Data storytelling, crowdmapping, and gender-based violence

ElsaMarie D'Silva Transcript

Kassia Binkowski
Hello, Sabrina.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Hi, Kassia

Kassia Binkowski
How are you?

Sabrina Merage Naim
I'm good. I'm good. I am super interested in hearing about the conversation you had?

Kassia Binkowski
Well, I'm going to take your mood down a notch. Because we have a history of talking about very hard things on this podcast. And we do our damnedest to humanize those issues and make them personal and give you a real story. And today's is no different. We're talking about gender violence. That's a hard, hard topic. But I had the privilege of talking with ElsaMarie D'Silva from India. She is a social innovator, and entrepreneur, and she is responsible for launching safe city, which is now a global platform being used to crowd map acts of gender violence around the world.

Sabrina Merage Naim
What does that mean, "crowd mapping acts of gender violence?"

Kassia Binkowski
So it means that survivors of gender violence 80%, in this case of whom are women, go on and share their stories. And they actually detail as much as they want to or feel comfortable, what happened to them and where and then the platform actually maps that in open source data that is accessible to communities so that communities are then empowered to take action, whether that's through legislation, whether that's through urban planning, whether that's through designing different spaces, to reduce violence, ultimately, is the goal, of course in their communities.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I'm curious how much of this is in collaboration with like local authorities, or maybe not at all.

Kassia Binkowski
So it's community specific, right. So it depends on what they want to do with the data and what action they want to take. The platform itself is about publicizing that information, making the data readily available, and actually creating the space for victims to report their stories. But it's certainly they're now working with police departments. They're working with local authorities in different regions. It's now the foremost crowd mapping platform for gender violence in the world. And it's from this woman, ElsaMarie, who herself lived through and witnessed domestic violence.

Sabrina Merage Naim
It's so hard, I'm sure it's so hard for her to come forward and to give such intimate details about what was happening in her home. But the fact that she was able to translate that into such activism that has now impacted people around the world. And really, what's what's frustrating about the history of domestic violence in this country, and I'm sure around the world is that survivors are so often not believed, right are so often kind of criticized or shamed, or cast aside. And so even the women and men who decide to go to their local authorities, and report the crime, very often nothing comes of it, which makes it a deterrent for others to do that. And I'm guessing my hope is that through ElsaMarie's, platform, the community to community aspect of it really encourages people to come forward in a different way than they might have if it was just go and report to the police. Is that true?

Kassia Binkowski
Absolutely. And it's all done anonymously, which I think is part of what kind of changes the game and makes it a safer space and a more accessible, approachable space for women specifically to show up and share these stories. I think one of the big takeaways for me is how privileged I have been to always feel safe, to feel safe in my relationships, to feel safe, where I live, and there is no question that there are things that we do differently as women that are second nature to us, because of the risk of gender violence in the world period. Like carrying my keys between my fingers, if I'm alone in a parking garage, right, like nobody taught me to do that. But I will always do that. Yeah. You know, but what we talk about is the rates of gender violence in India and how high they are. And, you know, the various forms of victimization that she's experienced. And I think you were just, you know, you were doing research for another project that showed how pervasive it is here in the States as well.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah, it is. And and we were talking about the incarceration system that we have here, where as many as 75% of the women who are incarcerated, have a history of domestic violence, and many of them are incarcerated because of that, that it becomes criminalized.

Kassia Binkowski
Right. The fact that those survivors are being criminalized, is mind boggling.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Right. The idea is that if you died from domestic violence, you are a victim. But if you survived, then you're a criminal. You know, and that is a really slippery slope to have to navigate and frankly, it makes me sad that on ElsaMarie's platform that they have to be anonymous or that it would make people feel safer to be anonymous, I certainly understand it because of this pervasive culture of shaming, and a stigmatizing of, of survivors. But, you know, you, you would hope in like an ideal society, that their communities would come around them and help them and get them through it. But unfortunately, that's not the case. And we live in a world where survivors would feel much more comfortable being anonymous, because they don't want to have to go through the after effects of what that culturally and societally means for them.

