The Other Side

Everyone experiences life uniquely, but through The Other Side, people can learn and share their experiences. Women can explain how men’s actions perpetrate the gender inequality, and men can equally respond. With understanding, we can create a worldwide environment that encourages all women to participate and prosper in our world.

For decades America has tried granting women equal access to society through legislation, from the 19th Amendment to the programs dedicated to helping women in STEM. Despite our efforts, however, gender inequality remains. The numbers do not lie about how women are paid less than men or how so few women become top executives. Gender inequality cannot be fixed with laws while the underlying problem of expecting less from women remains in society. Men and women both need to believe women can participate equally in society, and that requires people to overcome centuries of gender stereotypes.

No one today was present at the Declaration of Independence, and yet Americans still remember why we fought for freedom. I, like everyone else, learned from reading about the past. Books opened my perspective of the world because they gave me a glimpse into others’ lives, leaving me changed for the better. So why cannot the same be done with gender experiences? If men and women see how the other gender thinks, we could understand how the other side lives. With knowledge, people can know how to act so everyone has an equal opportunity to prosper.

My hope is that The Other Side will let people anonymously share their experiences safely online.  People have grown up where it is rude to ask and share experiences. Some women think it is offensive when men say somethings, but men would not know unless someone tells them. And some actions in the workforce men take are obvious to them, but bizarre to women, which ends up leaving women behind in the game. The Other Side lets people understand their mistakes so they can act better in the future, leading to healthier environments for everyone to participate and prosper. 

Count the number of profiles made. - 10,000 users in America

Track the number of posts made. - 100,000 experiences shared

Track the number of views of each post, as well as the number of posts each user reads (as levelups for users) - 1,000,000 read experiences

My solution is unique because it will combine game scenarios and machine learning to help users understand their actions in an interactive and rewarding way. The Other Side will primarily consist of short role-playing scenarios users can take, and through machine learning of previous test cases, users can see on a spectrum of how equal they truly treat others. People can then learn from the other side to see how other people respond in the same scenario. Additionally with a level-based system, people are motivated to learn not only about themselves but also about how other people experience life.

My technology strives to help people learn about themselves and others. For the first time, people could have the chance to see how other people act in different situations, and users can start to understand people from various backgrounds. My hope is if people have the opportunity to listen and share their everyday experiences about gender inequality and other tough topics, more people will become aware of their actions. If people become aware of how they are affecting themselves or others negatively, I believe people will change for the better and create an environment more equal to everyone. 

Because the technology is a website, it will deploy over the internet. Hopefully it can reach people with access to internet and computers, and slowly as people change how the act, their actions will filter to the rest of the population. From the beginning the solution will lose money as I do not want to charge people to use my solution nor limit what people can see based on what they can pay. However, hopefully the solution will become self-sustaining through positive, targeted advertisements related towards the topics The Other Side targets. 

Currently, we have no plans of sustaining ourselves financially. I am hoping to get a few of my friends to work on my solution with me during school. Eventually, I hope to apply to different startup competitions to gain more funding, but initially after my friends and I create the solution, I would want to deploy the solution and pay for it myself. I hope if my solution gains enough initial traction, we can find companies interested in supporting gender equality to invest in us, and with more traction we can gain more employees willing to work and scale our solution.  

Our solution is limited by time and experience. My friends and I are students and we do not have a lot of time to create this website. Furthermore, we are still learning so our solution is not going to be the most elegant code out there. Additionally, beyond just building the website, we are limited by who we can reach. The people who are most likely to use our website would be the students at our school, but beyond that it will be difficult to launch a new program, especially to those who lack the technology to use our website.  

I applied to Solve because even though I am only one person, I want to do my part in bettering our world. As a girl growing up with plans to be an engineer, I often felt discouraged. Only after finding like-minded girls did I feel motivated to continue pursuing STEM. I hope with my solution I can create a place for men and women to learn about each other so we can create an environment where all women feel encouraged to participate and prosper in not only STEM, but in every aspect of living. 

I have no current partners. 

None