Conference paper
HarassMap is an award winning volunteerbased initiative founded in late 2010 that is working to end the social acceptability of sexual harassment in Egypt. Its mission is to engage all of Egyptian society to create an environment that does not tolerate sexual harassment through convincing bystanders and institutions to stand up to sexual harassment before or when they see it happen.
Harassmap crowdsources SMS and online reports of sexual harassment and assault and map them on an online map. These reports are used to show people the scale and nature of the problem and consequently to dispel myths about sexual harassment particularly the ones that excuse the harasser and blame the harassed – for example, ‘women’s attire provokes the harasser’, ‘late marriage and sexual frustration cause harassment’ or ‘sexual harassment is a product of poverty and illiteracy’. HarassMap uses crowdsourced data in addition to information collected offline in our multidisciplinary approach including online and offline campaigns, trainings, outreach activities and sexual harassment policies.
Through the IDRC Data Sharing Pilot HarassMap plans to share a substantial proportion of the data that has been collected. This raises significant ethical as well as technical issues. There are also substantial challenges that arise from fact that the project is rooted in an advocacy, rather than a data collection, program. To what extent does focusing on data sharing and management take away from the core mission of the project?