Can ‘MindPong’ Pager lead to the future of women safety?
Imagine you have been working late and are the last one to leave the office. It is late night and yours is the only car in the poorly lit parking lot. You start walking towards it but feel eyes on your back. With the chill in your back, you reach into your bag to confirm you have the pepper spray at ready. You reach your car and unlock it but check the backseat first to ensure no one has creeped into it already, ready to pounce at you when you don’t expect it…
If the above description sounded like fiction to you, you are in for a huge wake up call because it is in fact the reality of daily lives of millions of women today.
If you haven’t already guessed by the title, I am going to share my perspective on women safety and the potential future of it (fair warning, it is an optimistic angle because I think we do need hope in today’s times). Even though one can sense hints of feminism in the backdrop, I still urge the “non-feminists” to give it a shot simply because it also takes a technological angle and names like Elon Musk are mentioned…
I dedicate the kickstart of my thought process to three things (I’ll be introducing the third reason at a later stage to keep the mystery). First, my general curiosity and inclination towards feminist topics. Second, in my mindless scrolling of the millennial social media hub (yes I mean Instagram), I happened upon a post which addressed something along the lines of male vs female response on “checklist of activities you do to prevent being attacked/assaulted/raped”. Would you like to take a guess on the contrast of the length of list from both genders???
Well, if you guessed that men don’t have such a checklist, you would be absolutely right! While it’s not really a concern for most American men, the women on the other hand go on a spectrum of activities from avoiding jogging at night or not leaving their drinks unattended to major lifestyle alterations like owning big dogs or not renting first floor apartments. The comparison clearly conveys that even though we have come a long way on gender equality in terms of policies but are we really empowering our women if we are unable to provide them a safe environment to grow and simply exist?
If the sheer volume of concerns women have to face on a daily basis towards their safety doesn’t sound convincing enough, there is factual data to support the concern and cause of women safety. Apart from UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights stating “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” in Article 3, the Women@Work 3.0 series by IndiaSpend covers the impact of “fear” on women’s career ambitions. Apart from our Hermione(s) giving up their Hogwarts and selecting lower quality colleges and giving up well-paying opportunities as it might require late working hours, Indian women go as far as spending Rs 17.5k more on a “safer” route for commute (as if the Pink Tax was not enough), as per a 2021 research by World Bank. In terms of economic benefits, a study by McKinsey finds that if India is able to bring its participation of women in the workforce on par with their male counterparts, it could add up to a whopping USD 2.9 trillions to the Indian GDP! Thus, there is both a need and potential enough impact of making our women feel safer.
“We need to ensure that from street to workplace, at every place, women have a sense of security, a feeling of being respected and for this, the country’s administration, police and judicial system, and every citizen need to fulfil their responsibility hundred percent.”
- Narendra Modi, Prime Minister, India
Even though our policymakers realize the need for a safer environment for women to thrive and have introduced legal procedures and amendments like POSH Act, The Criminal Law amendment along with the myriad of initiatives like the Nirbhaya Fund, 181 helpline, Meri Saheli etc., there has been an 87% increase in reported crimes against women over the past decade. The image becomes bleaker if we also look at the abysmal rate of only 25.2% out of all the 4.3 lakh reported incidents actually being brought to justice.
As per Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation, even with the plethora of pro-women safety changes, less than a quarter of working age women in India are actively participating in the workforce. So even though 75% of the population believes violence against women is a major problem, what can be done further to ensure our ladies are getting a safe environment to thrive?
Tech to the rescue
Shoutout to Elsa Marie D’ Silva for giving us the perspective on the role of citizens, government and media portrayal on women safety. However I am going to present another aspect to address the modern concerns of women safety.
Remember the starting of this entire piece???
As promised, looking through a technological lens, there have been indeed a plethora of inventions to aid in protecting the women or assisting them in defending themselves form the attackers. The Smart Personal Safety and Security Device Market catering to the needs of individuals, in armoring them to increase their chances of preventing and surviving an attack is expected to grow at 13.6% and become a $8.74 Bn industry by 2030. The major focus from end-user perspective is on the wearable devices and women safety applications which are accessible through our smartphones.