Kassia Binkowski
For sure. And I want to be really clear that, you know, we don't domestic violence and gender violence are not synonymous, right, like domestic violence is often one form of gender violence and safecity, this platform is gender violence at large. And so that could be random acts of sexual assault, you know, or is one of many things that gets reported. But both of these things, and this is something that we dive into. Both of these things are indicators of gender inequity at large, right, like higher rates of domestic violence, higher rates of gender violence, are both reflections of women being less valued than men. And we absolutely dive into that today. Take a listen.

Kassia Binkowski
ElsaMarie, thank you so much for joining us today.

ElsaMarie D'Silva
Thank you, Kassia my pleasure.

Kassia Binkowski
And for staying up so late in India on our behalf. So I want to start this conversation by reading a blurb from your personal website. It says, and I quote, "She wears many hats and has many diverse interests, social entrepreneurship, Social Development, Peace, aviation, sugarcraft, mental health, personal development, and coaching." Now, we could dive into all of those, some of those we will dive into. But before we go any further I have to know what is sugarcraft?

ElsaMarie D'Silva
I always get that question. And I think it surprises people. So sugarcraft is fondant, and the decorations that you make out of fondant, so you know, on cupcakes on wedding cakes, etc.

Kassia Binkowski
How did you get into that?

ElsaMarie D'Silva
You know, when I was in college, my mom made sure that I went for all kinds of artistic courses, you know, flower making and cake decoration, etc. And at that time, you know, I would always wonder like, you know why, but it was fun. So I went along with it. And subsequently, I ended up making all the decorations at my siblings, weddings, friends, weddings, and baked their cakes and for their children. And then, you know, I got into a corporate job. And for almost 20 years, I had stopped baking because I just didn't have the time. And you were working in aviation. Is that right? I was working in aviation. I had a long career between two of India's largest airlines. So I had completely, you know, disconnected with my hobbies. Because I was like really working very long hours. And aviation is a 24/7 job. So when you know everybody else has a weekend I was working, I've missed Christmas, Easter birthdays, New Years, etc. No time for sugarcraft. Yeah, no time for sugarcraft or fun. I mean, fun in that sense. With the larger family, you're stuck with your aviation family. So in the year 2012, the airline that I was working with had gone through a financial downturn. And you know, we would go to the office and it was really morose. So I was thinking how do I cheer people up? And because I had a lot of time on my hands. I said, let me start with cupcakes.

Kassia Binkowski
They do generally solve everything. I just have to, I mean, they make everything better.

ElsaMarie D'Silva
Yeah, they do. And I remember every week for several months I baked cupcakes. And for me, it was not just the baking, I get a lot of joy with the decorations, you know. So the harder the better, the more difficult and intricate they are the better because I like a challenge. And so from the cupcakes people then said, Do you think you can bake a birthday cake for my child? And you know, we have our anniversary? And I would say okay, and then because I had a lot of time on my hands at that point. So I would go through YouTube and look at other people's creations and then try to replicate or they would give me a design, you know, and I would try and replicate. And so I think I did a lot of baking. And when the airline shut down. I was I wanted to take a sabbatical and figure out what's next. So before I launched or parallelly to when I launched safecity, I actually even consider opening up a bakery.

Kassia Binkowski
I love it. Like the point, that pivot point where your life could have gone to radically different directions, like I'm going to work towards solving gender violence, or I'm going to make cupcakes. Yeah. So ElsaMarie, I have to pause you for a second, because you said that your mother pushed you into art classes and kind of was always, you know, nurturing that side of you. Why? What were her expectations? What were her goals for her daughter?

