Category: Equality

In New York City Gay Marriage is Worth $259 Million

You read that correctly, a $259 million (USD) boom in New York City’s economy is thanks to respecting human rights! Changing the law to reflect reality and letting homosexuals marry one another has generated some needed economic growth for the local economy. All of this in just one year!

“Marriage equality has made our City more open, inclusive and free — and it has also helped to create jobs and support our economy,” Mayor Bloomberg said in a statement.

More than 8,200 same-sex marriage licenses have been issued over the past year, representing more than 10% of the 75,000 licenses issued in the city, according to a survey conducted by the City Clerk’s Office and NYC & Company, the city’s tourism and marketing organization.

Read more at CNN.

Mobile Devices for Development

The use of mobiles in development is nothing new; however, it’s always good to remind ourselves how useful this technology can be. Mashable has a list of five reasons mobile devices are good for international development (and in developed nations too).

4.
Preserving the Rainforest
Brazil’s Surui tribe, a group native to the Amazon Rainforest, has been subject to the devestating effects of logging on its ancestral lands. Google helped the Surui devise a solution, through the use of Android phones, to monitor one of the land’s most valuable resources, its carbon stock.

Carbon offsets are sold to companies to counterbalance the negative toll their manufacturing, transportation or electricity are having on the globe.

While it may seem antithetical to use smartphones to help preserve the tribe’s traditional culture and lands, the Surui’s leader, Chief Almir, believes technology is a tool with great power to do good. As a testament to his work with Google, he hopes to open a center for technology and culture on the tribe’s ancestral lands.

Read more.

Declaration of Internet Freedom

Around the world governments are trying to restrain the ability of people to freely share information across the internet. Bills like SOPA in the USA and Bill C-30 in Canada to the more recent TPP all focus on propping up old media monopolies and curtailing people’s privacy and communication rights. The most effective and extreme example of clamping down on the internet can be seen in the Great Firewall of China.

WIth the above in mind, it’s good to see that a group of people have taken up the challenge of creating a universal declaration of freedom for online access and participation!

The Preamble:

We believe that a free and open Internet can bring about a better world. To keep the Internet free and open, we call on communities, industries and countries to recognize these principles. We believe that they will help to bring about more creativity, more innovation and more open societies.

We are joining an international movement to defend our freedoms because we believe that they are worth fighting for.

Let’s discuss these principles — agree or disagree with them, debate them, translate them, make them your own and broaden the discussion with your community — as only the Internet can make possible.

Go to the Declaration of Internet Freedom.

Canadians please check out OpenMedia.

Etsy Encouraging More Women to Hack

The online craft marketplace Etsy has started funding a school that teaches people how to hack and use technology. That’s fine in itself, but what makes it good news noteworthy is that they are openly encouraging more women to get into the tech space and is having a positive impact.

After having one female student in all of its past three classes, the current batch at Hacker School now has 23 women out of 53 students, said co-founder Nicholas Bergson-Shilcock. That’s still under half of enrollment, but some 661 women applied for the summer program, with an enormous bump following Hedlund’s announcement. “If anything, the admissions standards went up,” Bergson-Shilcock said.

Etsy ended up raising its grant amount to $7,000 for 10 students, to allow for taxes, and signed on Yammer and 37signals to provide four more grants each, for a total of $126,000 offered for female students who asked for financial assistance.

Read more here.

Thanks Jen!

Start-ups Founded by Women on the Rise

The tech industry is filled with men and a near-machismo culture that can be intimidating to both men and women. Fortunately inroads have been made by women into the tech world and are creating quite the splash.

The emergence of young female tech founders and executives reflects sweeping change in the worlds of start-up companies and angel funding, where wealthy investors give money in return for a stake in a company. It underscores the enormous purchasing prowess of women online that is transforming the Web economy. As more consumers reach for their smartphones and tablets to shop and communicate, there is a pressing need for commerce sites that cater to women, who control 70% of online purchases worldwide, according to Lisa Stone, CEO of BlogHer, a digital media company.
Many of these inroads are being made by female-led start-ups that are fueling innovation and the digital economy. Women will influence the purchase of $15 trillion in goods by 2014, according to Boston Consulting Group.

Read more at USA Today.

Thanks to Jen!