By Women, For Everyone.

Feminism is making a comeback. But despite its growing popularity, the conversation is so often misguided.

That’s why TedX Brooklyn launched a competition that offered a new perspective on the topic. The challenge was to reimagine an existing product or service from a feminine perspective that everyone can benefit from (not ‘by women for women’). A challenge I could not resist: not because the stuff invented by men is bad, but because we don’t have the balance of another angle. We need people with feminine sensibilities to create more balance in the world.

My idea started with an anti-trend - owning stuff, it’s so passé. Instead we’re borrowing our music from Spotify, our TV shows from Netflix, our holiday homes from Air BNB. I believe that we can leverage this anti-trend to solve not one, but two problems, through a female sensibility:

1/ The physical and emotional baggage of owning stuff you never, or rarely use.

2/ The desire to own stuff you don’t have the resources to buy.

My idea for TedX Brooklyn was to create a sister website to eBay – eBorrow - to facilitate the borrowing and lending of consumer goods, for the mutual benefit of both borrower and lender. Consider the student who’s going traveling and wants to borrow travelling essentials and lend out goods they won’t be using while gone, the vintage fashion collector who wants to lend out items in order to fund new ones, or the musician wannabe who wants to strum a guitar before making a permanent investment.

While men typically place importance on individuality and competition, I believe the desire for interdependence and cooperation is born out of inherently female values. This new heightened level of collaboration will save us money, de-clutter our lives, and ultimately connect us with others like never before.

View my winning entry and all the great ideas here on Shout (SheSays crowdsourcing platform).

Nicola Davies
Strategy Director UK