Items tagged empowering women

Give A Potential Attacker the Finger!

“It’s like a blue light in the palm of your hand.”

With attacks on unsuspecting victims popping up left and right, it’s always boggled my mind that there hasn’t been a way to immediately and discreetly contact the police vs. calling 911 outright. The latter is a dead give away to any potential aggressor that you’ve called for help. With all the modern technology out there, I thought, why can’t people somehow TEXT 911?

While mobile phones have helped a lot of people escape dangerous situations that are detrimental to personal safety and well-being; smartphones have tried to take it to the next level. I’m not armed with data or analytical insight here but in general, smartphones have not been a radical addition to this security issue. There are apps which help you alert the cops and your friends when you are in danger. SafeTrek is one such app, a very ingenious one at that. SafeTrek promises to significantly enhance student safety by augmenting the infrequently-used “blue light” emergency phone systems on many college campuses.

SafeTrek is a security app for the iPhone and Android. It’s a very simple app which – when used and triggered – will alert the cops silently with a danger-alert tagged with your current location. When you feel unsafe, all you have to do is tap and release a button on the app. The Safe Trek system includes an app where students worried about their safety can hold down a large virtual button that causes the phone to vibrate and the screen to animate. If the user doesn’t input a private PIN within ten seconds, the local police dispatcher receives a web alert that tracks the student’s path on a map. The dispatcher and student can exchange text messages or speak directly until the situation is resolved

Many lives have been saved because of SafeTrek. Whether a user is walking down an alley late at night or hears a strange noise in his/her own home, SafeTrek offers a guarantee of security when the user might not be able to call the police on their own.

Designed to beat the time it takes to dial 911 and send your SOS message, SafeTrek started as a small project but has found some widespread success. The app works very simply:

If you feel unsafe – say, when you are out in the night or going through deserted streets with suspicious folks strolling around – open the app and press-and-hold on the Safe button.
• After you are out of the unsafe zone and are sure that you are safe, remove your finger from the button and enter a PIN to cancel the alarm system which will send a message to the authorities.
• In case you are in an emergency, all you do is remove the finger from the Safe button. In ten seconds, if you don’t do anything, the SOS will be sent and your location will be tracked/monitored constantly.
• You can cancel the alert in ten seconds.

Power To The Woman

Women have come a long way since their fight for suffrage in the 19th century. There is even an entire month, March, dedicated to women and all of their accomplishments. It wasn’t always that way though. At first there was only an International Women’s Day, started in 1909, then National Women’s History Week in 1981. It’s crazy to think that just a century ago, women couldn’t vote, own land, get an education, and rarely had jobs. As of 2012, according to the Census Bureau, 41.6% of females 16 years old and over hold jobs while only 34.7% of men in the same age group hold jobs. The Census Bureau also concludes that 56.8% of all college students are females. A few females who paved the way for all women include:

Catherine Brewer, the first female to earn a Bachelor’s degree from what is now Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia
Amelia Earhart, first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean
Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female Supreme Court Justice
Patricia Harris, the first black, woman cabinet member in the U.S

Those four women are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Women’s History Month. You can check out a timeline from DiversityInc.com with tons of facts.

Women’s History Month; Honorees

Hate women? Well March is not your month. Saturday was the official start to Women’s History Month. March 2014, we celebrate women of colors and backgrounds, from homemakers to movers-and-shakers. The National Women’s History Project announced this year’s theme is Celebrating Women of Character, Courage, and Commitment. The honorees that were submitted include those of past and present resilience. While all the honorees are notable, Divas In Defense has selected three that really speak to the versatility of the honorees.

Image Courtsey of National Women's History Project

Tammy Duckworth (1968 – Present)
Member of Congress and Iraq War Veteran
Tammy Duckworth, U.S. Representative from Illinois, is an Iraq War veteran and former Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs. In 2014, she became the first disabled woman elected to serve in the House of Representatives. Duckworth has a strong record advocating and implementing improvements to veteran’s services. In 2004, she was deployed to Iraq as a Blackhawk helicopter pilot. She was one of the first Army women to fly combat missions during Operation Iraqi Freedom until her helicopter was hit by an RPG on November 12 2004. She lost her legs and partial use of her right arm in the explosion and was subsequently awarded a Purple Heart for her combat injuries.

Image courtesy of National Women's History Project

Arden Eversmeyer (1931 – Present)
The Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project Founder
Arden Eversmeyer founded the Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project (1999), to ensure that the stories of lesbians born in the first part of the 20th century, who were labeled “mentally ill”, fired from their jobs, rejected by their families, and even raped and murdered with impunity, are recorded in history. Project volunteers have documented over 320 diverse life stories recording the sacrifices and obstacles faced by lesbians of that era. The collection is now archived, and continues to grow, as part of the prestigious Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College. Today Eversmeyer is proud to live in a time when she can be her true self with acquaintances, friends, family, medical professionals, and everyone

Image Courtesy of National Women's History Project

Anna Julia Haywood Cooper (1858 – 1964)
African American Educator and Author
Anna J. Cooper was an author, educator, speaker, and among the leading intellectuals of her time. Born into enslavement, she wrote “A Voice from the South,” widely considered one of the first articulations of Black feminism. Throughout her long life, Anna worked for the betterment of African American women’s lives, which she saw as the foundation for a more just society for everyone. Cooper worked at Washington D.C.’s M Street — now Dunham High School for nearly 40 years, focusing the all black high school on preparing students for higher education, successfully sending many students to prestigious universities.

Information on honorees and a full list can be viewed here.

The orgins of Women’s History Month can be traced back to 1911, when the first International Women’s day was held on March 8th. While in office, Jimmy Carter issued a Presidential proclamation that the week of March 8th would be Women’s History week. Following the petition by the National Women’s History, in 1987 Congress passed a bill that declared March the month for Women’s History.

Tagged as: empowering women