Citation

Lea SG, D'Silva E, Asok A. Crime Prev. Community Safety 2017; 19(3-4): 227-239.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group -- Palgrave-Macmillan)

DOI

10.1057/s41300-017-0028-1

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

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.

Language: en