With online abuse and gender-based violence making headlines, we caught up with Ashoka Fellow Hera Hussain, founder of Chayn, to gain insights about the role technology can play, as well as its limitations, in providing healing & well-being to survivors of abuse.
Julia Kloiber: Your organization leverages tech to support survivors of gender-based violence. How did it get started?
Hera Hussain: I started Chayn in 2013 right after graduating with a degree in psychology and economics from the University of Glasgow. Having grown up in Pakistan, where there’s not a time of day when you're not reminded that you're a woman, I was very aware of issues like domestic abuse, forced marriages, honor-based violence, and sexual violence that women face everywhere. While in the UK, I helped two close friends get out of abusive marriages, one was from Pakistan living in the UK, and the other was in Pakistan. As a digital native, I was turning to Google for everything, and I was shocked that there just wasn't much information or services online.
Kloiber: What were the main gaps you noticed?
Hussain: The little information available seemed to strictly target Europeans or North Americans and was only available in English. I also found quite a lot of racial stereotyping : happy women were always white, and the sad women running away with bruises were always black and brown. The friend I was helping in the UK was from Pakistan and she was undocumented because of her husband. This meant she...
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