Tag: women

Women Changing Cities

A new book has come out to celebrate Women Changing Cities for the better. Cities around the world are dealing with climate change, inequality, and an assortment of local issues and often we forget that these cities can do more than react – they can lead. This book takes a look at 19 women who are leading our urban fabrics into the future to ensure a better locally life and, in some cases, shaping the globe.

The book spans 11 geographies, profiling 19 women in leadership: mayors, civil servants, entrepreneurs and advocates who, through their work, are fundamentally reimagining how cities can and should function. A brief preview of some of their stories are below. What unites these women across wildly different cultural and political contexts are five recurring themes: a commitment to listening and empathy; an intersectional, long-term vision; care as a social value; the power of coalition-building; and the courage to prioritize having an impact over holding on to power and pushing through the opposition.

Read more.

Denmark is the Best Place for Women

Denmark has earned the title as the best place for women to live based on the Women, Peace and Security Index. It uses 13 indicators that span women’s inclusion from education to justice in order to generate scores. Denmark continues to lead the rankings, while Afghanistan performs the worst. Notable the USA dropped in the rankings as they are removing healthcare and attempting to remove voting rights from women. Hopefully for those living in the USA the shame of falling down the rankings will help change things there for the better. Many developed counties are in the top 20 and we can also hope that they all do as well as Denmark next year, after all the wellbeing of women is directly connected to the wellbeing of nations.

  1. Denmark
  2. Iceland
  3. Norway
  4. Sweden
  5. Finland
  6. Luxembourg
  7. Belgium
  8. Netherlands
  9. Austria
  10. New Zealand
  11. Australian
  12. Estonia
  13. Ireland
  14. Slovenia
  15. Lithuania
  16. Canada
  17. Latvia
  18. Singapore
  19. Switzerland
  20. United Arab Emirates

Read more.

Gender Pay Gap Bot Made an Impact on IWD

Yesterday a wonderful little bot made a big splash during International Women’s Day (IWD). The Gender Pay Gap Bot on Twitter called out deceptive companies which “celebrated” IWD and advertised how much they care. The bot retweeted each corporate IWD tweet with a simple message revealing the median pay gap between male and female workers.

The bot is possible because the British government requires companies to publicly disclose average pay; you can see the data here. The more workers talk about pay the more likely they are to get paid better.

Follow the Gender Pay Gap Bot.

Easy HPV Testing From Eve Kit

HPV is a virus that can lead to cancer, but is generally easy to test for and prevent. It can be an awkward experience getting tested though, and that is where a new crowd sourced intuitive, the Eve Kit, comes into play. It’s a simple to use STI and HPV testing kit that women can use from the comfort of their own home.

The idea behind Eve Kit started over coffee, when our co-founder Jess realized that many of her close friends were all avoiding a potentially life-saving Pap test, just because it was “awkward” – which seemed like a terrible reason!

This sparked a mission to create a less invasive, more comfortable way for women to engage in their own health.

Through ongoing collaborations with women, healthcare providers and experts, Jess and the Eve team developed a simple, intuitive device to collect high quality samples for molecular diagnostic HPV, Chlamydia and other STI testing.

Check it out!
Thanks to Delaney!

Young, Urban, and Farming in Rural Ontario

In Ontario women from the city are defying stereotypes and running farms. Once the purview of the stereotypical old white farmer who hates cow-tippers, now women raised in cities are buying and operating farms in rural Ontario. These young and educated farmers are using organic process and community driven opportunities to run successful farms.

“I saw that something was wrong with the world, but I didn’t want to push paper around trying to change it,” she said. “When you work on a farm that respects the environment, you see your impact on the earth in a very real way.”

Now a proud owner of a 38-hectare vegetable farm in Neustadt, Ont., she finally feels she’s saving the earth from the ground up, caterpillars and all.
…

Both Young and Moskovits sell organic vegetables using a community-supported agriculture model. Local families buy in at the start of the season and receive farm-fresh fruits and vegetables every week.

“It’s a great feeling to sell directly to people that are eating your food,” said Moskovits. “Marketing locally also means you aren’t shipping great distances and wasting energy.”

It’s also a model that is relatively drought proof. Since members have already paid, they, too, bear the burden when harvests are low.

Read more at The Star.