Taking a look at the existing solutions in the wearable devices category, there is a range of accessories (bracelets, pendants, rings and others) as well as options like panic buttons, personal alarms or stun guns which promise the bearer a layer of security in case of emergency scenarios. Most of the devices either function to provide SOS and tracking facility or a form of defense mechanism to neutralize the attacker physically. The former ones (like Safer, DEWI etc.)utilize a combination of GPS and connectivity solutions like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, along with Smart Apps to inform pre-approved contacts or emergency services about the possible distress, along with precise whereabouts of the endangered individual at the press of few buttons.
Further on the spectrum, devices like personal alarms, panic buttons, alert beacons (like beacon by WanderSafe) focus on dissolving a dangerous situation from developing by attracting attention of nearby individuals to the perpetration. These facilitate women to seek out help form immediate surroundings and hence provide a more immediate solution to the distressed ladies. Lastly, personal defense devices like pepper sprays and stun guns aim to physically neutralize the threat and provide the victim an opportunity to escape the danger.
Thus, there exist a multitude of options to help our women during those late-night journeys back home. However, further scrutiny reveals that there is a significant gap in understanding of these emergency scenarios and hence the usage and success of the existing solutions. Most of the devices are modeled around the ‘activity’ of the distressed lady. The basis of these safety devices is the “reaction of the endangered women on perception of danger”. The devices expect the women to react by going into ‘fight or flight’ mode where the brain releases hormones as a stress response on sensing danger, and the woman is able to think logically and take physical actions (like clicking alarm buttons or finding the pepper spray in the bag) to ensure their safety.
However, in 90% of cases of sexual violence against women (where the victims survived the attacks) the brain’s stress response has been “freezing”. According to RCEW, Freeze and Flop (2 of the 5 bodily responses to danger) are automatic reactions where the victim’s body goes tense, still and silent in order to avoid fights and potential further harm thus reducing the physical pain and not to be considered as “consent”. Hence, a solution would be practical when it also activates in the freeze state of mind.
Furthermore, when it takes a minimum of 5 minutes on average for women to find their car keys (something they use on a daily basis) in their endless bags, it is unreal expectation that the perpetrator would allow the panicked woman minutes to search around their bags for the ‘trustworthy’ pepper spray or go through elaborate procedures of opening apps and alerting trusted contacts. The dependence of accuracy of mobile GNSS in the current smartphones on the device model, path length, moving precision etc. along with only 1/3rd of Indian internet users being women, further limits the usability and access of the current personal safety devices.
So is there anything technology can give us that is proactive, automated and accessible to truly change the scene of women safety?
Enters Elon’s Neuralink
The answer lies in my third inspiration for this article, the “Fitbit for your skull” or Elon Musk’s Neuralink.
For the uninitiated, amidst the Twitter saga, Elon Musk came into news for another topic, the neural interface technology, Neuralink. While coin-sized chip embedded in the skull is aimed at addressing the probable future risks of digital super intelligence, its near-term potential medical applications like the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, opens the arena of other utilities of brain implant technologies.
Looking past the financial claims of “Black Mirror” abilities of the implants, the recording and simulation of brain activity can possibly become the basis of future technology to “unfreeze” the brain in emergency scenarios. Acting as a kick-starter, the simulation feature can push the brain towards taking actual physical action through nerve control and increase the chances of a successful escape. Functioning as an ‘always-on’, real time, automated device, brain implants on the lines of Neuralink also have the capability to counter the delay and uncertainty in responding to the dangerous situations.
Furthermore, the recording feature helps in keeping track of the entire brain activity, which can aid in studies of trauma as well as guide the psychiatric treatment of the victim, countering the current limitations of the recall bias and the individual’s subject interpretation of events relying entirely on their memory. The feature also enables evidence capturing by wirelessly transmitting data to the connected computer which can lead to higher conviction rates, ensuring a fair, non-invasive trial without making the victim relive the trauma for the sake of justice.
However, as with most technologies, neural interface implants carry the risk of being invasive with concerns around privacy. As the implants allow access and control over the brain, and hence the entire body of the subject, further research needs to be done in the direction of making it a secure and accessible technology that empowers the individual without the possibility of its misuse.
Thus, with the hope that the neural interface technology can go beyond making a monkey “MindPong” expert, I end my piece, as promised, on an optimistic note for women safety being addressed via technology of the future.
MBA form IIMA, Ruchi Lathoria is a Business Consultant under the Strategic Leadership Program for Tata Consultancy Services in the IMEA region.
