Baby-Making App Glow Gets Into Sex Ed With Ruby, An iOS App For Women’s Sexual Health

Glow, the app that aims to help women get pregnant (or not) launched a new iOS app for women’s sexual health today called Ruby.

Ruby is similar to the other Glow family of products, but is tailored toward women’s general sexual health as opposed to just reproduction – because, well, there’s a lot more to us than our baby ovens.

Sex ed for young women is woefully missing in a mobile world. There are quite a few apps out there, but most aren’t compelling enough to download versus just Googling the information.

Take iOS app Sex Positive, for instance. This is an app aimed at sex education for college students. College students definitely need to be informed about what is okay and is not okay, sexually – one in four women report being raped or an attempted assault while in college – but students are probably not going to download a random app to read up on what is appropriate behavior.

Ruby is different in that it provides a community of support and enables women to track their sex life and other key health information like when they get their period by logging it on the app. Then, like an older, wiser sister, Ruby offers information, resources and sex-positive advice.

This is an important distinction to the app and what sets it apart from the rest. Teens and young women get a lot of misinformation when it comes to sex, healthy relationships and body image. Teen pregnancy rates are highest in conservative southern states where sex ed is mostly non-existent and at least one study found that more than 60 percent of women age 18-29 in the U.S. don’t have the basics of contraception down.

To get a sense of what the female gender faces psychologically, just walk past the magazine section at any grocery store and read the crazy messaging about how women should look and behave sexually. Some of it is comical, but could be taken as the Bible truth for those without enough knowledge or experience about what is okay and healthy.

The idea behind Ruby is to provide women, especially the young and sometimes ill-informed with a better sense of self and to help them make informed decisions about their health, birth control and safe sex options.

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Ruby is partnerning with Bedsider, an online birth control advocacy run by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, to provide resources throughout the app.

“To offer young women a way to embrace their bodies and better understand their health really drives us,” Glow’s marketing VP Jenifer Tye said.

Ruby will also partner with Huru International, a nonprofit that provides menstrual hygiene supplies and sex education to young women in the developing world, for the launch. Women in developing countries such as Uganda often miss school when they get their period, simply because they don’t have a way to stay clean. Ruby plans to help these young women to stay in school with a social media campaign. Each time someone tweets or posts with the hashtag #TalkRubyToMe, Glow will donate a day of supplies to one young woman.