ElsaMarie D'Silva
you know, my mom is a working mom. And I say this because not everybody, my age had a working mom. And we had a situation of domestic violence, were at a point, you know, my mom and dad separated, and my mom was literally caring for us. Because she was a working mom, she was financially independent. And she could support us. But I also feel that my mom has always supplemented her income, she was a teacher. So teachers don't get paid much in India, I think they don't get paid much in most parts of the world, unfortunately. She would supplement her income with, you know, baking and cookery classes and all kinds of things on the side, you know, she would make easter eggs and Christmas sweets and take orders and stuff. So I think she was just trying in her own way to ensure that we had multiple skills where, you know, if there was a situation, at any point in our lives, we could fend for ourselves and always have something to back us up. I think it was that we've never really discussed it. But, you know, I think these are life skills I keep I have three young nieces and they crib you know, when their parents send them for, you know, extracurricular classes. Because sometimes it does get a bit too much, right. But then I tell them, you know, what, just learn just take in as much you never know when it's going to, you know, help you. And they said, Okay, how is piano gonna help. And I said, you know, you can always entertain people with a tune at a party, you know, think about that. And so, it's not always about making money, but it's also about, you know, bringing in that little creativity to your day to day life. So for example, I know that I can always, wherever I go in the world, teach children how to make cupcake toppers, for example.

Kassia Binkowski
I love that I love because I think it's so easy. And all too often, you know, those artistic pursuits are brushed off as kind of not necessary, or frivolous, or certainly not, you know, an investment in your future. But your mom was looking at it through this lens of like, well, let's keep options open. Right? Like, let's give you more tools in your tool belt. You know, she was a working mom, a single mom, and she saw the value in that. That's amazing.

ElsaMarie D'Silva
Yeah. And also, it's a conversation starter you know, you find common ground with people, a lot of people love cakes.

Kassia Binkowski
You talk about sugarcraft on podcasts.

ElsaMarie D'Silva
I know it's like a good 15 minutes into the podcast, we're still talking about it.

Kassia Binkowski
Let's go back to 2012. So the airlines go under, you have a little bit more time on your hands. You're considering new career paths? Why gender violence?

ElsaMarie D'Silva
When I look back, I realized that it was a few years before 2012 That I was already searching for my purpose. And I was trying to think okay, how, what do I do? How do I give back? Also, as I mentioned, when we were growing up, we experienced domestic violence, I saw firsthand the impact of violence within the home. And, you know, my mom was not the only one. I know so many families who experienced the same but because maybe the mother was not a working mother. She didn't have many options. They had to suffer in silence, etc.

Kassia Binkowski
In what ways did witnessing your parents relationship and the domestic violence between them, in what ways did that shape and scar you? Were there conversations that you had with your mother about it was it kind of brushed under the rug? I mean, I'd be if you're willing and open I'd love for you to take us back to that experience.

ElsaMarie D'Silva
I don't think it was brushed under the rug because we left home twice. And my mom and my two siblings and I we walked out in the middle of the night one night and for three months we stayed away. The second time we when we left home again it was overnight and we stayed away for four years. You know so you can It's not something that you brush under the rug, right? But I think, you know, we don't talk enough about it, we don't. And I'm here I'm talking about what 30, you know, 30 years ago where it wasn't normal for, you know, families to openly break up. And like people would pretend that they had a happy, happy family. And it was in very rare cases that you actually walked away. So at that point, observing, because I'm the eldest, I kind of supported my mother through this process. I think I was her emotional crutch, if you will. But I also noticed that over a period of time that there were so many other women experiencing similar, similar situations at home, but didn't have the means to leave that violent relationship. So I had promised myself that I would never be in a situation like that. So I focused on my financial independence. And I also promised myself that at some point, I do want to do something for women like that, you know, because I knew the resources were very limited. For my mother itself, there were very limited resources, we were just lucky that our extended family supported us.

