Whenever cases of sexual assaults on women make the headlines, we condemn, blame and protest, but I believe it’s high time that we start taking some action on it. So, here’s my attempt at trying to initiate an action-based conversation about this pressing social evil.
Violence against women is a major social issue in the world, but the situation is much more severe in the Indian subcontinent. India is rated as one of the unsafe countries in the world for a woman. Be it rustic villages or modern metro cities, public places or homes, educational institutions or office spaces women in India constantly live in fear of their life and honour.
The upward trend in crimes committed against women has only been rising steadily over the years, rather than slowing down. According to NCRB (National Crime Records Bureau) the year 2018 saw an overall decrease in the total number of crimes but has shown an increase in crimes against women. According to the data, the major crimes conducted against women are Domestic Violence, Molestation and Assault, Kidnapping and abduction to forcefully marry them, and Rape.
The course of this article focuses on sexual assaults on women with the aim to:
- Understand the causes which lead to their prevalence
- Identifying opportunities for intervention
- Discuss solutions to curb it
WHY DO WE HAVE SEXUAL ASSAULT AND RAPE IN OUR SOCIETY?
Secondary research was carried out by perusing various research papers, article, and video to seek answers to the following questions:
- Why some men commit these crimes?
- Why the existing system of solutions not working?
Here is what I gathered from my research:
For better understanding the causes and how they contribute to the problem: negatively affect some men and enable them to commit violent acts against women, I tried to visualize the causes by building a systems map, which you can access here: violence-against-women-in-India
An interesting dark pattern ( or a vicious loop ) was identified on mapping the system:
Sexual assaults on women increase > media attention & public outrage increases >more women come out and register complaints in the Police > increases the inefficiency of the police forces due to rise in cases > pendency and conviction rates of cases increase > increases impunity > More sexual assaults
Interventions to break this cycle have been discussed later in the article.
USING THE FOGG BEHAVIOUR MODEL TO IDENTIFY OPPORTUNITIES FOR INTERVENTION
According to Fogg’s behaviour model, people’s behaviour is established if these three components are simultaneously present:
a. Motivation: People have to be sufficiently motivated to partake in the behaviour
b. Ability: They must have the ability to do the behaviour
c. Trigger: They have to be triggered, or prompted, to do the behaviour
Since trigger, motivation and ability, all three are required to be present simultaneously for a behaviour to be established, if we are able to remove one of them from the equation, then the chances of the behaviour being successful are reduced by folds.
On studying the causes, I tried mapping what motivates, triggers and enables some men to be violent towards women. Here are the results:
How Might We
The next step was to ideate ways in which the above three factors can be eliminated. For which I used the technique of HMW questions to turn those challenges into opportunities for design.
- How might we remove/alter the triggers that enable some men to rape/molest women?
- How might we remove the motivators that allow some men to be aggressive towards women?
- How might we stop men from taking actions on their motivations?
Next, I tried to group the HMW questions together to establish common themes between them. This way it became easier to ideate upon solutions.
And here is what I came up with:
Possible solutions
The solutions that I propose broadly fall into three categories:
- Making Policies
- Awareness Campaigns
- Programmes and Services
- Technological Interventions
Addressing Sexuality
Education policies to:
- Teach sex education to adolescents. School curriculums should in an interactive and creative way sensitize students about sexual and reproductive health. Also, innovative teaching methods to debunk gender-stereotypes should be thought upon.
- Provide gender-sensitive training of educators to remove harmful gender -stereotypes and norms in teaching practices. Also, training teachers to detect early signs of child abuse and intervene to provide protection to the child.
- Establish psychological counsellors in schools to help students coming from violent households.
Policies to:
- Design services in which discreetly cultivate awareness in men about healthy sexuality, catered towards men belonging from societies where rape and violence against women are high.
- Promote men’s health and men’s responsibility for reproductive health and respectful relationships.
Changes on the societal level
Awareness Campaigns:
- Involving MALE local community leaders, public figures, cultural and religious influencers to eliminate subjugation of and violence against women.
- Using religious gathering places like temples to drive awareness in the form (i) Posters, (ii) Street plays or (iii) Workshops to evoke empathy in people with regards to the subordination of women.
Programs and Services:
- Free parenting programs to provide parents with resources, tools and support to foster healthy, non-violent and safe homes to nurture kids.
- Programs to improve conflict resolution and promote healthy communication skills within relationships.
