It’s International Women’s Day! Yay! Are you doing anything special to celebrate? Why not have a go at smashing a digital glass ceiling?
We women make up close as damn it to half the world’s population. So why is it that we only represent a fifth of politicians?
Womankind Worldwide is giving us all the chance to run for office, via the Suffragette Roulette app. It’s sort of an RPG – our epic quest to get elected in the face of adversity and become the face of diversity. The challenge is risky, with plenty of obstacles along the way. Many of those obstacles look like men, but remember that they’re not real. A real man wouldn’t be such a pig.
The app cleverly blurs the lines between a game and the reality for many women. As technology evolves, we keep hearing about ‘realism’ in gaming. Graphics that look lifelike, characters who act like humans, trees which sway in an imaginary breeze, that sort of thing. Suffragette Roulette does the same.
It’s just like life, if life involved launching a massive political campaign that’s overshadowed by your boobs. It’s just like life, when life means not being able to walk down the street without being sexually harassed.
It’s just like life, which is what terrifies me.
The inspiration for this game came from the Pank-a-Squith boardgame, which I hadn’t heard of but am now delighted to know about. It’s named after Emmeline Pankhurst, and after Lord Herbert Henry Asquith, the prime minister of the time. The suffragettes actually played this in the early 1900s. You can still get versions of it on Amazon.
The aim of the boardgame version was to overcome the struggles of women of the time and reach the Houses of Parliament. Reaching universal suffrage – votes for women! – means you win.
Century-old barriers and attitudes are given a modern twist in Suffragette Roulette. Well, obviously, it’s an app. And it puts you on the side of being voted for, rather than trying to be eligible to vote yourself. But it goes further than that: defend yourself against Twitter trolls and try not to die for what you believe in. That women in the real world can’t just start again from the ‘Game Over’ screen is a sobering thought.
The app officially (and appropriately) launched today.
It’s free to download, so give it a go.
