“It’ll make it nice and easy for the police to find my body”

I’m looking at yet another report into women’s and girls’ safety [I’m not going to name it until I’ve given the authors a right of reply, but watch this space].  This one is on public transport and once again, a set of committees and roundtables have deliberated and decided that what is needed is Yet Another App.

I can only conclude that few, if any of those involved have actually been out and asked women who use public transport what they think.  I’ve been doing engagement on safety with women and girls for five years now, and no one has ever said “what would make me happier to go out after dark is another app”.  Just in case I was missing something, I checked this with a few other women who work in the field, and they said the same.  Not one.  Not by anyone.  “Never ever been cited as something that would make her feel safer.”

This is not my idea, it is a real image done as a proper suggestion. FFS.

Despite this, we are flooded with the things.  Last year, the Department of Transport did a scan on interventions which can help women’s safety on transport .  This sent me into such a state of despair that I turned it into a spreadsheet.

Some of them are frankly bonkers, such as “the humble lamppost” which is less of a plan and more of a fever dream in which “The humble lampost […] is an example of how security features such as emergency buttons could be incorporated into lamp post design. This could add an increased sense of safety for women walking on the streets.”  It could, or it might not.  If that’s not bad enough, another one is “theatre interventions”.  I wish I was joking but I am not.

If you click on the link for lighting – the single thing which women do say would make them feel safer – you get 404: Page Not Found.  I’ve checked this time after time over the last six months and no, still not a word.

But the spreadsheet means that I can tell you that almost a third of the proposals are for apps.  These fall into two camps.  One is of the kind that the report proposed, which allows a woman to report an assault once it has happened.  This is not what women want, they would far rather that the attack or harassment never happened at all and that places were designed to be and feel safer in the first place. 

The others are what I call “apps that scream” – ones which either allow people to track that you are safely getting home or which make a shouty noise when you press a button. 

No, this is far too late.

The problem with this is brilliantly summed up by Laura Bates in her book Fix the System (Not the Women) when she hears news of yet another government sponsored app being produced: “an app which would once again require self-policing by women while doing nothing to actually prevent assault”.

“Excuse me while I put down the camping-size backpack I’ve had to bring with me to hold all my ‘venturing outside as a woman’ gear, which now inclues attack alarms, self defence weapons, drink testing kits, anti-rape devices, a bus-signalling torch, several pairs of handcuffs, a magnifying glass and some flat shoes to walk ‘safely’ home in.  I’ll just put all that down so I’ve got my hands free to input my location into the app that will track my movements and alert someone if I don’t reach my destination at a specified time.  Not that they’ll get there in time to stop me from being murdered mind you.  But at least it’ll make it nice and easy for the police to find my body.”

There’s one thing which links all of these apps though, as Bates identifies.  They require the women to do the work.  But I don’t think it’s women who are the ones causing the issues (unless we are considering women wanting to leave the house and do things to be the problem here).  So why do we have to fix it?

I’m not asking this just to be mardy, either.  I think this gets to the heart of the problem.  It’s not just that the people sitting at these round tables, spending their innovation grants, and scanning for interventions don’t talk to women, I don’t think that many of them are women either.  A group of men, trying to work out a solution, is much more likely to come up with an app to fix things.  Technology must feel so much more comfortable than considering that they, the class of people round the table, are part of the problem, and this is what needs to change.

Had they got round to asking some women, however, this would have been pretty clear.

When the University of Leeds researched safety in parks, many women felt that apps made them trade freedom and independence for safety, ‘so no, not for me’.  Instead they suggested a tracking app ‘that sees where predatory men are’.

If only someone could get around to inventing that.  But women will probably end up with the ‘humble lamppost’ instead.  Because designing that is so much less difficult than asking women what would work.