- Developing a program for recognizing and facilitating communities/ localities who have done well in terms of reducing crime rates against women in their societies. This can serve as a motivator to other community leaders ( and communities at large ) to make developments in their areas.
Policy to redesign towns, villages and districts
- Re-design policies to be made from the perspective of (i) Inclusivity (ii) Safety and (iii) Ease of commute. Some steps which could be taken of are:
- 24x7 functioning public transport with constant police surveillance
- Ensuring modes of last-mile connectivity for women
- Police patrolling
- Well-lit streets
Other Policies:
- For establishing code of conduct in mass media to eliminate content which promotes gender-stereotypes and discrimination.
- To address and eliminate gender discrimination and patriarchal notions in legal and law enforcement sectors.
Technological Interventions:
- A system which calculates and assigns a safety index to different districts of a city. This safety map can be accessible to the general public and authorities of other districts and can help in creating accountability within the district administration to better work towards the problem of women safety and security.
Changing the belief system
This is a hard challenge to conquer, but steps in the right direction by using expert knowledge can surely make it achievable.
Policies:
- Curbing pornographic content that vilifies and objectifies women.
- To eliminate single-sex educational institutes. Since these institutes are majorly preferred by parents to instate feudal concepts and minimize the negative effects of communicating with boys. “All-boys” and “all-girls” schools or colleges create an environment conducive of disruptive gender-norms and stereotypes, moreover, it becomes difficult for students to later develop healthy social relationships with the other sex.
Technological Interventions:
- Constructing an immersive and emotional experience for people where they get to experience what it is like to be in the shoes of the opposite sex. This can help in creating empathy and respect in people towards the other sex.
Programmes:
- Focusing on imparting knowledge and educating members of low-income communities about sexual harassment, rape and molestation of women. Since many people fail to understand what that actually means, how and why it is wrong.
Intervening the vicious loop (discussed earlier)
Policies to develop the legal and law enforcement sectors :
- For increasing the capacity of infrastructure, human resources and facilities in the legal and law enforcement sectors.
- Leveraging technology to boost productivity in these two sectors.
- Providing women officers opportunities to advance in their careers and hold high-level positions.
Awareness Campaigns:
- To encourage women to be a part of the Indian Police Forces. This reduces gender-gap, increases workforce, empowers women, brings equality and can thus help in reducing the inefficiencies of the law sector.
Technological Interventions:
- Using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Geofencing GGtechnology for proactive surveillance, which again, would increase the efficiency of the authorities by preventing the occurrence of crimes.
Here, I would like to break the flow a bit and divulge into explaining and showcasing the technological intervention discussed above.
The basic idea here is to develop a mobile/smart-watch application which can in real-time analyse voice recordings to detect certain keywords. These keywords are basically words/phrases which one usually uses when they are in a perilous situation, phrases such as, “Help Me”.
On detecting these keywords, a person’s location and voice recording can be sent to the police, nearby people, and the person’s emergency contacts.
The application’s name is SafetFirst and here is a simple explanation of how it works:
- A person on downloading the app can set up their emergency contacts, using either their mobile phone or smartwatch.
- Post that the person sets up an unlock pattern, to prevent false alarms.
- When the application detects a person is in motion, it prompts the user to switch on the app and allow it to record.
- On detecting the keywords, the application asks the user to verify if they are in danger, within a stipulated amount of time, if they fail to reply within the time frame or answer in the affirmative (that they are in danger) then their details are sent to the police, their contacts and people in the immediate vicinity. If instead, their answer is in the negation, then the app will ask them to confirm that they are actually safe, and someone else is not using the app on their behalf.
- The concerned people then receive text messages and phone call with the details of the user.
Reasons for developing a watch-based interface:
- Easier access than smartphones. Phones are hard to reach at times because they are either stored in bags or pockets, whereas watches are easily accessible because they are worn around wrists.
- Better in grabbing attention because of the use of haptics.
How does the application help?
- Creates proactive vigilance rather than reactive vigilance.
- Creates a sense of community help and evokes empathy in people.
- Eases and expedites the process of the police investigation, since the perpetrators get caught in the act.
Conclusion
Violence against women is a long-standing social problem in India. We have come a long way over the years, with some ground-breaking laws and policies such as the abolishment of Sati practice, awarding death-sentence to rapists, and many more, but there’s still a long way to go.
I hope this article acts as a source of motivation for people to dive into action.