Presentation for the Greater Sydney Commission's Women's Charter Community of Practice Webinar, 11th June 2020. In this talk, I generated overarching findings or key themes from three projects that examine women's mobilities and their safety concerns in different contexts - during travel, when dating, on public transport, and within the home. The key themes focus on techno-solutionism and the rise of an 'app for that culture' where digital innovations are expected to address long standing systemic issues such as gender inequality and men's violence towards women. Another key theme is that new technologies often require women to rework their safety strategies and the ways in which they keep themselves safe during their everyday lives. Technologies that create additional labour for women, or responsibility them for their own safety might be avoided if women were involved in the design and development of new technologies from beginning to end. What is also necessary is collective, connected action to shift the status of women in society through social movements that address gender justice head on. Technology has an important role to play in creating safer cities for women, but that technology must be integrated and embedded well and with women at the centre of its design.

1. Technological innovation,
women’s safety and
equitable mobilities
Dr Jenna Condie
Senior Lecturer in Digital Research
and Online Social Analysis
E: j.condie@westernsydney.edu.au
Flickr: Ahmad Hammoud (CC BY 2.0)

2. Evaluating technologies for women’s safety and new mobilities
Flickr: Alexander KesselaarFlickr: Alex Proimos
Mobile dating
practices in
the Sydney
region
Tinder
Tourism
Mobile ICTs,
gender &
women’s safety
on public
transport

3. Flickr: Sacha Fernandez
Key themes
1. Digital geographies of
fear
2. Men’s violence ignored
3. Women’s safety
strategies
4. Cybersecurity
weaknesses
5. Trade privacy for safety
6. Techno-solutionism
7. Paternalistic
technologies
8. Prominence of personal
safety apps
9. Lack of funding
10.Need feminist UX
research / design
justice