NORTHERN MACEDONIA
Towards Balanced Gender Approach in Social Media and Internet
7 October 2022
The innovation camp “Towards Balanced Gender Approach in Social Media and Internet” was organized by Intersection Center for Science and Innovation on 7 October 2022 at the Centre for Technology Transfer and Innovations (INNOFEIT) in Skopje, North Macedonia with the participation of 9 students.
Winning team & solution:
PREYA (Preventing Gender Inequality at a Young Age) – an app that would equalize and remove the traditional classifications of “female” and “male” daily responsibilities and professions that are imposed on children from the earliest age.
© Angela Meshkova, Milosh Miloshevikj and Emilija Naumoska (Students from the School of Electrical Engineering, University “Kiril and Metodij”)
Considering that parents have dominant patriarchal upbringing in the Balkan countries, the main prejudice goes to girls and their household responsibilities and future job careers. The winning team proposed an application that would equalize and remove the traditional classifications of “female” and “male” daily responsibilities and professions that are imposed on children from the earliest age. The application would be suitable for children of any age – recommended from the age of four – and would consist of performing various tasks with varying levels of difficulty.
The selection of tasks to perform would be: recognition of tools and their use, recognition of household appliances, cooking, parental duties, cleaning the home, gardening duties, repairing broken appliances, etc. A user of the application (a child) would not decide the obligation that they want to perform, with levels being randomly generated from the variety of tasks. In this way, obligations will not be imposed according to the child’s gender, which will avoid the division according to gender and every child will feel competent to perform any obligation. This will further affect their career choices in their future, since the performance of the tasks itself, would not depend on gender.
