Braços Dados, the first application of Gender and Number, offers service for women at risk in the public space.
The app is free and allows users to send a message to a trusted network when they feel at risk; Initiative also aims to map areas of cities where perception of insecurity is greater
Rio de Janeiro, March 27 – What can an app do for women who feel insecure when they walk alone through the cities? Gender and Number, an independent gender-focused data journalism initiative, today launches the Braços Dados application to provide users with an emergency message delivery service to a previously registered five-person network. When a button is pressed, the preselected contacts receive an alert with the location of the user.
The free app – available for Android system in the Play Store – was developed to serve a broad audience that daily has its mobility impacted by the perception of insecurity. Research on harassment and sexual violence by different institutes and organizations shows that public space is still hostile to women. In São Paulo, 35% of them have already been harassed on public transport, according to Datafolha 2015 survey. The street then appears as a more constant space for harassment: 33% said they had suffered some form of intimidation or violence with pedestrian connotations. The data is not exclusive of the largest city in Brazil. In an NGO survey of 503 women from four Brazilian capitals, harassment is also perceived and causes at least 86% of them to change their routine in some way, such as changing the path (55%), avoiding poorly lit areas (52%). , Request the company of other people (44%) and even give up going places (18%).
It is expected that Braços Dados in addition to a service for women – who are mostly in public transportation and who make most of their commutes on foot – will also be an ally to map spaces and situations where they feel risk. By triggering the safety net, the user records her location, and then can pinpoint the type of situation that led her to feel insecure. “With the application, at the same time as users trigger a network to monitor whether they will reach their destination well, the record of this moment of insecurity becomes a given about the perception of women in public space. The users themselves can give more details of the situation that led them to resort to the network: crossing a rough street, going from the bus to the door of the house on a poorly lit street, being in an empty car with a suspicious unknown. In the long term, this survey will subsidize actions to make the public space more friendly to women, “says Natália Mazotte, Director of Gender Data and Number.
Inside the mapping
Arm Data collects anonymous and aggregated data from users, which means that all information collected does not carry personal identification. We collect general information, such as situations in which users felt insecure and regions where the safety net was triggered more often. These surveys will compose a database on the perception of insecurity of women in public space, whose objective is to promote more informed debates and to direct public policies of urban planning with gender cuts. The data will not be sold, transmitted to third parties or used for any kind of commercial promotion.
In-app registration requires name and email, as well as gender and city. But these data will not be disaggregated in the analyzes. The Gender and Number has the transparency and openness of data as a premise, but always considering privacy as a fundamental right to be preserved.
On Gender and Number and the debate on access to the city
A Género e Número is a journalism startup with a focus on gender issues and open data. It produces content and tools that can support the debate, qualify it and expand it, including those already initiated in discussions on gender equity. In day-to-day work, among so many topics that the team monitors and follows, it is observed how harassment and violence with sexual connotation to women in public spaces are not treated with priority by the public power. The arguments of managers or politicians always tend to place violence in a gradation, minimizing the consequences of harassment. There is not even comprehensive data produced by government agencies that addresses the impact of women’s perception of gender violence in the public arena. However, there is an understanding, by civil society organizations sensitive to the theme, of the relevance of the subject, which is directly related to the mobility of women, 51.4% of the Brazilian population.
Access the presentation video of theBraços Dados: bracosdados.generonumero.media
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