Emily O'Gorman. Image: Flávia Bianchi
A former senior programme manager of Dogpatch Labs’ Founders accelerator, Emily O’Gorman is no stranger to the founding and running of a start-up.
“It’s easier to commit sexual harassment than it is to report it,” says Emily O’Gorman, founder of social impact start-up Reportd.
“Existing reporting mechanisms, such as filing a report with the police, are not widely used due to a number of reasons – stigma, lack of faith in the police, an arduous reporting process, among others. The easiest course of action is to do nothing, so the vast majority of people don’t report.”
According to data from the Central Statistics Office in its Sexual Violence Survey 2022, one in five adults (20pc) experienced sexual harassment in the 12 months prior to being asked – with women being more than twice (28pc) as likely to experience sexual harassment as men.
“By not reporting, we don’t recognise sexual harassment as behaviour that is wrong and that warrants reporting. As a result, sexual harassment remains normalised, and we remain desensitised to it,” O’Gorman says. “Due to chronic underreporting, we lack detailed data on the issue, leaving us unaware of the true extent of the issue. We can’t manage what we don’t measure.”
Removing the friction of current reporting
To address this issue, O’Gorman founded Reportd last year as a platform for anonymously reporting sexual harassment – whether it happened that day or 10 years ago. The idea is to remove the friction of current reporting systems.
“[Reportd is] a reporting tool built to receive reports of sexual harassment and meet the needs of individuals who have experienced it. Reports can be submitted in a matter of minutes; it’s easy to navigate and easily accessed,” she explains.
“Once there is a critical mass of reports, the data will be made available to specific – yet to be determined – organisations that are in a position to collaborate on creating action based on the findings, such as the guards, policymakers and researchers.”
She says the specific organisations are yet to be determined because it is “difficult to confirm this without the data and what it tells us, thus where we need to go”.
O’Gorman is no stranger to the process of founding and running a start-up. Prior to embarking on building Reportd last year, she worked at Dogpatch Labs for more than three years, where she helped set up the 2050 Sustainability Accelerator before taking up a role as senior programme manager of the Founders Talent Accelerator, a 12-week programme to connect potential entrepreneurs with the right co-founders.
Before that, O’Gorman worked for Berlin’s Plug and Play on its energy and sustainability accelerator. While studying in DCU, she also set up a college-wide student incubator and organised multiple Techstars Start-up Weekends.
Getting as close to the problem as possible
Now, through Reportd, O’Gorman wants to end what she calls an “epidemic of everyday sexism” and bridge the data gap caused by the “chronic underreporting” of sexual harassment. The platform is based on the Pyramid of Sexual Violence, a tool to help make the connection between different forms of sexual violence clearer.
Image: University of Alberta Sexual Assault Centre
“This research shows that our foundational attitudes and beliefs contribute to a society that creates people who commit sexual violence. Rape and femicide are not the acts of first-time offenders, in the same way a thief doesn’t jump straight into robbing a bank,” she explains.
So far, O’Gorman says, there has been a lot of interest in the platform and feedback is helping her improve it. Her focus at the moment is chatting with potential users and “getting as close to the problem and their needs” as she can. And while raising investment is not the priority right now, as the founder of a social impact start-up she is open to speaking with impact investors who share a passion for Reportd’s mission.
“The prevalence of sexual harassment is the foundation of sexual violence. If we don’t meaningfully address the bottom of the pyramid, we’ll always be faced with the symptoms of this issue – more devastating acts of sexual violence.”
Find out how emerging tech trends are transforming tomorrow with our new podcast, Future Human: The Series. Listen now on Spotify, on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.
