17 Ideas To Support Female Entrepreneurs from Across the Globe
The barriers seem endless. Unconscious bias, unequal pay, double-standards for healthcare, childcare and household chores. No network. Lack of funding. The list goes on. There’s no shortage of ideas to solve the problems, but often they’re coming from the top — executives and leaders at big corporations, typically based in Silicon Valley. At AngelHack, a majority female-owned and operated company, we wanted to know — what ideas might the rest of the world have? What could developers, designers and entrepreneurs — male and female — come up with to tackle problems preventing female entrepreneurship and barriers facing women in tech?
More than 2,000 hackers signed up to answer the call, with 861 hackers gathering at events worldwide to build 207 projects to tackle tough challenges facing women today. Check out just a few of these ideas below. Do you have other ideas to share? Feedback on these ideas? Perhaps you’re interested in connecting with any of these awesome creators? Let me know in the comments!
1.Create new ways to find funding. Built in Boston, Team Foundhr created a project that makes it easy for women to find opportunities for funding, and also makes it easy for grantors to submit their grants.
2. Help female immigrants get jobs legally. Team H4Werk out of San Francisco created an app that streamlines the process for H4 visa holders to complete work permit documentation painlessly.
3. Tackle culture bias in the workplace with voice recognition. SpeakUp out of Seattle is a technological prototype that addresses meeting room culture, where women often find themselves disproportionately interrupted or spoken over.
4. Help prevent gender and sexual violence. Safety is a critical piece to empowering women. Created in Nairobi, Bonga is a mobile app coupled with a web platform which together act as a preventive intervention for Gender and Sexual violence. The app also reduces the time to access medical help for survivors of sexual violence which is approximately 72 hours or more
5. Dream up new networking tools. Team Minas De Ouro from São Paulo built a marketplace and social media app to connect female entrepreneurs and investors.
6. Improve access to education and resources. Also created in São Paulo, Marie is an educational bot for girls, where women and teens can learn about science and technology skills in an easily accessible way.
7. Put some pep in their step! Team Pepper the Pepbot from Vancouver created a slack bot that allows teammates to send positive feedback anonymously to their coworkers.
8. Use virtual reality to build empathy. Straight outta Sydney, team Social Q addressed the cultural challenge of creating a space where participants are able to objectively identify behaviors that reinforce gender inequality through VR simulations. Cool!
9. Track bias with a chat bot. Bots are all the rage! From New York City, team Tracker built a Slackbot that empowers employees to report bias, allowing managers to track trends and provides tips and tools to improve the situation.
10. Use tech to fight Imposter Syndrome. From London, Team Caraboo created technology to help women overcome imposter syndrome, which is when a high-achieving individual has a fear that they don’t belong despite their accomplishments.
11. Help girls access funding for education. The first step to changing the world for girls? Access to education! Team The Rudite out of Delhi, India create an app to provide integrated information about available scholarships for girls, customized to their personal needs and goals.
12. Help women find accurate healthcare information and providers for their needs. Health is a critical component to success! Team Inaa out of Los Angeles is a free service that will provide users with fact-based accurate information and local healthcare services for women.
13. Highlight role models, aka #goals models. Protagonist from Miami created a mobile-first web app designed to highlight the accomplishments and positive news stories of successful female role models in Technology, Science, Business, Law and Sports.
14. Let’s talk about sex..ual health. Team Emily from Barcelona created safe platform that promotes sexual health as a normal part of health care, by encouraging women of all ages and health professionals to openly discuss and manage sexual health.
15. Get up close and personal with IoT. Team Mirru from Berlin created a connected women’s vaginal health device, with many potential applications for global and personal maternal and sexual health and health services delivery.
16. Know your rights. Team W Rights out of Gaza created an app to help women learn about their legal rights and access supportive legal services.
17. Raise women’s voices to access better health and safety services. Team MOMS created an application that leveraged voice recognition technology to access and contact health and safety services in Mexico.
