Spin the globe to India and you’ll see it’s lit up like Diwali: the #MeToo movement is rising, and – like its US predecessor – it is largely being played out on social media, with very real consequences for well-known public figures. The campaign is not confined to large cities; among the top areas searching the term are small towns across India.

This moment has been a long time coming. The public accounts of violence shared by women using the #MeToo hashtag stretch back to memories of growing up, entering the workforce, walking on the streets, using public transport and other settings typically encountered throughout the course of life.

Recently, the Indian state attempted to use smart technologies to deliver safe cities for women. The strategies used to address both online and offline violence include installing surveillance systems, such as CCTV cameras, facial recognition, number plate recognition and social media monitoring. What makes these strategies “smart” is that they are integrated into centralised police command and control centres, to monitor and increase response rates.

Yet one of the flagship smart safety apps, Himmat – launched by Delhi police in 2013 to enable women to alert police control centres of the location of violent incidents in real-time – had only 30,000 users in a city of 19 million, and was declared a failure by a parliamentary panel in 2018.

A right to technology

Clearly, technology has divergent outcomes: it can escalate a global movement for gender justice, but it cannot be taken as a panacea for deep-rooted social problems such as violence against women. This raises further questions about who has access to technology, and how it can be used to document violence.

In India, these questions are significant because 26 per cent of the population has access to the internet, compared with the US and the UK where it is 88 per cent and 90 per cent respectively. The demographic of people who use the internet is also skewed in terms of age, gender and geography: 75 per cent of mobile internet users in India are aged 20 to 30, while only 5 per cent are over the age of 35. What’s more, 89 per cent of mobile internet users are male, and only 27 per cent live in smaller cities.

A recent study highlighted that although more people of different ages and incomes are starting to use mobile phones across India, there are still barriers to access: currently, only 45 per cent of people in lower income groups have a mobile phone.

Working women often use mobile phones that belong to male household members, and can be used to monitor their movements. The lower purchasing power of these families means they mainly have access to older models bought secondhand, with little capacity to download data-intensive apps and other web content.

When they do use the internet, working class women often do so for practical purposes – searching for employment, transport options, childcare and so on. Mobile phones themselves can even be seen as harmful mediums of violence against women, by means of abusive texts or cyberstalking – as #MeToo has shown.

