Women | Tools | Technology Challenge

The competition Women | Tools | Technology: Building Opportunities & Economic Power invites entries that will identify transformative solutions for promoting women’s economic advancement through technology. Through the Women | Tools | Technology Challenge, the sponsoring partners are looking for creative ideas and sustainable approaches that enable more women from developing countries to be active contributors to and leaders in a rapidly changing economy.

The ideas and solutions generated through Women | Tools | Technology can be new or can improve upon existing technologies to enable them to benefit more women. Innovators with concepts for catalysing women’s economic advancement through technology will be able to submit their ideas through a "crowd-sourcing", online format that allows for discussion and collaboration among other innovators and selected experts. The Changemakers community votes online to select the three award-winners from the slate of finalists. Each of the three finalists that receive the most votes will each receive a cash prize of US$5,000.

Partners in the initiative are: ExxonMobil, Ashoka’s Changemakers, and the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW). This competition is funded by the ExxonMobil’s Women’s Economic Opportunity Initiative. Additional direction and focus for the challenge are provided by a new research study entitled "Bridging the Gender Divide in Technology", which was conducted by the ICRW.