Women of India: Why don't more of you carry pepper spray or other safety tools?

Why aren't personal safety tools more common among women in India?

I've been wondering about something and wanted to hear women's perspectives.

Many women I know have had uncomfortable or even scary experiences—receiving inappropriate messages from ride-hailing drivers, being harassed in public, or dealing with men who crossed personal boundaries.

Given that these experiences seem to be fairly common, I'm curious why more women don't carry personal safety tools like pepper spray (where legal), personal alarms, or use safety measures like live location sharing, emergency contacts, or other self-protection systems.

Part of what made me think about this is that two of my former girlfriends had undergone self-defense or martial arts training and showed me some of what they'd learned. What struck me was that, despite the training, I could still physically overpower them fairly easily. I'm a 5'3" man who's overweight, not particularly athletic, yet I still felt there was a noticeable strength advantage. I've also found I can often outrun women who are younger than me. That made me wonder whether physical differences can limit how effective unarmed self-defense is in many real-world situations, whereas tools like pepper spray may help reduce that disadvantage by creating an opportunity to escape.

Another thing I've noticed is that women seem to respond to harassment in different ways. Some don't talk about their experiences at all. Others focus on broader issues like societal attitudes or patriarchy, which are important conversations but also long-term problems that may take years or generations to improve. I'm curious why discussions about immediate, practical self-protection measures don't seem to be as common alongside those conversations.

Is it because:

You already carry or use these things, but people don't talk about it?

You don't think they'd be effective?

You're worried they could escalate the situation?

There are legal, practical, financial, or social reasons that discourage carrying them?

Or is there another reason I'm missing?

I'm not asking this to victim-blame or suggest that women should be responsible for preventing harassment. Ideally, society should be safer. I'm simply trying to understand how women think about balancing long-term societal change with immediate personal safety measures, and whether my assumptions are missing something important.