Can mobile applications be a weapon against street harassment?

A poorly lit street, an empty subway car or one full of euphoric fans during the Paris Games can cause stress in women. Several Applications They are being developed to help them feel less alone and facilitate police intervention.

“We know that there will be more people on the streets and on transport, with an increase in alcohol consumption” during the Olympic Games in the French capital, July 26 to August 11, says Priscillia Routier-Trillard, founder of The Sorority.

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This free application created in 2020 for an exclusively female audience especially allows “those who feel unsafe to alert the 50 closest people thanks to the phone’s GPS position.”

Women with the same application receive a notification on their smartphones when they are in the area from which the alert was launched. “They can send a message to the person asking for help, call them, find them to accompany them or in the worst case scenario, notify the police,” says Routier-Trillard.

Maja, 18, has already resorted to this application after being chased on a street. “Since I pressed the alert button, I received a dozen text messages and calls. Finally, another user located me and accompanied me by car,” she describes to AFP.

Search for a safe place”

Emma, ​​25, signed up after an attack on the Le Havre tram. “She was petrified, I couldn’t do anything,” she laments. Since then, she prepares her routes and verifies that there are users of the application in the cities she goes to.

The Sororitywith 90,000 verified users, with vetted profiles, is now collaborating with law enforcement, as announced on March 8 by Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin.

“Our users will be able to contact the police or gendarmerie when they receive an alert,” explains Routier-Trillard. The objective of this collaboration is that police and gendarmes can “better identify users’ calls” and “intervene quickly, helped by all the details provided,” she adds.

Umay, another free app, also collaborates with law enforcement. Since 2019, it has compiled “safe places”: 3,200 gendarme stations, 600 police stations and another 6,000 establishments such as bars, restaurants, shops or institutions, where people who feel threatened, whether men or women, can take refuge.

“It was a relief to know that it existed and that I would never be completely alone again,” explains Anaelle, 18, who discovered one of these places by chance thanks to a sticker on a shop window.

Volunteers trained for the Games

Since then, this Parisian psychology student says she feels safer, as do her parents: “They unloaded it and, thanks to that, they see where I am and let me go out more easily at night.”

The application, used by 75,000 subscribers, has signed an agreement with La Française des Jeux (FDJ), the French public company that manages lotteries and sports betting. The objective is to make a maximum of bars selling tobacco and newspapers as “safe places” official before the Games.

“We can imagine that during an event like the Olympic Games, there will be more inappropriate behavior, favored by the festive atmosphere, the consumption of alcohol and perhaps other psychotropic drugs,” assesses Williams Nuytens, sociologist at the University of Lievin and specialist in sports, violence and vulnerable populations.

The French Ministry of the Interior recalls that the victims of sexual assaults are 91% women, while the perpetrators are 97% men.

According to the latest annual report of the Higher Council for Equality between Men and Women (HCE) on sexism in France, eight out of ten women are afraid to go home alone at night, and nine out of ten adopt avoidance behaviors to Get rid of sexist comments.

Umay It also works with the Olympic Games Organization Committee (COJO) and the thousands of volunteers recruited to receive visitors, ensuring “training to raise awareness (of volunteers) in the management of situations of aggression and especially sexist violence.” and sexual,” celebrates François Morival, co-founder and CEO of the application.

Source: Elcomercio

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