Kassia Binkowski
So fast forward to 2012, you have the opportunity, and you decide to do what

ElsaMarie D'Silva
so I was thinking, Now, how do I give back right? Because I have the time I'm financially independent. I am in a space where I feel I'm ready. But where do you start? So I was part of an international program with the Swedish Institute. And that got me thinking about CSR, sustainability and business and we had to do a project. So the project that I was really thinking about was actually supporting women within their careers. You know, like a mentorship program, which subsequently, Sheryl Sandberg came up with Lean In, but at that time, nobody was talking about it. So I started to think about that. But then in December 2012, the airline had shut down. So there was no company to implement this project that I had thought of. And we had this horrific incident of Jyoti Singh being gang raped on a bus in Delhi. I call it our George Floyd moment, because it was an inflection point where everybody was outraged. The incident itself was extremely brutal and horrific.

Kassia Binkowski
What can you tell our audience about that incident? Who might not be aware?

ElsaMarie D'Silva
Yeah, so this young girl, about 24 years old, a physiotherapy student in Delhi had gone to watch the Life of Pi. And she had gone with a male friend, and they had finished watching the movie around 8pm, which is not late in the night. It was not even supposedly a dangerous place in Delhi, they were returning home and they chose to get onto a bus, which had a few people on it. Now, Delhi has this strange system of transport where you have the formal state transport buses, but you also have private buses. So this was a private bus and she thought it you know, there were people on the bus, so obviously, they got onto that bus. But what as it turned out, the people on the bus were part of a gang. And they, you know, obviously we're looking to, you know, I don't know what they were doing. But they felt that why is this woman with a male friend, and that was unacceptable. So they beat him up, tied him up, and they went on to gang rape, Jyoti Singh and then not only that they inserted metal rods into her body, pulled out her innards, and then threw her and her friend out on the street, leaving them to die. She didn't die immediately. And that, you know, that's how we all got to hear about the story, but then subsequently, she died. So this whole situation started this conversation in the media on Jyoti saying everywhere you went in public and private circles, we were all horrified about it and talking about it, it actually led to, you know, protests marches and there was curfew in Delhi as well. Now at that time, I wanted to do something concrete so friends of mine and you know, friends and myself, we decided to launch safecity, the crowd map,

Kassia Binkowski
break it down for us. I mean, tell us a little bit more about what safecity does how it works.

ElsaMarie D'Silva
Sure. So at the Swedish program that I was talking about, we had also heard about harass map Egypt, where they will crowd mapping stories of sexual violence in public spaces, crowd mapping is you crowdsource you invite the public to share their experiences and all of this plotted on a map. So at that time when we heard about it, we said, oh, that's a cool idea, but not necessarily for India. However, when Jyoti Singh was gang raped, and this whole incident occurred, we felt, you know, this was the time to launch it. And so that's what we did. And, you know, we launched it as safecity, we invited people to share their stories, because everyone started to talk about their own stories, we were all emotionally triggered, I was reminded of my own experiences of being groped on a train, witnessing masturbation on a public bus, being catcalled on the streets being stalked on the streets, and also sexual harassment at the workplace. So but until then, we have never actually made any complaint.

Kassia Binkowski
So ElsaMarie, I have to pause you for a second because you shared the story about the domestic violence in your home. And then you're sharing the story about the gang rape and it being a catalyst for kind of this movement, and everyone's concern and awareness around gender violence. And then you went on to just list several instances that you experienced personally, from groping to witnessing public masturbation to cat calling. How normal is that? Right now, for women in India? What is the landscape look like at large, I mean, the fact that you could just rattle those off as common occurrences is horrifying.

ElsaMarie D'Silva
Absolutely, Kassia. And we don't even talk about it. So the statistics globally is that one in three women experienced some form of sexual assault at least once in their lifetime. And 80% never reported officially or, you know, speak up about it. Now in India, that's a global average. So in India, obviously, the numbers are much higher, according to me and the trainings that we've done speaking to 1000s of women over the years, I would say it's close to 95%. Wow, you're right. It's so normalized. It's so part of your daily routine that often you don't even recognize that it's incorrect. It's wrong. And under Indian law, it is actually a crime.

