“When you say something as simple as, the world is facing a loneliness crisis . . . and we are in a really toxic state as humans, I just feel like we have such an interesting business to try and heal some of that through better relationships,” she says.
Official will remain as a standalone app for the time being, though Herd says thereare opportunities for Official and Bumble to collaborate. If a person finds a partner through Bumble, they can switch to the company’s relationship-centric app rather than leave the system entirely. Couples who met on another app or in person could also sign up for the app and join the Bumble network.
The #MeToo movement has raised public awareness of issues such as misogyny, sexual harassment and gender discrimination. These issues are increasingly central to public debate about future policy change in many areas. However, football – the world’s most popular sport – remains a bastion of male domination.
But some momentum has been building towards greater gender equality in football. In 2019 a record 1.12 billion people watched the FIFA women’s World Cup. Our research has shown evidence in the UK of a “new age” of media coverage of women’s sport.
Despite the progress made on closing gender gaps in work and education, gender inequality remains the norm around the world. Violence against women has yet to be properly addressed in any country, and social, cultural, political, and economic barriers continue to hinder women’s participation in labour forces, politics, and humanitarian action – while stunting their presence in leadership roles. Assessments conducted by UN Women in dozens of countries confirm that COVID-19 has widened existing gaps, resulting in a disproportionate loss of work and deepening poverty for women and girls, while increasing both gender-based violence and women’s unpaid domestic workloads. Change, in the form of equality, can no longer wait.
With the World Cup just weeks away, we’re entering an exciting new era for women’s sport – and thanks to its new design innovations, Nike is playing a pivotal role
South Korea is to offer reclusive youths a monthly living allowance of 650,000 won ($490) in order to encourage them out of their homes, as part of a new measure passed by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. The measure also offers education, job and health support.
The condition is known as “hikikomori”, a Japanese term that roughly translated means, “to pull back”. The government wants to try to make it easier for those experiencing it to leave the house to go to school, university or work.
According to its website, The Pear Ring is the opposite of engagement rings. Wearing one signals to others that an individual is single and looking to strike up a relationship. The website also claims that this is a real-life social experiment live in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Canada, and Australia and will be launched in other countries soon.
Dozens of athletes wrote a letter to the House on Monday urging lawmakers to drop proposed legislation that would prohibit transgender and intersex girls and women from participating in sports.
A state-sponsored matchmaking app has rolled out in China’s eastern province of Jiangxi. Launched in the city of Guixi, a city with a population of around 640,000 people, the app “Palm Guixi” uses data on single residents to organise blind dates.
Thai soap operas about gay romance, generically known as “Boys’ Love” (bl) or sometimes “Y series”, are stealing hearts across Asia. Though the first shows appeared in 2014, the genre, including over a hundred series to date, took off outside Thailand during covid-19 lockdowns, thanks in part to many being available on YouTube. In Japan, a key market, the hashtag Thai numa or “Thai swamp”—a reference to the shows’ addictiveness—is popular on social media. Thailand promotes bl content at international trade shows. In June 2021 the industry secured 360m baht ($10.4m) in foreign investment.
“I started noticing this trend of people who are essentially your peers, they’re a few years younger than you, addressing people who are older than them like they’re elderly, talking to them like they’re a senior citizen,” says Laurier, who is based in the US state of Georgia. In January, she made a TikTok about the “rampant” ageism she sees on the app. “The way that it is normal these days for someone in their late teens or early twenties to call someone in their late twenties or thirties ‘old’ or ‘washed up’ … I just find that really disturbing,” she said in the video.
Analyzing Trends with Tim Stock 