Expanding opportunities for girls and women in india
The FIA Foundation is an independent UK registered charity which supports international programme of activities promoting road safety, the environment and sustainable mobility, as well as funding motor sport safety research. Their aim is to ensure ‘Safe, Clean, Fair and Green’ mobility for all, playing part to ensure a sustainable future.
The FIA Foundation Research Paper series seeks to provide interesting insights into current issues, using rigorous data analysis to generate conclusions which are highly relevant to current global and local policy debates.
The FIA Foundation partnered with Safetipin to build a picture of how adolescent girls make their journeys. The study uses innovative technology, supported by discussions with local women, to understand how their experiences and behaviours are shaped by the physical and social framework in which they live. The project specifically focused on adolescent girls’ experiences to highlight the risks they, in particular, face moving around their communities.
ABOUT SAFETIPIN
Safetipin is a social organisation working with a wide range of urban stakeholders including governments to make public spaces safer and more inclusive for women. Safetipin collect data using mobile phone applications and present this to relevant stakeholders with recommendations. Safetipin also generate a safety score based on the data they collect and provide it in the My Safetipin app for users to make safe and informed decisions about their mobility.
Safetipin provides information about factors that promote safety for women and other groups, to citizens at large and important urban stakeholders. They give data for safety, inclusivity and mobility based on physical and social infrastructure.
Users can do a Safety Audit to provide a better understanding of their city and add comments too. They can report problems such as poor/no lighting, broken/blocked footpath, open wiring etc. While travelling, they can view Safety Audits to view safe and unsafe locations, and plan their routes accordingly.
Even provides information to public service providers with access to information from the data collected such as non-functioning streetlights, broken or unpaved walkpaths, poor accessiblity to public transport and unsafe areas, to help them improve the safety of the area.
NGOs: The My Safetipin mobile safety app can be used as a tool by NGOs and others working at the grassroots level in lower income areas for advocacy and more detail to address the issues of safety.
Corporations: Companies can use Safetipin to extend safety outside the workplace, by providing information and recommendations to employees on transport, places to stay and even planning routes based on employee locations with the help of our GIS service. Further employees can use the Tracking feature in our app to let others know of their location and possible dangers.
Portals: The Safety Score of places and neighborhoods could be made available to travel or property portals to give users information about the level of safety in and around the areas of the property.
To understand the challenges faced by girls and young women, due to lack of safety in public spaces and public transport, data was collected in three areas in and around Delhi. A combination of quantitative and qualitative primary data was collected through safety audits using the My Safetipin mobile phone app, ‘safety audit walks’ and focus group discussions with participants and key informant interviews with local stakeholders
Key Informant Interviews gathered in-depth information on how local key stakeholders perceive girls’ and women’s safety and inclusion in public spaces. These interviews were instrumental in understanding how these key informants perceive their own role in building safe and inclusive spaces particularly for girls and women. Quest Improvements that have been made in the past and how the existing situation could be improved. Seven key informant interviews were conducted across the three audit points. In Rojka village, interviewees were the school principal, a teacher and a senior member of the village council (known as a panchayat). In Bawana, they were conducted with the ward councilor and president of the resident welfare association. In Jamia Nagar, a school principal and ward councilor were interviewed. ons for the interviews pertained to girls’ and women’s safety while using public transport and public spaces