Kassia Binkowski
I want to be really clear here, like, are we talking about the cat calling? Or are we talking about the actual physical assaults?

ElsaMarie D'Silva
All! Under Indian law catcalling. So there's something called offending the modesty of a woman. So playing obscene songs, you know, making obscene noises when you're passing by all of this would qualify under Indian Penal Code as offending the modesty of a woman. But there's also, you know, stalking, groping, touching. All of this is a crime under Indian law, whether it's in the physical world or in the virtual world.

Kassia Binkowski
And you're telling me that, that your estimates suggest that 95% of Indian women experienced this in their lifetime?

ElsaMarie D'Silva
Absolutely. It's just that we don't think that, you know, we can we have the right to complain, we don't, we don't know that we have the right to speak up. They're socially conditioned to not challenge it. And to be honest, I don't think the men even realize that what they're doing is a crime under Indian law, because if you look at the Bollywood films, they all promote all of this, you know, they promote that the hero is a hero because he stalks the women. She says no at the start of the movie, but because he persists and stalks her throughout. At the end, she says yes. So what message are you trying to convey? That, you know, no is yes? And you can get that no to change to a yes, if you're persistent enough.

Kassia Binkowski
Wow. I read in preparation for this conversation that data from the government's National Crime Records Bureau suggests that a woman is raped every 15 minutes in India. Is that correct?

ElsaMarie D'Silva
And that is under reported. So that is what has been reported to the police. There's a lot that's not being reported.

Kassia Binkowski
Which let's be clear, is true of gender violence around the world, right, like all so many of these issues that are too taboo to talk about, to generally safe to assume that numbers are underreported.

ElsaMarie D'Silva
Also, we are a population of 1.2 billion, not that I'm condoning it, but what I'm trying to say is that without the data, it's very hard to solve the problem. So that is the gap that I identified and I decided to work on you know, encouraging people to anonymously share their stories documenting it in a structured manner where we capture what has happened to you where the date and time and the category and then trying to make sense of it from a location perspective, and then bringing in the right people to think about it. So it's the data itself is available, open source, that means you can go to our website, look at the map, and also look at all the trends and patterns that are appearing based on location or category, or time of day. And that helps you think about your role in society as a citizen, as a resident of that community. What do you want to do about it?

Kassia Binkowski
I want to talk a little bit more about the platform itself. So what you're saying is that this is it's a crowd mapping platform where any individual can report share their story about specifically about gender violence, is that correct? Yes. That story then gets mapped across India, along with the data points of 1000s of other stories that have been shared. Is that true?

ElsaMarie D'Silva
That's true. So it's not only for India, it's a global application.

Kassia Binkowski
That's what I was going to say now. Because since launching in 2012, it has now become the largest crowd map on the issue in India and abroad.

ElsaMarie D'Silva
Yes, so we have partners in different countries, specifically, we have another large data set in Kenya, followed by Nepal, Cameroon, but we have other countries like Trinidad and Tobago, Malaysia, Nigeria, our latest countries, Croatia this month.

Kassia Binkowski
That's amazing. Congratulations. Give us some more specific examples about how the platform is being used. Because on the one hand, I hear you say that until you have enough data, you can't possibly solve some of these issues. On the other hand, as you know, as a woman who could log on and share a story, it also feels a little bit inactive. You know, it feels a little bit passive as if like, Well, great. So now it's like a point on a map. But then what? So give us some examples of how this has actually been used and what the data is driving towards.

ElsaMarie D'Silva
So multiple things. So first of all, do you use peer review apps like TripAdvisor?

Kassia Binkowski
Absolutely.

