Why are app developers looking out for vulnerable women at the Olympics but the Church isn’t?

The Sorority App produced by The Sorority Foundation claims to be “a solution to keep everybody safe during the Paris Olympics and Paralympic Games.” Quite a bold claim to make.

The app provides a means for users to send a discreet alert to other users of the app within the same area, should they feel unsafe. When a woman activates the app, on average 10 contacts will be alerted, they can then make contact via their messaging service or use geolocation to find each other and stick together.

The app has over 100,000  verified users and is recognized and certified by the French Ministry of Interior, the Prefecture of Police, the National Gendarmerie and the National Police. It is being promoted as an effective form of support during the Paris Olympics.

I love the idea of women supporting women, and looking out for one another, but my concern with this app is that it relies on that.

I love the idea of women supporting women, and looking out for one another, but my concern with this app is that it relies on that. What if ten people are alerted and everyone assumes someone else will do something?

Psychologists tell us that individuals are less likely to offer help in the presence of others. Or what if a woman goes to another woman’s aid and ends up in danger herself?

There are a number of apps available now to enhance women’s safety. HollieGuard, when activated, switches on the phone’s camera and sends a message and recording to pre-defined emergency contacts. This means the woman is not relying on ten strangers to come to help but on friends and family she has had the opportunity to put arrangements in place with. For an extra cost, recordings can also be sent to a police-approved monitoring centre.

But no matter how great an app is, is it ever really “a solution to keep everyone safe”?

But no matter how great an app is, is it ever really “a solution to keep everyone safe”? It’s brilliant that these apps are being developed, but they’re not the solution to violence against women. They’re a sticking plaster. The solution is to address the aspects of our culture that result in such a large number of violent men.

Violence against women is at epidemic levels, (1 in 3 women worldwide) and most of it takes place in intimate relationships, where apps designed to protect women out and about on the streets will be far less effective. Why is it that so many men feel it’s acceptable to abuse their partners? What do we need to change about our culture to teach those men to love and cherish women as equals? These are the questions we should be asking.

Of course we should make use of apps, and schemes such as ‘Ask for Ani’ and ‘The Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme’, and of course we should fund domestic abuse services and women’s refuges, but at the same time, nothing will change if we don’t address the root cause of violence against women: violent men, and the culture that creates and empowers them.

Rather than leading the way in creating a non-violent culture that’s respectful of women, multiple bodies of research show that Christian women experience intimate partner violence at the same rates as non-Christian women. The Church should be a place of refuge for the victim, for the oppressed and the broken-hearted, but in the case of violence against women, it’s often not.

It shouldn’t be app developers paving the way to keeping women safe, it should be us: The Bible tells us that “True worship is to work for justice and care for the poor and oppressed.” (Isaiah 58:5) So why, when it comes to violence against women, are we palming our job off onto technology companies?

Read our deep dive into the subject of Domestic Abuse in the Church in the WA Plus article in the August issue of Woman Alive here and in the print magazine.

If you’re experiencing Domestic Abuse, help is available from the National Domestic Abuse helpline 0808 2000 247.