most vulnerable in society are the least likely to be able to adopt this technology, and so the story goes; it is easier to stay out of harm’s way if you can afford it.

This technology divide is even starker when we look at developing countries.

In a blog for the Huffington Post, Henriette Kolb, CEO of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, highlighted how the digital revolution excludes the majority of the world’s population; according to a report by Intel, 4.6 billion people do not have access to the internet, and the situation is worse for women and girls.

According to Kolb, in developing countries there are 21 per cent fewer women with mobile phones than men, compounding existing forms of disadvantage for women and girls.

The mobile phone revolution has certainly hit India, but according to one source only nine per cent are smartphones.

In more rural areas, the technology may be there, but cultural norms can still hamper access to it.

One village in Bihar is reported to have banned women from using mobile phones, in the belief their use was ‘encouraging women to elope with lovers’.

In an age of endless technological advances, it is tragic that the world over we are still looking for ways to protect women from the most primitive forms of violence and victimisation.

And even more heartbreaking, that somehow the responsibility for the safety of women from men lies squarely at the feet of those very women.