Women’s Day: Truecaller launches campaign encouraging women to call out, report harassment

Truecaller has launched a #Callitout campaign that encourages women to speak up about the harassment they face through phone calls and SMS ahead of the International Women’s Day, which is tomorrow.
The new #Callitout campaign is an extension of the #itsnotok campaign that the company launched earlier. With the campaign, Truecaller wants to create awareness about harassment and encourage women to take action against harassment. The first time it was launched was in 2017, but Truecaller has been doing this every year since then.
According to studies conducted Truecaller in 2020, 8 out of 10 women in India receive harassment and nuisance calls in India. One out of every five women in the country receives inappropriate and sexual calls or SMS. In India, 76% of these calls and messages come from people unknown to the women, while 4% come from known acquaintances.
The study also identifies trends in Brazil and Kenya where a large number of harassment calls come from prison inmates. In India, women in metro cities are the most affected these calls and messages with women in Chennai being most affected, followed New Delhi, Pune and Kolkata in that order.
At the same time, women in India are more likely to take action against these calls with seven out of ten women reporting that they have done so. However, these actions rarely involve reports to authorities as most women in the country resort to just blocking the callers.
To aid the efforts of its awareness campaign, Truecaller has also partnered with the Cyber Peace Foundation to launch a cyber-safety program that aims to train 15 lakh women to stay safe online.