ElsaMarie D'Silva
Or Yelp, you know, so we are using these peer review apps or peer rating apps all the time. That means we rate our Uber drivers, we look at what our friends have said, before we read a book on Goodreads. You know, we also even check the movie reviews, we won't waste three hours of our time or two hours of our time watching a movie, right? But when it comes to our experiences of sexual and gender based violence, we don't talk about it. And this is not an India issue alone. It's a global issue. We don't talk about it. So for example, how am I going to know if I come to your country? What are the safe spots? Or what are what are women experiencing over there. Similarly, if you come to India, you want to come and visit and you want to be safe, but you you don't know what I'm experiencing. Right? So by documenting, so, the application itself serves many purposes. So for the survivor, it's a place to document the experience. Now, I say the documenting is really important, because if you didn't document it, in effect, there is no proof it ever happened. It's also cathartic. We have women who and not just women, men also report people write in, sometimes just one word harassed. But sometimes they even write 1000 word essay on that experience. That means they want somebody to hear them out, you know, so it serves that purpose. Second is, as survivors, we want to know that we are not alone. There are others. And we also want to know how did they handle it? So often, people in their essays or in that free text field, they actually share what they did. And you can learn a lot from people's experiences. And third is the information. So yes, you're contributing, you're one story. But in that data set, when you look at the pattern and trend, you will see a recurring thing appearing in that particular location that can serve as an early warning for you. Okay, if I'm going to this place, and I have no choice, it's not about avoiding that place, but it's about navigating that space with full knowledge as to what might happen and being ready with your strategies like the toolkit, or toolbox of responses that are possible. In such situations. You know, we as human beings respond in three ways. We either freeze, we flee or we fight back, often we freeze and then we think it's not an appropriate emotional response. That's not true. It is and emotional, it's an appropriate response. But could we? Could we have multiple responses? Could we have that pepper spray in our bag handy if we know that we are going to be groped? Or can we be faster and the way we challenge that perpetrator? So one of our interns, she actually got assaulted on her campus. And she wrote to me, and she said, you know, normally I would have, you know, just frozen on the spot. But I, it took me nine seconds to respond, and I'm so glad, but then it was only possible because I was working with safecity. And you know, I was now very actively thinking about my responses. So that is from a survivor that allows a community now you have the information to say, Okay, this kind of crime is happening in my residential area outside my children's school or outside my office building? Am I How does that make me feel? Am I okay with it? Can I use this information to bring in people to make that change happen? What is the change I want to make happen?

Kassia Binkowski
So today safecity, it's a huge data set of 40,000 stories from victims, I think, close to 90% are from women, across both rural and urban areas. I hear you saying that making this data available to communities allows them to take action empowers them, you know, to collaborate with authorities. That all makes sense to me. So what I really want to dive into is, the question of whether or not a platform like safecity places the burden on women to be the solution rather than men. It places the burden on women to like you said, be prepared, if they're going to a high risk area to carry the pepper spray to react more quickly, you know, to react in a matter of seconds to an assault, how much does that place the burden and the onus on women to protect themselves as opposed to driving the solution forward with men?

ElsaMarie D'Silva
Actually, I don't think the burden is on women, I think the burden is on the community to show up. So the way our application and our methodology is, we are asking people to look at the map and say, Are they okay with this kind of, you know, incidents occurring in their community, and what is their role, and therefore, we invite men to be part of the solution, they can no longer ignore it, because the data is staring them in their face. And, you know, I'm proud to say that all our interventions on the ground have at least 50% or more men and young boys participating in it. And they can then be peer educators, you can give them the skills to be, you know, bystanders and intervene because they ask in public spaces all the time, right. As for women, I think this application shows them that they're not alone. And it gives them an outlet to document it, but it doesn't place the onus on them for their safety, but rather, they can take it to the community and say, How are you, you know, allowing this to happen, so it helps them to drive accountability for their safety.

Kassia Binkowski
As somebody who witnessed domestic violence firsthand and is now you know, has built and is leading the charge here with safecity, what roles do men play in reducing gender violence at large?

