Shock bras, mobile apps: Why technology can’t stop sexual violence

Women’s safety is a point of debate once again India.  The Badaun gangrape and murder case where two teenaged Dalit sisters were gangraped by seven men, then hanged from a tree has shocked all and led to protests in both Delhi and Lucknow.

The impunity with which the rapists acted shows that not much has changed in India, especially for women in rural areas and those from lower castes. In light of Badaun, maybe it’s time to revisit the hype around technology as a safeguard against sexual violence.

More so since in the wake of the Delhi gangrape, we’ve witnessed a proliferation of tech apps, anti-rape lockets, and anti-rape underwear grabbing media headlines. Last year, three engineering students came up with lingerie that would give the rapist/attacker a shocker. They said that they felt the need to do something after the 16 December gangrape.

“The lingerie with global positioning system (GPS), global system for mobile communications (GSM) and also pressure sensors, is capable of sending shock waves of 3,800 kV as well as alerts to parents and police,” said lingerie co-inventor Manisha Mohan in an interview with PTI.

“The shocks can be emitted up to 82 times,” she said, adding that the device could give women “freedom from situations faced in public places.” The group had planned to look for a commercial roll-out of the device by April last year, although its not clear if the new underwear hit the stores.

There have been apps focused on women’s safety as well. The most prominent is the VithU app, which has been endorsed by Bollywood Superstar Kareena Kapoor. The app basically will send your location to four of your chosen contacts in case you are attacked. All the user has to do is press the power button twice.

Screenshot of the VithU app.

But do any of these high-tech solutions really offer any help?  Not really, says Adi Robertson in  The Verge  who points that very often such devices end up trivialing the seriousness of the rape.

The author gives the example of products like “Guardian Angel” a pendant which is aimed at helping women feel safe. The pendant has a central button which triggers a call to the wearer’s phone (thus helping her avoid any annoying man at the bar).

Also if they hold the button for long it sends an emergency text message with location coordinates to a designated contact, in case the woman is facing a direct threat. Another product mentioned in Anti-Rape wear (ARWear), which is resistant to cut, tear, etc and is thus supposed to protect women.

Robertson, writes, “there’s a fine line between giving women useful tools and focusing so much on those tools that the larger societal problem gets ignored.”

In case of the anti-rape wear ad, she points out that the promotional video shows “a woman strikes a pose to check out her anti-rape underwear before sliding on her little black dress and doing her hair, all in one seamless process. Split ends. Deodorant streaks. Sexual assault. How terribly inconvenient.”

She adds that such technology and the way its marketed “ends up normalising rape as an unremarkable, if unfortunate, part of the female experience,” by reducing it to a pendant or a piece of underwear.

Screenshot from the Vimeo video of Anti-Rape wear.

This kind of messaging is apparent in India-made devices like iBall’s Andi Uddaan, a smartphone with dedicated SOS button and designed keeping in mind the safety concerns for women in India.  Pressing the SOS button would ensure that loud siren goes off in the phone to alert people nearby of the danger, and also makes calls and sends messages to five pre-defined contacts.

The company called it  “perfect blend of security and style”, evidently because the two go hand-in-hand.  Just to drive home the fact the  phone was for women, iBall fitted a Swarovski Zirconia crystal on the home button.

Reducing women’s safety to a bra or even a panty doesn’t help explain the larger problem which is this: women are attacked not because they forgot to wear a pendant but because they are women. It also puts the onus of safety on women themselves, thus once again opening up areas for potential victim-blaming. This is all the more problematic in a country like India, where not every woman can afford a smartphone, and where getting even 2G connectivity is a miracle at times.

The sentiment behind these devices can’t be faulted, nor is anyone saying that only fool-proof solutions are need to fight crimes against women, but in country like India, these only talk to a very small number of women. They don’t answer the concerns of a dalit girl who is forced to go out in the open to defecate  or the housemaid who is raped by her employer.

Nor is this to say that technology can’t help women deal with the violence. Mapping of areas where crimes against women are high is possible using GPRS. Data from such mapping can also be used to help set up better policing in these areas, perhaps setting up legal aid centres or even medical centres in the vicinity.

But where many apps like electronic shock bras are concerned, as Roberston says, “it is simply the aestheticisation of female fear.”

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