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Women Safety (IN)

Team

Yashvanth Mohan Kondi
Daksh Varshneya
Marissa Memelink m.l.memelink@gmail.com
Bauke Bakker baukebakker@me.com

Commissioner:

Description

MediaLAB and Fields of View, telepresence at Cisco

Suit up! On the 17th of October we went for a little trip to the city… the day of the telepresence call with the MediaLAB Amsterdam.

As we might have told you already, the project we are working on is a mirrored project, meaning our team started out with the same research question/topic as the team in the MediaLAB Amsterdam: Women’s Safety in Public Space. Our main funder, Cisco, facilitates high-end, high-tech, monthly meetings to showcase our findings in this cross-cultural project. Our weekly Skype meetings are nothing compared to this state-of-the-art, almost immersive experience, diminishing distance as the office in Amsterdam and Bangalore are real-time connected . Look at this!

DCIM101GOPRO

 

This meeting was, for us, the first formal meeting for this project. We looked forward to it. We prepared a little presentation summing up what findings we had so far. In this blog post we will recap what we told in that presentation at Cisco. Although our project at this moment has taken some steps further, we didn’t want you to miss this. These are descriptions of the path we followed, people we spoke to, decisions we made, things we’ve learned and our future plans (approximately one month ago). Because we made a very simplistic presentation in Prezi, which you can find here, I will add a little more flesh to this skeletal structure. I will give you four key decision points.

When we got introduced to this project roughly 4 months ago, it was called the ‘Panic Button’ project. The idea originated in one of the classes a professor here gave. The conversation was about a device, that would be unobtrusive, easily wearable and maybe even fashionable. The idea of a device to use in case of panic was born.

When we arrived in the end of August, we had a lot of talks about what this project was actually all about. For starters we looked at the name, ‘Panic Button’, which was chosen as a temporary name. The main problem for us with this name was that it placed a strong accent on ‘panic’; something we wished to dismiss or avoid. Hence, a name that would imply the avoidance or removal of panic in a hazardous situation seemed better. “What about ‘Unpanic’? –Yes, sounds alright, let us take that for now.”

Panic Unpanic-01

It was soon after this when our colleague, sociologist and gender expert Dr. Niveditha Menon sent us an interesting mail. She pointed out that with using the name ‘Unpanic’, we actually tell the users, in this and most other cases women, that they should ‘unpanic’. They should not be in panic, what ever happens to them. Or worse, they should not be overacting.

[…] if we are telling women NOT to panic we are telling them two things – One, that they do panic (which they do not), and that thy ought not to panic (why not? the fear is real enough). […] we are not in any position to tell woman NOT to panic, because frankly, do we have any right to? – Niveditha Menon

Here we were, working on a project with no name. We had to have something… so we started from scratch, again. What do we want to accomplish? What do we want to improve, help or solve? Is our problem even solvable? And if so, is there any change that would happen within our time here, a limited semester. We began blowing up our initial research question and deconstructed it.

The next topic of discussion regarding our project was whether or not we would be making a device. The initial plan, the panic button, would’ve been a device to be used in cases of panic, violence and/or harassment. We would not be touching the core or the cause of the problem by making such a device. In Dutch we have this beautiful saying: ‘It is like mopping the floor while the tap is still running’. The problem is rooted deeper and by making a reactive device we would not address the core problem. Another saying seems appropriate: prevention is better than cure. Though, preventing harassment would require an attitudinal or behavioural change, and how were we going to achieve such a complex task. We felt that we needed to split the project in different parts.

After thinking about what we wanted and needed, we started to draw it out. In the blog post “Recipe for curry” we wrote about how we then structured and prioritized our further research. You can read it again here if you like.

Designbrief #1

As we floated ideas freely, we concluded that we were not going to find a solution. We cannot solve this problem or make it disappear. This is not being pessimistic, solely realistic. Though, it’s not a reason to be disappointed or demotivated. We found that, even if we were not working towards a future without violence or sexual harassment, we could still be doing a meaningful project. We thought about it in a ‘two steps forward- one step back’ way. It is not that women don’t have rights here, because they do. They work, they vote, they do pretty much everything men do. Still, women are being restricted because they are not considered equal to men. It feels like new canals have been dug, but some boats still take the old route. It always takes time for changes to be accepted. In addition, every change brings about new sets of obstacles in its wake. It is like a wave movement, cyclical. Inspired by the feminist waves of women’s emancipation, we saw our project as contributing towards the crest of the next wave. Knowing we won’t make much change, if even any, our vision is to work on that next waveThe project would from now on be referred to as the ‘Next Wave’ project.

Unpanic- Next Wave logo

With our three approaches we went to see professionals and experts in the field. We asked them for feedback, tips&tricks and experiences. We are blessed with the availability of people who have been working in the field of gender, human- and women’s rights and activist-groups for years. How nice it was, therefore, to see that their way of thinking about this subject echoed our views. They liked the path we had walked thus far, but there was still a lot to do. After extensive discussions and almost personal lectures we mapped out the different aspects of this social crisis and how they were interconnected. Here is the map.

