Image may be NSFW.
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HarassMap aims to empower Egypt’s women in ways similar to the role played by Twitter, Facebook and the like in all the uprisings that together constitute the Arab Spring of 2011. To the purely social aspect, it adds the visual impact of cartography.I love it when cartography gets used for things like this.
HarassMap is a website that amasses reports of sexual harassment, texted in by phone [3], and then plots this data on a map. The data can be traced historically (via a timeline), divided by type (from touching and stalking to indecent exposure and rape), and parsed geographically.
At a glance, this location-based angle shows which neighbourhoods are safe, and which type of harassment is most likely where (and when, thanks to the timeline feature).
Rapes, for example, are reported in the city centre, in the northeast and in the south of Cairo. As the reporting is voluntary, requires knowledge of the project, and has no immediate impact, it is likely that the data presented by HarassMap is incomplete, This raises questions about its practical value as a guide to separate “go” from “no-go” areas.
But the mere fact that HarassMap is tallying up incidents of indecency (and worse) in itself is a signal to Egyptian society at large. By quantifying these cases, the website is empowering women to take action where previously their options were to give ‘less offense’ by staying in more, or veiling up more. It also lays the issue on the doorstep of the government - and the men - of Egypt, underscoring the necessity for a change in laws, and in attitudes.
