Feminist Yelp, a Date-Rape Game, and Other Killer Apps From a Global Women's Hackathon

[Novara]

Feminist Yelp, a Date-Rape Game, and Other Killer Apps From a Global Women's Hackathon

What if there was a platform that was kind of like Yelp, but with a feminist twist—where you could rate businesses (specifically bars, clubs, and restaurants) according to how their staff and patrons treat women? That's the idea behind a mobile app dreamed up by a group of young female coders in Brazil. The women, ages 18 through 22, came up with it in February during an international hackathon organized by the Global Fund for Women. Tentatively named Não Me Calo (I Will Not Shut Up), it was chosen this week as the hackthon's winning idea. Through the Global Fund's partnerships with the tech industry, the team will get funds and mentoring to make their app a reality over the next six months or so.

Não Me Calo is a simple concept: Users will identify businesses where they've encountered physical and verbal abuse or harassment from employees or patrons. The app's ranking system will call out the worst offenders and encourage app users to spend their money elsewhere. With any luck, the business owners will then take steps to alleviate the problem. "It provides a way to leverage existing technology, sort of like Foursquare and Yelp, platforms that allow you to check into public spaces in major cities, with an additional piece of information that probably isn't being collected right now," said Michaela Leslie-Rule, the Global Fund producer who coordinated the hackathon. "Our hope is that this would be available to women and girls globally."

The event, which included girls as young as 11, brought together dozens of coders in New York City; Oakland, California; Porto Alegre, Brazil; Tapei, Taiwan; and Trivandrum, India. They spent 24 hours designing and building tools to create safe physical and virtual spaces for women and girls. Here are some of the other ideas that came out of the event:

Read more ideas in the link: http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2015/04/sex-offender-maps-date-rape-video-game-sex-ed-global-fund-women-insight-hackathon

Good stuff!