WASHINGTON — Zenia Tata doesn’t want another woman to experience what she calls her “scary joy ride abduction incident” in India after taking a cab from the Mumbai airport.
Tata wished she had a hidden device that alerted authorities she needed help and where to find her. That could soon come true. XPRIZE is about to launch a competition focused on women's safety in India, where a string of high-profile rapes and assaults have prompted massive demonstrations.
In some parts of the country, nine out of 10 women report some form of sexual assault in their lifetimes, according to the International Center for Research on Women.
“If women can be kept safe in society, then children are safe, elders are safe and business thrives," said Tata, who is XPRIZE's executive director for global expansion. “The tricky part is it’s going to need society at large to take part.”
The women's safety competition carries a cash award of at least $1 million and will launch in September. The goal is to create a device, hidden or implanted, that could send a distress signal to a woman's emergency contacts or to police, give her location and live-stream images and sounds to aid her rescue — and possible prosecution of her attacker.
Anyone in the world can enter the initial competition, then a certain number of semi-finalists will be invited to further develop their plans in India, Tata said. The device could be used in other countries that put the systems in place needed to support it.
XPRIZE, a non-profit foundation based in Culver City, Calif.,
has sponsored many technological competitions, including $10 million prizes for SpaceShipOne, the first private, manned reusable spaceship, and for Edison 2, a four-seater car that gets 100 miles per gallon. XPRIZE is currently offering multimillion-dollar incentives for innovations in artificial intelligence, marketable products made from CO2 emissions and adult literacy.
Tata, 47, who was born and raised in India, lives in Denver and has worked as an international business consultant in Mexico, Ghana, Myanmar and 22 other countries.
She said a women's safety device would have helped when she accidentally got into an unregistered taxi in Mumbai in 2014. As the young cab driver sped onto the highway, he asked for her cellphone. When she refused to give it to him, he threatened to drive her into his slum to meet his brothers.
“I knew, as soon as I gave him the phone he would have thrown it out the window,” Tata recalled. “I threatened to hurt him.”
She also pretended to call someone about what was happening and gave the driver a fictitious address close to her hotel. She got out when she was close enough.
“It makes you think, if only I had a safety net,” she said.
Tata said all her female relatives and friends in India have similar or worse stories.
Kristen Houser, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape, said XPRIZE should instead focus on preventing sexual assaults from happening, such as promoting an end to rape jokes and street harassment. Those types of programs done in the United States and abroad cause potential perpetrators "to rethink whether they'll get away with it," Houser said.
Even Tata is uncertain whether a system that tracks a woman’s location and summons police will help in India, a country where rape carries a strong stigma.
“In India people would rather be private … than to let a bunch of people know they needed help,” she said. “That’s something XPRIZE can’t help, but I think it’s going to change.”
