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Women's Safety in Public Spaces: Examining the Efficacy of Panic Buttons in New Delhi

Published: 02 May 2017 Publication History

Abstract

We present a qualitative inquiry through the lens of feminist Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) into women's perceptions of personal safety in New Delhi, India. Since a brutal gang-rape incident took place in Delhi in December 2012 and received global attention, women's safety has been the focus of much attention India-wide. In April 2016, the Indian government issued a mandate that all mobile phones sold in India 2017 onwards must include a panic button for women's safety. We draw on interview and survey data to examine women's responses to the mandate, also investigating what factors influence their perceptions of safety, positively and negatively. Our findings indicate that women's sense of safety may be deconstructed into a multitude of factors--personal, public, social, technological--that must align for this sense of safety to be preserved. We then discuss the implications these factors have for the success and (re-)design of the panic button and similar interventions.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI '17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    May 2017
    7138 pages
    ISBN:9781450346559
    DOI:10.1145/3025453
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    Published: 02 May 2017

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    Author Tags

    1. feminist hci
    2. gender
    3. hci4d
    4. india
    5. safety

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    Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

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    • (2025)Safety Interventions for Women in Urban Public Transport of South Asia: A Systematic Review and SynthesisHandbook on Sex, Gender and Health10.1007/978-981-97-2098-9_47(1063-1090)Online publication date: 28-Jan-2025
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    • (2024)"Just Like, Risking Your Life Here": Participatory Design of User Interactions with Risk Detection AI to Prevent Online-to-Offline Harm Through Dating AppsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36869068:CSCW2(1-41)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
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