India records a crime against a woman every 71 seconds. The answer cannot be a locked gate. Here is what building safety actually looks like, and who is already doing it.
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Kamna Hazrati, Founder, AndPurpose
71
seconds. One crime against a woman registered in India every 71 seconds.
The number behind the headlines
An analysis of India’s 2024 crime data shows one crime against a woman registered every 71 seconds. That is about how long it takes to read this section. And registered crime is only part of the picture, because most violence never reaches a police register.
Recent weeks in Delhi made the number impossible to ignore. A seventeen-year-old was gang-raped in a public park by men posing as policemen. The Supreme Court described the pattern as a systematic failure. Young women took to the streets night after night, asking to be heard.
The response: a lock
What came back was parks closed after sunset. It is a familiar message: leave early, stay in, text when you reach. It treats women’s presence in public space as the problem, rather than the failures that make that space dangerous.
If safety depends on women disappearing from public life, it is not safety. It is a curfew with a better name.
Home is not the safe place
“Stay home” assumes home is safe. The data says otherwise. The largest single category of crime recorded against Indian women is cruelty within the family, with over 1.2 lakh cases last year, and nearly one in three married women reports spousal violence.
Add the bus, the street, the park and the workplace, and almost every space carries some risk. When that is true, “stay home” is not advice. It is the absence of a plan.
Key takeaway: Restricting where women can go does not remove danger. It moves women away from it and leaves the cause untouched.
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The solutions already exist
Safety can be built. Vienna spent about twenty-five years redesigning lighting, sightlines, pavements and housing so that people of every gender could use the city at any hour. When its parks felt unsafe for girls, it redesigned the parks. Ours got locked.
Safety rests on four things: design, data, infrastructure and power. All four can be built, and Indian organisations are already building each one.
Design
Can people see and be seen?
- Lighting, clear sightlines and busy edges make spaces self-policing.
- Safetipin works on safety data for public spaces, which helps planners decide where to fix lighting and layout first.
Data
Do we know where harm happens?
- Safecity maps anonymous reports of harassment so patterns become visible.
- Gender Lab, Chennai used that data to identify harassment zones at bus stops.
Infrastructure
Do services reach women safely?
- Water, sanitation and transport shape how much time and risk women carry each day.
- WaterAid India puts women in charge of planning and monitoring these services.
Power
Who decides, and who is heard?
- Safety lasts when women and girls are decision-makers and know their rights.
- Sayfty, Girl Up, Akshara Centre, Jagori, Sakshi, HelpSakhi and Voice 4 work on awareness, advocacy and support.
10 Organisations solving for Gender Safety in India
The data layer: why anonymous reporting matters
Safecity, by Red Dot Foundation, is the reporting layer our formal system is missing. Its platform collects anonymous reports of sexual harassment and abuse and maps them, so a pattern at one bus stop or one lane becomes visible to communities and police. In a country where under-reporting hides most of the violence, anonymous data is not a workaround. It is the bridge to the truth. Red Dot is ECOSOC-accredited at the United Nations.
Data into action: Gender Lab, Chennai
Gender Lab runs with Safecity and the city. It identified bus stops that were harassment zones, which started work on safer public transport. The World Bank also ran a gender mobility assessment and safety audit in Tondiarpet, north Chennai. It is a strong case study of a city government actually using the data.
Safety begins where services end: WaterAid India
Through the Women + Water Collaborative in Bihar, across Aurangabad, Bhagalpur, Buxar and Madhubani, 1,309 women have moved from being users of water and sanitation services to being their planners, monitors and decision-makers, connected to Panchayats, Jeevika and SHGs. WASH is also a question of women’s time, dignity, voice, safety and decision-making power.
Knowing your rights: Sayfty
Dr. Shruti Kapoor started Sayfty after the 2012 case to give women and girls the knowledge and confidence to speak up for their safety. It works on education and awareness rather than data, which makes it a good complement to the mapping work above.
Safetipin
Focus: Design and data
What it does: Safetipin turns a qualitative question, “does this place feel safe?”, into a measurable score. Launched in 2013 by Kalpana Viswanath and Ashish Basu, its app lets anyone audit a public space on nine parameters, including street lighting, security and gender diversity. The idea grew out of safety audits run by Jagori and other groups.
Why it matters: The data goes to the people who can fix things. A UN-Habitat profile of the work noted thousands of audits in Delhi shared with police and transport stakeholders, and a second round of audits can measure whether changes worked.
Get involved: Download the free app, audit your own commute, or ask your city or campus to commission an audit.
Safecity (Red Dot Foundation)
Focus: Data
What it does: Safecity collects anonymous reports of sexual harassment and abuse and maps them, so a pattern at one bus stop or one lane becomes visible to communities and police. Red Dot is ECOSOC-accredited at the United Nations.
Why it matters: In a country where under-reporting hides most of the violence, anonymous data is not a workaround. It is the bridge to the truth.
