Exploring the Limitations of Technology in Ensuring Women's Safety: A Gender-Inclusive Design Perspective

Abstract

Statistics indicate that up to 95% of women and girls in countries such as India report feeling unsafe in public locations, suggesting that the safety of women in these environments remains a pressing concern. Rather than accepting this status quo, there is a growing emphasis on the utilization of technology to provide protection. Innovations, such as wearable panic buttons, mobile applications, and transport monitoring systems, are designed to address the security gaps that society is still struggling to address. Nevertheless, the responsibility for safety planning and precautions is incorrectly attributed to women due to their excessive reliance on technology. It also cannot substitute the deeper attitudinal shifts and policy changes needed to transform women’s safety from a privilege into an intrinsic human right. This paper evaluates technology’s promises and limitations in ensuring women’s security through a gender-inclusive design lens. Detailed analysis shows that while tech tools can provide useful protective capability on an individual level, they fail to address the root societal causes of violence against women. There remains an emotional burden and exhaustion from having to constantly strategize for one’s own safety. Furthermore, computational systems designed to forecast crime hotspots continue to place emphasis on data that originates from safety concepts defined by men. For technology solutions to effectively amplify women's voices in security, they must incorporate "safety by design" concepts that deliberately acknowledge and respect the many experiences of womanhood. Women themselves must be active participants throughout the process, from problem definition to prototype testing and beyond. Only then can innovations avoid one-size-fits-all assumptions. Centering women also means accounting for intersections with factors like race, income level, profession, family status and age which impact experiences of safety. Ultimately, technology has a multifaceted function encompassing both advantages and limitations. Although applications and wearables may offer temporary protection, they are unable to substitute the necessary change in society attitudes to guarantee women's safety as an equal and absolute entitlement in both private and public domains. Only a collective reckoning coupled with elevating women’s voices at all stages can lead to solutions that empower rather than burden those meant to benefit. The path forward lies in an intersectional approach that reshapes not just technical fixes but notions of safety itself to make it intrinsic to womanhood.