ElsaMarie D'Silva
See, I feel, you know, men play a huge role. Yes, I am a survivor of domestic violence, but at the same time, I don't take the approach that, you know, we, you know, we have to alienate men. I feel that even the work that we do has a transformational justice lens, where we meet people halfway, we share the data and we say, How is this, you know, okay? And are you even aware that what you're doing is harmful? And how can we change this? How can we help you change this? So we can, we can stop that reform, you know, because it's not in our interest, only blame men, or put everyone in jail according to Indian law, all of this, you know, men can be jailed, but there's not enough have space in the jails to accommodate all those perpetrators, right? So, so that's not the solution, the solution is making them aware that it is harmful. It's limiting to, you know, the other half. And that is just not right. So but when there's silence, and nobody's challenging them, nobody's talking about it, it's actually allowing them to get away with it.

Kassia Binkowski
If we've learned anything about the complexity of these issues, gender violence among them, it's that there's no, there's no silver bullet, I mean, certainly the data mapping that you're doing is tremendous. But I imagine there are probably still holes and who you can reach and how you can help. I'm curious kind of how your goals have evolved, and what you're doing to make the platform even more accessible?

ElsaMarie D'Silva
So initially, it was just a web application. And it was just meant to be a documentation site. Over the years, it's expanded to the mobile apps as well, several languages, partnerships on the ground partnerships of all kinds. And also, you know, the use of the data in community based interventions, we work with grassroots organizations who have a community presence, we worked with residential associations, you know, where they are concerned about their neighborhood, we worked with educational institutions are helping the administration as well as teachers to think about their role, because we found that young people, they don't go to their parents with their incidents and experiences, because the first thing that most parents do is limit their movements limit their, you know, their mobility, but so they go to a friend, or they go to a teacher, so equipping them with the right skills with the right knowledge on how to respond to these kinds of crimes is very important. Now, we have also, you know, we are working with the police, we share the data dashboards with them with five different police forces. We work with the Western railways in Mumbai, but we are also now getting into urban planning and, you know, related partnerships.

Kassia Binkowski
So speaking of urban planning, and kind of Designing Spaces, is there any kind of risk of inadvertently marking or mapping poor areas as more unsafe? Is there any risk of kind of inadvertently isolating either areas or populations? You know, I'm thinking of rural and more impoverished communities without connectivity, you know, without smartphone access? Is there any risk of kind of inadvertently isolating either people or places via a data mapping tool like this?

ElsaMarie D'Silva
So we work across the economic spectrum? So our data comes from all communities. So therefore, you will see it in high end neighborhoods as well as in low income? You will see it across transportation hubs, you know, so I won't say that, you know, we brand the space as unsafe, of course, there might be a higher number of reports from those spaces, but I would encourage people to think about, okay, what can we make that how can we make that better? So to give you an example, when we were in Kibera, Nairobi, Kibera is an informal settlement. And my partner, Jane Onyango, she has done a brilliant job. Initially, she was collecting all these little experiences through notes and boxes, and we helped her digitize it and helped her look at it as clusters and patterns and trends in the data. When we approached the Nairobi Urban Planning Commission, they said we can make a space positive. I said, How will you do that and they said, we'll put lighting we'll painted we'll put flowerpots we'll create an activity there so that there is, you know, positive interactions. So rather than, you know, branding a space as unsafe, you can change it to make it safe for everyone, you know, and that's what I would love for anyone using our application.

Kassia Binkowski
You have been so widely recognized for your work with safety Eat, you know and more recently now with with red dot foundation you've been on BBC Hindi's 100 Women list, Yale World Fellow, Global Leadership Award by Vital Voices like the list goes on and on the work you are doing is incredible. I'm curious, what keeps you up at night now? What is the next challenge that you're working on? What is the thing that really excites you?

