Gender Equality Hackathon

Following the Migration Policy Hack in 2016, we were happy to partner with Foraus, Impact 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.

As partners, we were hosting a challenge about changing perceptions of gender-based discrimination amongst the male population. How can we involve more people who are not facing direct discrimination in their daily lives to ensure better and more inclusive behaviors, and ultimately achieve equal opportunities for all genders?

About Lift's Challenge

Lift's challenge was about measuring and changing perceptions among the male population. We noticed that gender-based discrimination is often perceived as irrelevant 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 involved more people who are not facing direct discrimination in their daily lives to ensure better and more inclusive behaviors.

Team Labyrinthe and the Gender Footprint Calculator

Florence, Chloé, Louisa, Laurin and Nicoletta formed the Team Labyrinthe who took up our challenge. They worked hard over the course of the 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!

Have a look at their presentation here: 

Our challenge "Changing Perceptions" in full

As the level of visibility and recognition of the gender equality cause has increased over the past decades, there seems to be a paradoxical growing disbelief, annoyance, and, sometimes, even anger, amongst a segment of the male population.. Gender-based discrimination is perceived as not relevant to them, because they don’t experience its consequences, first-hand, and because some of them think that it imposes unnecessary constrains to their lives. We believe that the main reason for this phenomenon is a lack of understanding of what reality truly is like for people facing systemic discrimination. Changing these perceptions seems crucial in order to bring them on board with gender equality-related debates and progress, and thus, it leads us to the following question: how can we involve more people who are not facing direct discrimination in their daily lives to ensure better and more inclusive behaviors, ultimately achieving equal opportunities for all genders?