by ELSA MARIE D’SILVA
Safecity mural “Staring Eyes. The Hindi sentence on the poster translates as, “Lower your eyes”” PHOTO/Elsa Marie D’Silva
This past April, a survey of 300 women commuters on the Paris metro system found that every one of them experienced some form of sexual harassment or assault while travelling on the massive transport system. The High Council on Equality, the government agency that conducted the study, urged the French government to address this alarming finding and is now embarking on a nationwide campaign to “define and measure” gender harassment in public spaces.
But French women are hardly the only victims of this degrading and underreported intimidation. Every day, women worldwide must deal with unwanted stares and inappropriate language — in broad daylight, as they carry out their daily routines — that makes them fear for their safety, but often falls short of being a punishable crime.
Whether it is a man on a crowded street commenting on your body or being stared at and followed on a poorly lit street, this kind of harassment happens everywhere — from the streets of India, where I live and deal with this harassment on a regular basis, to the streets of New York City.
For a long time, quantifying this problem has been nearly impossible, especially in places that don’t have the resources to conduct expensive surveys or lengthy studies. But more recently, the unique power of crowdsourcing — the sharing of information by a large group of people via mobile phones, apps and social media — has emerged as an effective way to allow anyone to share their experiences and to help researchers collect data and draw attention to this long-simmering problem plaguing women and girls.
As the cofounder of Safecity, a crowdmap for women in in India that enables them to report incidents of sexual harassment anonymously, I have seen this firsthand. In just two years, more than 5000 people from all corners of India — from the high-rises of Mumbai to the beaches of Goa and the backwaters of Kerala — have shared their personal experiences on the crowdmap.
In some cases, the stories shared occurred as long ago as a decade, reminding us of the deep and lasting impact of this abuse. Many users report that they shape their everyday lives around avoiding unwanted attention from men in public spaces. They return home before dark, wear loose clothing or even opt out of extracurricular activities at school or college for fear of being assaulted.