Get involved: Report an incident, or share the platform with your residents’ association, college or workplace.
Gender Lab, Chennai
Focus: Data into action
What it does: Gender Lab runs with Safecity and the city. It identified bus stops that were harassment zones, which started work on safer public transport. The World Bank also ran a gender mobility assessment and safety audit in Tondiarpet, north Chennai.
Why it matters: It is a good case study of a city government actually using the data.
Get involved: City officials can use it as a template for a ward-level audit and published action plan.
WaterAid India
Focus: Infrastructure and power
What it does: Through the Women + Water Collaborative in Bihar, across Aurangabad, Bhagalpur, Buxar and Madhubani, 1,309 women have moved from being users of water and sanitation services to being their planners, monitors and decision-makers, connected to Panchayats, Jeevika and SHGs.
Why it matters: Safety begins where services end. WASH is also a question of women’s time, dignity, voice, safety and decision-making power.
Get involved: Support the programme, or ask local bodies how women are included in planning water and sanitation.
Jagori
Focus: Advocacy and training
What it does: Jagori is a Delhi-based women’s resource and training centre, and the force behind the Safe Delhi Campaign, which has worked for years on a safer, more inclusive city for women. Its safety audits were the groundwork for the Safetipin app.
Why it matters: It shows how community knowledge, collected patiently, can become a tool cities use at scale.
Get involved: Follow the Safe Delhi work, attend trainings, and bring its audit approach to your neighbourhood.
Sakshi
Focus: Law, education and justice
What it does: Founded in 1992 in New Delhi, Sakshi works to end gender-based violence through legal reform, education and behaviour change. It was behind two landmark public interest litigations, one that informed the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act (2013) and one that contributed to the POCSO Act (2012). Its programmes include The Rakshin Project and the #MakeHomeASafeSpace campaign, and its profile lists a mobile helpline for women in distress in Delhi.
Why it matters: Safe streets also need strong laws and people trained to apply them. Sakshi works on both.
Get involved: Join its trainings and campaigns, and bring them to your college, school or workplace.
Akshara Centre
Focus: Safe city programmes
What it does: Mumbai’s Akshara Centre grew out of the women’s movement and has worked since the mid-1990s on women’s rights. Its Safe City programme audits streets and lanes, has worked with the police on the 103 women’s helpline, and has trained BEST bus drivers and conductors to prevent harassment of commuters. It has also been credited with helping bring a gender chapter into Mumbai’s Development Plan.
Why it matters: It proves that partnerships with police, transport and municipal bodies can change how a city works.
Get involved: Support its programmes, or use its approach to open conversations with your transport and municipal authorities.
HelpSakhi
Focus: Technology and response
What it does: Sakhi describes itself as a preventive personal safety system for women: an app that reads real-time risk and suggests safer routes, a discreet SOS clip-on, and a response network. One press alerts up to five trusted protectors with a live location; two presses also bring in emergency services and opted-in Sakhi users nearby.
Why it matters: It covers the moment before and during distress, which public systems rarely reach.
Get involved: Explore the app and device, and check pricing and availability on its site.
Sayfty
Focus: Education and awareness
What it does: Dr. Shruti Kapoor started Sayfty after the 2012 case to give women and girls the knowledge and confidence to speak up for their safety. It works on education and awareness rather than data.
Why it matters: Knowing your rights and having the words to use them is the other half of safety.
Get involved: Invite Sayfty to run a session at your school, college or workplace.
VOICE 4 Girls
Focus: Girls’ life skills and safety audits
What it does: Hyderabad-based VOICE 4 Girls, founded in 2011, teaches girls life skills and gender equality through activity-based English programmes. It has also partnered with the British Deputy High Commission on awareness workshops, and students from seven colleges mapped hazards and harassment in Hyderabad using the Safetipin app.
Why it matters: It brings young people into the work of auditing and fixing their own city.
Get involved: Support its programmes or invite it to work with students in your area.
Girl Up
Focus: Youth leadership
What it does: Girl Up is a global youth-led movement for girls’ leadership and rights, and its gender violence page sets out the issue and ways to take action.
Why it matters: Young people are often the first to demand change, and need networks that take them seriously.
Get involved: Start or join a club or campaign on your campus.
What you can do this week
- If you are a citizen: support one organisation above, and report or map unsafe spots where platforms allow it.
- If you lead a workplace or school: audit the routes people take to reach you, including lighting, transport and reporting channels.
- If you work in a city or policy role: commission a safety audit and publish what it finds, as Chennai’s example shows.
Whichever you are, forward this post to one person who can act.
Work in gender safety? Be part of the list.
The list is growing. Add your name to the list, write to us at hello@andpurpose.world, with Subject: Gender Safety Idea, #ORGANISATION-NAME.
A dedicated conversation on gender safety is also being opened at the AndPurpose Global Summit in New Delhi.
Our daughters should inherit cities, not curfews.
With Love & Purpose
Team AndPurpose
