What do your phone and feminism have in common? Once you download the new SPARK Movement Women on the Map Google Field Trip app, the answer will be everything.
This ingenious app is based on the premise that historically awesome women aren’t getting enough recognition. To explain their new project, SPARK Movement, a grassroots pushback against the sexualization of young girls, cited a few disturbing statistics from Equal Visibility Everywhere: There are no U.S. holidays named after women; there are no women on paper U.S. currency; fewer than 25 percent of public figure U.S. postage stamps depict women.
SPARK Movement explains, “Last year, we saw the same thing happen when we looked at Google’s Doodles: between 2010 and 2013, only 17 percent of Google Doodles around the world honored women. When we talked to them about it, not only had they already started fixing the problem, but they also invited us to join their Field Trip app. Google knows, as we do, that it’s not that women don’t make history — it’s that we don’t honor them for it.”
So the women aren’t the problem. It’s the fact that they don’t have an equal share in the historical spotlight. This is precisely the goal of the new SPARK Movement Women on the Map app, hosted by the Google Field Trip mapping app.
SPARK researched more than 100 women worldwide with remarkable achievements. With the help of the Field Trip mapping app, all of these great historical endeavors have been pinpointed to a real place on a map. All you have to do is download the Field Trip app, turn on Women on the Map and wait for your phone to buzz at a specific location to see where badass women have made history.
Depending on where you travel, you may feel the buzz from inspiring ladies like Mary Ellen Pleasant of San Francisco, California, activist and abolitionist known for dressing like a jockey to help slaves escape; Mary Anning of Lyme, England, who made the breakthrough scientific discovery of Plesiosaurus fossils; or The Arpilleristas of Santiago, Chile, women who wove colorful tapestries to raise awareness of the violence under Pinochet’s regime. SPARK is also accepting applications for their database of accomplished women to contribute to the app.
Where is the gender balance in our nation’s, and especially the world’s, history? Once you download this free app, you’ll see that it’s hardly been a man’s world all along. Women have been pushing the limits and making radical changes for centuries — and they’re finally getting credit for it.
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