Street Smart Safety for Women: Your Guide to Defensive Living

In a book written by women for women, Street Smart Safety for Women offers tips on defensive living that will increase readers' reliance on the one thing that can protect them most: their safety intuition.

Violence against women is a global health issue. The threats women face today are unparalleled and more dangerous than ever before. And, for the first time in history, the toxic cocktail of technology and social media has weaponized misogyny and virtualized violence against women.

There’s an even more serious challenge that faces women today. Social conditioning—the way our systems of family life, education, employment, entertainment and pop culture, spirituality and religion influence us— leaves many of us ill-equipped to deal not only with this escalating surge of attacks, but also the unrelenting prevalence of sexual assault, domestic violence, and scams.

Women have been culturally trained to discount one of their greatest protections – safety intuition. As women, it is so ingrained in us to attend to everyone else, including strangers on the street, before we listen to ourselves, that we have lost touch with our innate ability to often detect dangerous situations. As the result, we are left generally defenseless to recognize predators who manipulate our natural compassion, to our own detriment. This inability to listen to ourselves and be persuasion-proof directly affects our personal safety and data shows that attacks on women continue to escalate daily across the world, inside and outside of the home. Though everyone is talking about how women continue to be less safe, few offer solutions. Women are terrified and they are looking for answers.

In Street Smart Safety for Women, retired Deputy Sheriff Joy Farrow and technologist Laura Frombach, herself a survivor of a violent household, draw on their experiences both personal and professional to provide those answers. Dedicated to educating women in personal safety and showing them a defensive living strategy and trusting in themselves can reduce their probability of becoming a victim of a crime.

Chapter 1 – Design for Defensive Living
Chapter 2 - Technology Terror
Chapter 3 – Can You Recognize a Predator?
Chapter 4 - Persuasion, Manipulation, or More?
Chapter 5 - Dating Diligence
Chapter 6 – What Do Victims of Domestic Abuse Have in Common with Korean War POWs?
Chapter 7 - Financial Security is Key to Your Safety
Chapter 8 – Tips from a Female Cop
Chapter 9 - Shams, Scams and Cons
Chapter 10 - Women and Weapons
Chapter 11 - From Victim to Victor

Joy Farrow is a retired Sheriff’s Deputy with twenty-eight years of experience, working road patrol in Pompano Beach, FL, and facing every situation imaginable. After the attacks of 9/11, Joy transferred to the Fort Lauderdale Airport with the Broward Sheriff’s Office to focus on the safety of air travelers. She also assisted in the aftermath of the 2017 mass shooting at the Fort Lauderdale Airport. She has saved many lives over the course of her career.  Joy was one of the featured speakers at the TEDx Eustis conference and speaks on women’s safety.  

Laura Frombach was introduced to technology in the U.S. Army working on Pershing nuclear missiles. Having spent much of her career as a technologist and engineer with IBM, HP, FedEx, Coca Cola Enterprises. Lenovo and others. A turning point in Laura’s life was the ‘aha’ moment when she correlated her mother’s mental illness to domestic violence. She speaks on behalf of local domestic violence shelters.