Women’s strategies addressing sexual harassment and assault on public buses: an analysis of crowdsourced data

This paper uses crowdsourced data on women’s self-reports of harassment and assault on public buses in India. The data provide a basis to identify the strategies that women use to respond to and manage this everyday threat. The study examines 137 accounts of assault collected by a crowdsourced platf...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Lea, Suzanne Goodney (Author) ; Asok, Abhijith (Author) ; D’Silva, Elsa (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Published: [2017]
In: Crime prevention and community safety
Year: 2017, Volume: 19, Issue: 3, Pages: 227-239
Online Access: Volltext (Resolving-System)
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Keywords:
Women’s safety
Public transportation
Groping
Assault
Crowdsourced data
Description
Summary:This paper uses crowdsourced data on women’s self-reports of harassment and assault on public buses in India. The data provide a basis to identify the strategies that women use to respond to and manage this everyday threat. The study examines 137 accounts of assault collected by a crowdsourced platform in which women detail, keeping silent (n = 27), fleeing (n = 38), or resisting (n = 72) such an assault. Findings show that confronting incidents in the moment by “making a scene” and “engaging the crowd” works well in the closed, shared-space setting of a crowded public bus. The study concludes by asserting crowdmapping as a multi-faceted tool: it can allow women to be aware of potentially dangerous locales, empowers them to report incidents to help keep others safe, and provides a source of data to advise on best practices for navigating street harassment and assault in public buses.
ISSN:1743-4629
DOI:10.1057/s41300-017-0028-1