Nov 29, 2017

We were happy to partner with ForausImpact Hub Geneva and Think Tank Hub on the SDG Acccelerator #PolicyHack, a two and a half day event aiming to create a space for the development of new tools and innovations tackling gender equality challenges. The event gathered 60 selected participants who picked and worked on one of the 12 gender equality challenges, such as transparency in public innovation funds, empowering future female change makers, women in leadership, women in media, humour to fight gender inequality, retention of young women in the workplace, etc. You can find an article (in French) about this initiative here.

Lift hosted its own challenge about measuring and changing perceptions among the male population. We noticed that gender-based discrimination is often perceived as not relevant to them for a number of reasons among others because they don't experience its consequences first-hand. The goal of our challenge was to find a solution that will involve more people who are not facing direct discrimination in their daily lives to ensure better and more inclusive behaviors.

The Gender Footprint Calculator

Team Labyrinthe and the Gender Footprint Calculator

Florence, ChloƩ, Louisa, Laurin and Nicoletta formed the Team Labyrinthe who took up our challenge. They worked hard during the whole weekend and came up with an original and actionable idea: the Gender Footprint Calculator. The project targets, as a first step, the male population of Switzerland to measure the perceptions on gender bias. The platform includes pieces of knowledge about gender inequality and a series of thought-provoking questions aiming at bringing self-awareness to men who are not always conscious of their contribution to gender inequality and discrimination. Ultimately, the platform also has the objective of creating a movement in Switzerland and a social media campaign to help reduce the gender inequality gap. During the weekend, the team of bright minds already had the opportunity to test their prototype on the male participants of the hackathon.

We are really excited to follow the next steps of the project and are looking forward to seeing how it will further develop to include other genders in its scope!