Recent and emerging technologies: Implications for women's safety

Abstract

New technologies have multiple implications for women's safety and well-being. As emerging scholarship begins to capture the scope and psychosocial impact of technology-related violence, the literature can become outpaced by the rapid development of technologies, some of which are designed to protect women. This exploratory study conducted a series of online searches to document and describe new technologies that can be used to enhance or reduce women's safety. A total 23,100 web-based articles, including but not limited to news stories and marketing materials, were identified and screened; 495 were reviewed and key constructs were coded. Two thirds of the articles addressed how technology could protect women and over half addressed perpetration; 18.8% addressed both. Protection focused largely on two technologies –mobile telephones (37.2%) and wearable devices (19.4%) – and sexual or physical assault (57.2%). Perpetration focused on mobile telephones (58.4%) and e-mail (43.9%) and cyber- or in-person stalking (63.2%). Women are advised to alter their online behavior; negligible attention is given to tech companies' responsibilities. Of the 98 products identified, most (80.2%) – typically a wearable device or app – were described as protecting women from sexual or physical assault. The products are marketed, with little evidence, as a way for women to protect themselves from assault. The introduction of corporate messaging and profit into the long-standing issue of violence against women is changing the means by which women can be abused and simultaneously and perhaps inadvertently is reinforcing norms that hold women accountable for their victimization.