NEW YORK CASE STUDY
Autoethnographic & Ethnographic Case Study on Women's Safety in New York City
NEW YORK CASE STUDY
Western and Non-Western Approaches to Women's Safety
This case study captures the complex realities, institutional structures, and cultural forces that shape women’s safety in one of the world’s most influential cities. The case study is both a comparative analysis and an in-depth urban study: it explores New York City’s legal systems, public spaces, transportation networks, housing structures, and social institutions while examining how Western and non-Western approaches define, regulate, and respond to women’s safety.
NEW YORK ANTHROPOLOGY
New York Anthropology is Dedicated to Studying The Safety and Everyday Lived Experiences of Women in New York City.
NEW YORK ANTHROPOLOGIST
New York Anthropologist, Social Scientist, Visual Artist, and Journalist Sade Eastmond
Specializing in Social Anthropology and Social Ethnographic Research on Women's Safety
SADE EASTMOND, MA.
Social Scientist, Social Anthropologist and Social Ethnographic Researcher
Sade Eastmond is driven by the belief that public safety is a foundational public health imperative. As a New Yorker, she brings a trauma-informed and human-centered approach to building a safer city, combining compassion with civic action to advance the structural conditions that allow women and children to live with safety, dignity, and full autonomy in New York. Eastmond has completed comprehensive advanced training with specialization in Responsible Conduct of Research, Social and Behavioral Research Best Practices, and General Data Protection Regulation compliance frameworks. Her research looks at how women experience safety and danger in New York, not only by independently studying forensic psychiatry, criminal law and crime statistics, but by studying women’s everyday lives, behaviors, fears, social experiences, and the dating culture around them. She examines how prolonged exposure to dangerous men, structural inequity, chronic trauma and abuse, neurologically and behaviorally reshapes the lived experiences of women in New York City. Her mission is to reshape legal systems around the world so that women and children are protected not only in principle, but in practice, by creating model laws, proving the need for reform, litigating landmark cases, mobilizing governments to act, and turning legal victories into lasting institutional change. Her goal is to end violence against women and children.
Autoethnographic and Ethnographic Research on Women’s Safety
NEW YORK VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY
As a New York Anthropologist, Sade Eastmond explores women’s safety not as an abstract concept, but as a lived human experience shaped by violence, vulnerability, public institutions, emergency response, urban environments, and the people who witness and respond to crisis. Through The Lens of New York Visual Ethnography (Photo-Ethnographic Research and Photo-Journalism) and Psychology, Sade Eastmond Documents and Studies: "How Safety Impacts The Psychological Wellbeing of First Responders?" She examines the broader human ecosystem surrounding safety in the city: the women and vulnerable populations who experience danger, the first responders entrusted with protecting them, the members of the public who witness traumatic events and their aftermath, and the institutions responsible for maintaining public safety. Her photographs do not attempt to diagnose the internal psychological condition of the people depicted. Instead, they document observable environments, behaviors, interactions, and institutional responses that becomes a part of a broader anthropological and psychological inquiry supported by additional research methods.
Sade Eastmond's mission is to empower women economically, academically, socially, spiritually, and physically so they can move through the world with greater safety, autonomy, and dignity. Drawing on years of ethnographic and autoethnographic research into women’s lived experiences in New York City, her work connects personal agency with the structural conditions that shape everyday life. Safety is treated as a foundation for every other form of empowerment because a woman cannot fully exercise economic independence, social freedom, or inner resilience while navigating unaddressed risk. Through coaching, training, and speaking, this mission is translated into direct support for women and for the organizations that serve them. The work is trauma-informed and research-grounded, connecting individual experience to broader patterns of risk, culture, and opportunity. The goal is lasting change: women who are better equipped to shape their own lives and communities, and systems that more effectively protect and enable that freedom through economic empowerment.
SUPPORT
Sade Eastmond’s work is designed to support the City in building a safer New York, with a focus on the safety and wellbeing of women and children. Through New York Anthropology, she conducts investigative ethnographic research on women’s everyday experiences of safety and danger, examining how public spaces, institutions, and emergency response shape vulnerability. She independently fundraises for research and innovation while offering coaching, training, and speaking that translate these findings into practical support for women and the organizations that serve them. Sade Eastmond extends invitation for collaborations and opportunities in partnership with the City of New York.
To explore how this work can support you or your organization, email: sade@newyorkanthropology.com
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