ElsaMarie D'Silva
I don't think I've solved the current challenge. So, you know, I would love for it to be to address it in my lifetime to make sure that it ends in my lifetime. I don't think that's going to happen, unfortunately. So yeah, so for me, what keeps me up, is making the most out of this platform that I have to ensure that as many people are aware of their rights about this kind of violence, feel comfortable talking about it, because it's not easy talking about it. And really, I think the cause that I have deserves it.

Kassia Binkowski
So two questions for you say, one is, you would love to see this. And in your lifetime, you're not particularly optimistic about that. But that doesn't, doesn't seem to slow you down. What needs to happen for gender violence to end, especially in a country like India, where the rates are so incredibly high?

ElsaMarie D'Silva
I think men have to take ownership, men have to really decide that this is not behavior that they will tolerate amongst their peers, and that it has to end. And women I feel have to build up the courage to speak up and challenge it. And you know, it can be solved. The thing is that it's not your fault. It's not your fault, there is a huge community of support. But unless you speak up and ask for help, nobody will know that you need help, you know, so yeah, I think on both sides, we have to do our bit. We have the laws, we have the you know, infrastructure, but it's not being used. So we need to make that work as well for us hold the powers that be accountable.

Kassia Binkowski
So what I'm hearing you say is, it's actually more of a cultural shift. That is, you know, policy reformation. Which leads me to this question about whether or not gender violence is a sort of indicator for gender inequity in a country? What is the relationship between those two things?

ElsaMarie D'Silva
So under our Constitution, for example, we are supposed to be guaranteed the right to equality, the right to dignity, the right to live our lives in the way that we wish to live it right. But in reality, that's not true. And that's because of a patriarchal mindset that favors males over females. And this is seen right from, you know, the womb to your debt. And the femicide rates in India are extremely high. That means even before you're born, a lot of children, female children are aborted. A lot of female children are killed. And then of course, at every stage in your life, you experience some form of violence or the other, right or leading to inequity. And now the latest is the women dropping out of the formal labor force. So we are at the lowest ever. The men returning to the workforce has reached the pre COVID levels, but the Indian women in the workforce is at an all time low. So all of these are indicators that there is no preference for the men in the country. And therefore violence is very easily perpetrated because you're seen as property, you're objectified. So you're not seen as a person you're not seen as an equal, you're seen as something that can be taken advantage of, you know,

Kassia Binkowski
If all of these things point to women being valued less than men, what gives you hope? What keeps you you know, working on this issue? What keeps you optimistic, that you know, the data mapping is going to drive towards solutions? What gives you hope that feminism has a fighting chance?

ElsaMarie D'Silva
Because there are amazing women and men out there who are making the change happen, and I know that I live an amazing life and that is possible because of my ecosystem. You know, so and I try to show through my own life and my choices that, you know, an alternative as possible. So you don't really have to give into societal expectation, and that you can live life of your own choosing in every sense of the way. So, so yeah, so what gives me hope is that it is possible, if you don't fight hard enough, you will never know, right. And I have heard so many stories of women of young girls saying that they feel confident accessing the city further from their home, going out later at night, making choices that they otherwise wouldn't have. And you know, every time you challenge the system, and you win, it gives you further confidence to take it a step further, you know, so, like, say young girls who were only allowed to study up to grade 10. They negotiated till grade 12, then grade, you know, then the entire graduation, they have aspirations, young girls have aspirations of being astronauts and scientists and doctors and, you know, in the army and police, women, etc. But their families probably just want them to get married, you know, so as soon as they are of marriageable age or even less, they'll get them married off, because their responsibility ends. But all and all of this is interlinked, right? So every time you challenge you say, "No, you know, why is my brother being treated differently from me? Why are you saying that I can't step out of the house because it's unsafe for me? Make it safe for me so that I can be out there." Right? And every time you challenge it, you win a little bit of freedom, and then it just is it something that can't be turned back. You know, it's like once you taste freedom, you know what is possible.

Sabrina Merage Naim
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