Frame 1

Now it was time to unite the knowledge we gained so far and start thinking about the research questions in each of the three approaches. The research questions would determine the choices we made. Here they are.

Keywords:
From safety to freedom, mobility, visibility and self-hood

Short term:
How can we facilitate informal reporting of sexual harassment in a physical space while ensuring institutional linkages?

Long term:
How can we design a tool for Indian men to interpret themselves, in a non-threatening way, so the frame shifts from entitlement to consciousness of power structures?

Unifying:
How can we design an online platform for organizations and a general audience, on organizations working to promote freedom of women?

The span of our plans is huge. We know that. We are not sure how far we will go, but we found it too difficult to narrow down our scope. For now, we are focusing on the short-term project, since this is the most feasible to accomplish within our stay.

Keep you posted!

 

Recipe for curry

It has been one month now, more or less, since we’ve been here. In these last three to four weeks we have been breaking our brains over what we are researching. What exactly do we want to work on? How do we define these aspects and, how can we formulate our research question? Also, we had online meetings with team Amsterdam to see how they are progressing and Sruthi gave us a nice introductory lecture on India and its society. We will start off with the progress of our research question.

We were aware of the complexity of our problem, sort of. I like to compare it to taking a spoon of curry and we have to distinguish between flavors. The first thing we did to find the research question was blowing up the sentence ‘women‘s safety in public space‘. We took the spoon of curry apart and checked which spices we could see. What do we define as women and what kind of women are there? What is the definition of safety, for whom and why? What kind of spaces are there, which ones are problematic and what can we use from this? We can tell you now, these questions are more difficult than meets the eye, especially in a country like India… So many spices!

We found out that the subject we are working on has many variables. If separated, flavors might taste different than combined. The taste palette, or the width of our problem is extremely complex and intertwined. Reading in on the Indian culture doesn not go overnight, it takes a lot of work and good guidance. Maybe we can start by saying that we are not going to solve this problem on our own? Either way, all the work that we do for the sake of this subject is a step in the good direction and that feels great.

posters

After we figured out how broad each of our aspects were, how wide the spectra are, we started to think about what interests us the most. From this soul seeking on our interest came three main approaches to this subject. Short term: a project or product that can be realized within a short span of time. Long term: the longer term goals that the short term project feeds in. Unifying project: looking at the already existing projects and find ways to connect and unify them. The reason for these three aspects is as follows.

The problem we are facing is incredibly broad and deeply rooted. It does not stop simply at looking at busses or city-squares. The problem is deeply rooted in society and in the attitude of the citizens. It has been around for so long that we figured out that one single action wouldn’t make a big change. With a relatively small action we wouldn’t get to the core of the problem, thus a long term project is required. To really do this, we would have to research the norms and values of the society in general. How do people see each other and in what way do people respect each other? Why do they do what they do, in what ways? Only by doing this we could figure out where we should seek the ‘solution’. Although this seems like a very nice plan it is a little ambitious. Not only because the half of our team is non-Indian and knows little about the culture and traditions, but also because of the many variables at work. Last but not least, there is our limited timeframe in which we have to do something.

Short termed action seems to be a feasible goal within the time we have here. This is something we can finish. Ideally, the short term action feeds into a greater long term goal. How we are realizing this is not yet clear to us yet.

Then we have the unifying part. This part comes from the idea that there are already many initiatives in this field. There are already many projects about safety, or more specific, on women’s safety. Not only in India but also elsewhere in the world. All these projects would, first of all, be useful for us to study and see how they handle different situations and how we can get inspired by their visions and ideas. Next to this ‘fundamental’ research, we are looking for ways to interconnect these different initiatives to join forces and become stronger as unity. The main focus though, lays on the short term direct action. Different roles within our frame are: victims, bystanders, perpetrators, institutions, institution-representatives and media.

Designbrief

 

Our calls with the MediaLAB Amsterdam gave us a good insight in how our situation differs from the current situation in Amsterdam. Although we started off with the same ‘question’ or problem set, we immediately saw that team Amsterdam is going in another direction than we are. Amsterdam is relatively safe. The focus of their project, as for now, is more in the perceiving of safety. As for us, it is a combination of subjective safety (if you feel save) and objective safety (if it is safe).

One overlapping aspect we found out is that different groups of people perceive safety in different ways. Lets say that a student, born and raised in Amsterdam, feels relatively safe on the streets of Amsterdam. He or she knows where to go or where not to go. A tourist in Amsterdam might get another feeling; in a new city where you know nothing about anything that is going on there, you might feel less safe. In our case we didn’t focus much on the divide of locals or tourists, more on the social status and cultural hierarchy. How do people from low caste and low class perceive safety compared to high caste and high class?

co-call

In this blogpost we can’t provide you with a definite research question yet, unfortunately. The field of research is still too broad for us to be focussing already on something particular. For that, we can provide you with a focus of the research we are working on right now. How can we make a product/service to get the bystanders to be more alert or assertive? How can we influence the attitude of the Indian society to be more respectful towards women (in the long term)? How can we combine the work that is already been done to make a powerful unit?

Any suggestion about concepts, existing projects or insight on this matter are more than welcome. In the meantime, we’ll keep busy!