Tech Solutions For Women Must Include Us All

Anna Wright, CEO and founder of digital accessible wayfinding scaleup, BindiMaps, shares why it’s so important for tech solutions to be inclusive for all women.

Technology solutions targeting women’s unique interests, wants, and needs are obviously critical for advancing our well-being.

The companies producing these solutions are also often led by women, creating societal goodwill well beyond the technology they produce.

For instance, research shows that women-led companies are not only more likely to solve social problems for more diverse groups, but they also hire more diverse teams.

This creates a virtuous cycle in which women hire other women and diverse staff, who rise up the ranks or split off to run their own businesses, which then also go on to hire and promote more women and other diverse staff. 

In the process, the businesses benefit from a broader range of insights, greater innovation, and expanded market opportunities, leading to sustained economic growth and prosperity for all. 

But in celebrating women-first ventures and technologies, we mustn’t fall into the trap of thinking women are one homogeneous group with equal needs experiencing disadvantage in an identical way. 

Gender can be complicated and is also just one plane across which disadvantage can fall. 

For instance, women of colour will face a whole range of racial biases, disadvantages, and even aggression or violence that caucasian women on average will not.

Women with a disability may not be able to benefit from or even access initiatives and products designed to “help women”.

So when we consider this year’s IWD theme of “investing in women” to “accelerate progress”, let’s consider the technologies that are helping all women – not just a select few.

Below are three examples.

The multifaceted bias in hiring

We all know well that removing human bias in hiring processes can lift successful candidate numbers of women, and other diverse applicants.

But, not all biases hurt all women equally.

Catalyte is unique in its approach to removing bias in the hiring process, because it removes both human and so-called “objective” biases from the process across multiple planes, ensuring the biases hurting all women are removed.

For instance, “years of experience” tends to automatically work against women across the board, because women overall tend to take career breaks to care for children by default. So that’s fine.

But if we just considered “women overall” in the area of qualifications, we might miss some women. Because women overall have more qualifications than men. 

But when we look at women who are also racial minorities, experience socio-economic disadvantage, or have a disability, we understand that these women might find it significantly more difficult – or even impossible – to complete formal education.

So instead of relying on years of past experience or degrees to assess candidates, Catalyte uses its proprietary algorithms to assess new hire potential instead. 

In this way the playing field is not just levelled for women versus men – it’s also levelled for all women compared to each other too.

Hidden pitfalls of banking, for some

There are hundreds of studies on the multitude of ways women are still disadvantaged in financial services, and regarding financial literacy and engagement in general. After all, Australian women could only first open a bank account in the 60s! 

But for trans women, there’s a whole extra layer of humiliation and dehumanisation to overcome before they can reach the regular level of discrimination and disengagement many cishet women experience.

Enter, Bliss, a features-rich mobile banking app “with a dignity guarantee and experiences free of discrimination, harassment, or hardship”.

The app helps trans women to do all of the things cishet women need to do – open an account, take out a loan, hit savings goals. But it allows trans women to avoid the exhausting and often inhibitive micro (and macro) aggressions in the process.

The empowering effects of disability tech

It’s no secret that women and men experience public spaces, including indoors, differently. 

Getting lost or confused in a large facility might be an inconvenience for a man. But for a woman, this might create enormous amounts of anxiety around safety. 

Now imagine that woman has an extra layer of vulnerability in the form of a vision impairment or disability.

It’s possible she may choose instead to simply avoid any facilities that are complex – even if that facility might be critical to her career prospects, such as a university or even her own workplace.

This is why the BindiMaps digital accessibility wayfinding platform and app have been designed to help the over 13 million Australians with one or more chronic eye conditions to more easily navigate indoor spaces, with an accuracy of just a few metres.

And while this obviously helps people of all genders with a vision impairment, there are clear advantages for women who might have additional fears around their safety too. Fears that might otherwise preclude them from activities critical to a full and financially secure life.

By removing barriers to mobility, we are therefore improving the employment prospects, independence, and engagement with the community of all women – not just those with sight.