20 best pictures of India celebrations following gay sex court ruling Show all 20 1 /20 20 best pictures of India celebrations following gay sex court ruling 20 best pictures of India celebrations following gay sex court ruling Someone celebrates underneath a rainbow-coloured flag as the Supreme Court in India rules that gay sex is longer a crime. AFP/Getty Images 20 best pictures of India celebrations following gay sex court ruling People celebrate in the street following the ruling. The Chief Justice of India stated that the outlawing of gay sex had been "irrational, arbitrary and indefensible". AFP/Getty Images 20 best pictures of India celebrations following gay sex court ruling Up until now, gay sex in India had been punishable by up to 10 years in prison under Section 377 of the Indian constitution. AFP/Getty 20 best pictures of India celebrations following gay sex court ruling The law was originally imposed during the Victorian era while India was still under the rule of the British Empire. AFP/Getty Images 20 best pictures of India celebrations following gay sex court ruling "Any consensual sexual relationship between two consenting adults - homosexuals, heterosexuals or lesbians - cannot be said to be unconstitutional," said Dipak Misra, Chief Justice of India. AFP/Getty Images 20 best pictures of India celebrations following gay sex court ruling Members and supporters of the LGBT+ community in India were overjoyed by the decision, with the celebrations awash with rainbow-coloured paraphernalia. AFP/Getty Images 20 best pictures of India celebrations following gay sex court ruling "They have opened the door to discussing rights," Anjali Gopalan, founder of the Naz Foundation charity that has been fighting against Section 377 told The Independent. "They have apologised to the gay community, and they have said copies of the judgement will be handed to every police station. It is the best judgement we could have hoped for." AFP/Getty Images 20 best pictures of India celebrations following gay sex court ruling People were dancing and smiling as the Supreme Court's ruling was announced. AFP/Getty Images 20 best pictures of India celebrations following gay sex court ruling Bismaya, an activist with the Delhi brand of LGBT+ advocacy group Impulse, told The Independent: "I'm so happy, it's overwhelming. I cried when we heard the news. I'm gay and I'm not afraid of that. It's something I used to say, but now for the first time I have the legal backing." AFP/Getty Images 20 best pictures of India celebrations following gay sex court ruling The rain did little to dampen people's spirits as they celebrated the historic ruling in New Delhi. AFP/Getty Images 20 best pictures of India celebrations following gay sex court ruling A woman exclaims with joy as she holds hands with others on the day of the ruling. AFP/Getty Images 20 best pictures of India celebrations following gay sex court ruling Members of the LGBT+ community in India hold a placard reading "Love is genderless" while standing outside the Supreme Court in New Delhi. AFP/Getty Images 20 best pictures of India celebrations following gay sex court ruling The celebrations in India were bright, colourful and full of happiness. AFP/Getty Images 20 best pictures of India celebrations following gay sex court ruling Bismaya, activist for LGBT+ advocacy group Impulse, said: "It's great for me but it's also a great day for the whole of India. Acceptance in wider society will take time, because we cannot expect change overnight. It has been a battle for two decades for this judgement. If now we get full acceptance in a couple of years, that would be great." AFP/Getty Images 20 best pictures of India celebrations following gay sex court ruling Members and supporters of the LGBT+ community in member celebrate the landmark ruling in Siliguri with a cake and confetti. AFP/Getty Images 20 best pictures of India celebrations following gay sex court ruling People join in the jubilant festivities in Kolkata. AFP/Getty Images 20 best pictures of India celebrations following gay sex court ruling A woman cries with happiness in Chennai as the ruling made by the Supreme Court in India is announced. AFP/Getty Images 20 best pictures of India celebrations following gay sex court ruling The celebrations in Kolkata were full of happiness and energy. AFP/Getty Images 20 best pictures of India celebrations following gay sex court ruling A group of people stand in heavy rainfall in New Delhi as they celebrate the outlawing of the outdated ban on gay sex in India. AFP/Getty Images 20 best pictures of India celebrations following gay sex court ruling The movement to reconsider Section 377 started in 2001 with a legal challenge made to the Delhi High Court from the Naz Foundation. AFP/Getty Images

Speak, witness, curate

We three academics are part of a larger group of researchers and social organisations, who have been examining the links between access to digital technology, urban infrastructure and violence against women in India, as well as considering how women themselves speak about and document these connected issues.

Based on our research, we see the right to technology as a key means of fighting gender injustice, in all its forms, in the 21st century. A right to technology means developing women’s capacity to speak about violence. More than simply giving women the freedom to speak via mobile phones, a right to technology would expand their use of safety apps and global hashtags to include text messages, pictures and videos shared between private support groups.

It also means developing the potential of low-cost, lightweight mobile technologies to enable women to speak of violence, giving them the confidence to locate their violence – in the home, street, bus, workplace – and name its perpetrators, whether that’s family members, colleagues, friends. The purpose of this speech? To be believed, to not be shamed, to remove their perpetrator or to claim justice through the courts.

A right to technology is also about developing a society’s capacity to witness violence through technology. This means expanding how violence is seen and heard, from the #MeToo hashtags to the range of social, legal, policy and infrastructural blind spots that enable violence to continue on an everyday basis and be perceived as normal.

It means seeing violence in the absence of safe spaces, lack of access to safe and reliable public transport, safe drinking water or public toilets. It means perceiving violence in stories of everyday struggles with mobility, unemployment and education. It means witnessing violence in women’s inability to speak without a #MeToo movement, or even despite a #MeToo movement.

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A right to technology also means building women’s capacity to curate violence through a variety of media. This means women can actively select and present a variety of personal stories of violence in their daily lives – monsoon rain floods, waiting for public transport, moments of panic in buses filled with men and restrictions on mobility.

The maps and pictures shared by women living in the urban margins show the mundane ways in which violence against women and other forms of injustice are interwoven in their everyday lives. This bottom-up viewpoint disrupts the Google worldview of #MeToo trends, seen from a global perspective, and allows women who are too often overlooked and excluded from urban technology to curate their experiences of violence, within or without the #MeToo movement.