I looked at OECD data for gender-related tables, and found an interesting one on women inventors. Data was gleaned from patent records, detailing the names of people involved in the inventions (“the inventors”) sorting those lists by country-specific common male and female names (which probably means there are slip ups in either direction).
I have tried many different tools, and the most useful were Quartz Chartbuilder for simple graphs, CartoDB for maps and DataHero for all the rest.
First I made a map of the data. I found it interesting that such high concentrations of women inventors were found in Poland and Portugal, as well as Mexico, Greece and Chile.

Then I charted differences over time for some countries (Because I couldn’t fit them all in). As you can see, all featured countries have seen peaks which later declined. For Australia and Finland the decline seems to be ongoing, while Greece, Israel and Chile have seen a modest uptick, and the US pretty much flatlined.

Last, I wanted to see if I could find some interesting relationship between women inventors and other indices. Was there a correlation between the percentage of women inventors in a country, and the percentage of women who received tertiary education in that country?

Yes, there does seem to be a strong correlation between the two. A more educated women populace would mean more women inventors.

What about women entrepreneurs – was there a possible correlation there?

There does seem to be a modest correlation between the two.

But I was most surprised when I tried to correlate gender wage gap – often used to describe the level of gender parity in a country – with women inventors. I had expected for the connection to be inverse: the lower the wage gap, the higher the opportunities a woman has to become an inventor. But it was the other way around, at least in the countries I checked: Denmark had a low wage gap – and a low rate of women inventors, while Chile displayed the opposite connection. Whether this is the result of a cultural difference of something else  – or maybe my chart didn’t portray the situation entirely accurately – I don’t know. But it leaves some interesting questions to investigate.

I wrote an explainer about abortions. Enjoy!
https://www.canva.com/design/DABu6JPZfsM/5IkeR7j1Qyz8KnhW-cC_nQ/view?&utm_content=DABu6JPZfsM&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=sharebutton

Last week, Apple announced that it will not help the FBI investigate the San Bernardino shooting, by creating a way to hack the iPhone. Anika and I unpack what has become a colossal debate about technology and our right to privacy.

Last year in Israel, I went to a few protests that became quite violent. I filmed and took pictures with my phone – sometimes for reporting, sometime just to post on social media – but was always afraid that the people I was filming (police and right-wing thugs) will see me filming and try to snatch my phone.
That’s why I was very excited to learn about apps that allow journalists and citizen journalists to film with their phone and then send the film to Youtube or to their email automatically.
Some of the tools available are CopWatch by Darren Batista, which allows you to upload the video and sends an alert to Canadian group “Network for the Elimination of Police Violence”, and CA Justice by ACLU which uploads the videos to their website. My life here have been pretty peaceful so I didn’t get a chance to make use of the apps yet, but they are a very important step in allowing reporters and citizen journalists to document violence, from police or other sources.

This is important for two reasons: first, freedom of press has been deteriorating around the world for the past 10 years (according to the freedom of press report) and so tool that enables anyone to report more safely is essential. And as we’ve seen in the last year in the US, documentation of violence – mainly by police and military – is sometimes the only way to prove that problems like police targeting black men, really exists. The tools I mention are not perfect, but they are a start.