South Asia | India | Technology

Meet the women entrepreneurs who are tapping AI to revolutionise fashion ecommerce

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If data is the new oil, artificial intelligence is the new electricity. AI is helping e-sellers add a personal touch to the shopping experience for buyers. India’s ecommerce market is estimated to be worth $84 billion by 2021 (as per the latest RAI report), which means more offline merchants are coming online. And one of the sectors seeing a revolution, courtesy AI, is fashion retail. Fashion retailers, even those from small towns, are embracing technology, to be seen at par with or as more progressive than their counterparts in metro cities. And a few women-led startups are guiding th
Europe | Sweden | Economy

If the world followed Swedish women’s lead, we could add $6 trillion to the global economy

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A new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers says that if the world’s biggest economies bench-marked their workforces to Sweden, which has a 69% female employment rate, the total global GDP gain could be as much as $6 trillion. The Women in Work Index 2019, released today (March 5), uses a number of measures to gauge workplace equality, including countries’ employment rate—that is, the number of people employed as a share of the working age (15-69) population. Its authors suggest that if countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) caught up to Sweden’s
North America | United States | Advice

Personal finance expert Jean Chatzky warns women: ‘We are sabotaging our financial security’

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On the eve of International Women’s Day, personal finance journalist Jean Chatzky says she worries about a paradox at the heart of women’s investing habits: Women are better at investing than their male counterparts, but they prefer to stash their money, exposing them to greater financial risk. Chatzky says women tend to be more cautious with money than men, but that caution can backfire.
North America | United States | Health

Diet Sodas Linked to Cardiovascular Disease in Women

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Scientists are looking into a link between women, diet sodas, and cardiovascular disease that is both problematic and shocking. The artificial sweeteners in diet sodas are causing people to gain weight. There is still a lot to be learned about how artificial sweeteners affect the human body. There have been some recent studies concerning women who drink diet drinks and how they affect their hearts as well as their weight. The University of Iowa has conducted the largest study so far, to determine if there is a link between diet soda and cardiovascular disease in women. Women who drank at
Africa | Uganda | Culture

Why women in Uganda don’t care about work-life balance

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Consistent research is highlighting the disadvantage faced by women, particularly mothers, in today's modern workplace. The most recent data from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency suggests that women in management are paid 45% less than their male counterparts. Many women are torn between trying to be a 100% excellent worker and 100%perfect mother, and often feel like a failure at both as they are stretched too thin. I think it serves no purpose to dwell on all the difficult things that women have to deal with. We seem to reinforce this caricature of ourselves as working mother
South Asia | New Zealand | Health

Anti-depressant use during menopause ‘raises risk of broken bones’

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Women who take common anti-depressants to counter the impact of menopause may have a 76 per cent higher risk of broken bones, scientists warn. The risk appears to last for several years after women take the drugs, leading to calls for doctors to reduce the period for which they are prescribed. For many women, the onset of the menopause triggers mood changes and depression, and each year thousands are prescribed a type of anti-depressant called SSRIs - selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the best known of which is Prozac. The drugs are also sometimes prescribed to help women cope
North America | United States | Advice

How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time

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The stressed-out, hair-pulling, kitchen-disaster, screaming-children, sleep-deprived but otherwise successful professional working mom has ventured into trope territory. If you’ve seen the I Don’t Know How She Does It film or read the Allison Pearson novel, you know. But Laura Vanderkam, author of the new time-management book for women, I Know How She Does It  (see what she did there?) says that depiction is fiction and that she has the data to prove it. She also has advice for other professional women on how they can make the most of their time — and still have a good life. For h
Latin America | Chile | Activism

Native Women Bring Solar Energy to Chile’s Atacama Desert

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Three indigenous communities from the Chilean highlands have just received solar panels, which will be set up and maintained by unlikely solar engineers: five native women who travelled halfway around the world to India and overcame language and other barriers to bring photovoltaic energy to their villages. Luisa and Liliana Terán are cousins from Caspana, an Atacameña indigenous community; Elena Achú and Elvira Urrelo are from the Quechua village of Ollagüe; and Nicolasa Yufla is an Aymara Indian from Toconce. The three villages, with a combined population of 1,000, are in the Atacama
Europe | U.K. | Advice

Female entrepreneurs too reluctant to brag about business prowess

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Female entrepreneurs are failing to shout about their achievements despite generating higher profits than their male counterparts, according to a landmark study. The Psychology of Entrepreneurs report found that 42pc of successful businesswomen claim that their business is prospering, compared to 62pc of males. This despite the fact that female entrepreneurs are significantly better organised, more extraverted, more competitive and more emotionally stable than men. The report, which surveyed almost 1,000 business owners, also found that women showed greater entre
North America | Canada | Activism

Montreal foundation making reusable menstrual pads for women in Senegal

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In 2009 when Shara Rosen and some Senegalese friends in Montreal launched the Fondation Sénégal Santé Mobile, which sends medications to community health centres and equipment to birthing centres in some of the country’s most disadvantaged areas. On Thursday afternoon, Rosen and members of the foundation will be in Phillips Square in downtown Montreal to show off their latest project — reusable menstrual pads for teenage girls and women. The event is being held on Menstrual Hygiene Day, which aims to raise awareness about the importance of menstrual hygiene management among girls i
Europe | U.K. | Health

Nearly half of women wrongly ‘blame themselves’ for miscarriage

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Women mistakenly believe that stress causes miscarriages, causing them to feel unnecessarily guilty, a new study shows Almost half of women who have miscarriages feel guilty and two in five feel like it was caused by something they did wrong, according to an American study. But in reality, 60 per cent of miscarriages are caused by a genetic problem and they are far more common than people think. An online study published in the Obstetrics and Gynecology journal found that a large number of women have the wrong ideas about what causes miscarriages, which leads to unnecess
South Asia | Australia | Educational

The part women play in domestic violence

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Women can only command real power once we socialise girls to take themselves seriously and develop mental grit. Violence against women gets a lot of press at the moment. As a woman, I find male violence always inexcusable and repugnant. As a clinical psychologist though I understand quite a lot about how and why it happens – since I frequently come up against it in my work. For sure, from a moral perspective the perpetrator is always at fault. Nonetheless, if we are to have any impact on stopping this violence, we need to understand how and why it often happens. From the perspective of how
International | Intergrity

Global fact-checkers investigate claims about women

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An informal network of nonpartisan fact-checkers have collaborated again in recent months for a "factcheckathon," this time fact-checking claims about women for International Women’s Day. Different fact-checkers looked at claims about women’s health, wealth and other topics. Below are brief summaries of the various organization’s fact-checks; see the group’s collected work here. PolitiFact’s PunditFact project fact-checked a graphic from that said, "ISIS LURES WOMEN WITH KITTENS, NUTELLA." ISIS supporters create and promote propaganda messages that are more slickly produced and re
South Asia | India | Entrepreneurship

This product new product helps Indian women stand and pee in dirty public toilets

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Public toilets are a curse for all women in the World. Every single woman thinks ten times before using a public toilet because most of them are unhygienic and we women have to sit and pee. Now an invention by three Indian men called Pee Buddy may change the way women pee once for all. For those times when we need to stand and pee. Here's what the founders say about the product: “Loos in India are unclean and the chances of contracting infectious diseases are high. So, we launched ‘PeeBuddy’ which is India’s first portable urine director. A revolutionary eco-friendly product, Pee