By Laura Ashbury
The world of phone apps is like a microcosm of humanity, reflecting the interests and needs of the entire population. So it should come as no surprise that alongside Pokémon hunting and weight-loss tracking software there are more serious apps on the market. Some apps even have the power to enable women around the world to lead lives of greater freedom and prosperity. Read on to learn about some of the ways you can add women’s empowerment to your apps menu.
iMatter
Image via itunes.apple.com
This app helps young women read the warning signs of controlling and abusive relationships, and it promotes healthy self-esteem. Women can use the app to get educated about healthy relationship behavior and to support others who are experiencing domestic violence. The iMatter
team updates the messages, videos, and quizzes regularly to raise awareness of the effects of intimate partner violence on women’s lives. Ultimately, the app’s designers hope to help at-risk women recognize warning signs of abusive relationships and learn how to support their own physical and psychological safety.
The SmartWoman Project
This mobile social network is supported by relatively affluent women who pay a monthly fee of $5 to use its forums and social networking capabilities. Subscribers also get lifestyle, health, and relationship content from celebrities and experts. What makes this women’s network different is that the proceeds pay for mobile access for women in Kenya, Indonesia, Nigeria, Mexico, and other developing nations. Those women will receive daily messages meant to inspire and educate them on health, entrepreneurship, and other paths to empowerment.WW
If education via SMS sounds trivial, then keep in mind that previous education campaigns using text messages have proven successful in the developing world. Women in the first-world countries can opt to send additional aid to help women on the receiving end buy mobile phones, or they can buy fair-trade merchandise through the app.
Clue
On a completely different level, the designers of this app set out to put women around the world more informed about their menstrual cycles. The phone app’s uses range from monitoring when your last monthly period started — that question every doctor asks at every visit — to tracking fertility and patterns in cramping and flow that could help diagnose serious health issues like fibroids, cancer, or PCOS. Clues allow the latest smartphones, such as the popular iPhone 6s, to become advanced health-tracking devices that keep a woman one step ahead of her cycle and put her back in charge of her life. The app features a strong focus on science and a gender-neutral design, with a conspicuous lack of daisies and pink coloring.
Nextdrop
In many developing countries, the water that is piped into towns and villages arrives erratically. The water may flow for only a few hours a day or a few times a week, and the residents never know exactly when it will be available. Invariably, it is the women of the family who are responsible for collecting the water, and all their other work, from laundry to meal preparation to hygiene for the family, depends on water. Every day is a waiting game for these women, a struggle to arrange everything else around an unpredictable resource. A 23-year-old woman in India created this world-changing program, which enables women to crowdsource information about water availability via SMS, giving notification about an hour before the water becomes available in your location.
Tiendatek
Micro-entrepreneurship is the pathway to empowerment for large numbers of women in Central and South America. These shopkeepers and vendors often don’t have the education or tools necessary to run their businesses efficiently, and their profits — and families — suffer as a result. Tiendatek is a point-of-sale system that helps shopkeepers better manage their inventory and improve profitability. All store owners need is a phone or tablet that can run the app, and they can get real-time reporting, analysis, and personalized services.
Apps that empower the women of the world come in many varieties, just like women themselves. From helping women everywhere track their menstrual cycles to giving female entrepreneurs the tools they need to run their businesses well, these apps are changing women’s lives all over the planet.