The first app I remember seeing was shown to me by a guy friend of mine, and it was the Wobble app.

In case you don’t have the pleasure of familiarity with this app, it allows you to add “boob jiggle” to a photo of any woman of your choice. And we wonder why our research with YouGov shows that women with smartphones are nearly twice as likely as men to have never downloaded a SINGLE app.

(Source: The App Economy YouGov/Lady Geek 2010)

Quite remarkable when the same piece of research showed that more women than men bought smartphones in the last 6 months. So women are buying smartphones but are not buying apps for 2 main reasons:

1. Like me, many women perceive that a lot of the apps are not relevant to their lives such as iFart, iBurp and so on. 
2. There is just too much choice out there. Who needs 200,000 apps? Most women want a small selection of apps that make a difference to their lives.

And that is exactly the ambition and purpose of the brilliant IdeasProject “Apps to Empower Women” Challenge run by Nokia.

The competition asked for submissions of app ideas that would make a real, practical difference to women’s work, education and leisure. The top app chosen in the challenge will be developed by a team of women software developers.

Honours went to Mobile Women African Crafters by Atim Oton, Easy App for Elderly Women by JoJa Dhara and Trigger Free by Jenny Evgenia. Mobile Women African Crafters would be an app that creates and increases sustainable income for local women crafters in Kano, Nigeria who stay at home and work. The idea is an online space for crafters to share and sell their crafts via Mobile phones. The Easy App for Elderly Women would help elderly women navigate their way through various social networking and communication tools to help them stay in contact with their friends and family. Trigger Free would allow survivors of sexual violence to identify media that can trigger post-traumatic stress. Allowing users to add media to a database, rate them and help other survivors enjoy trigger-free leisure.

The winner was Woman’s Personal Private Market Place by Rustam Sengupta. Often women, especially living in the rural areas of emerging markets do not have access to personal care products such as contraceptives, or the means to purchase them from traditional sellers.

The app will have a catalogue of such products and allow the process to be as discrete and comfortable as possible. Now that is what I call a real app.

These ideas show the force for good in innovative technology like apps. Yes we can download apps to get the weather or play a game, but its amazing to see how apps are transforming how women gain access to everything from health services to banking, and employment opportunities to educational tools. The mWomen Programme is an important component of this, and addresses key barriers to women’s access to mobile phones.

The appetite for empowering apps is a hunger to feed, and there are inspiring women making it happen.

The judges for the Apps to Empower Women Challenge were Mitchell Baker, Abigail Disney, Libby Leffler, Elizabeth Varley, Angelique Mannella and Belinda Parmar.

 Written by Sarah Fink from Lady Geek TV, a The NextWomen partner campaigning to end the stereotypes and cliches towards women in tech. Find LadyGeek on Facebook.