There has been a lot of discussion since Anne-Marie Slaughter’s article in The Atlantic magazine with one answer eluding the most. It’s something very basic, almost as natural as breathing, which may be the reason we hardly think of it: A woman is not one woman the way a man is a man, but more like four women with different energies as she progresses through her menstrual cycle. On a daily basis the energy changes remain hardly noticeable but do add-up to a substantial difference if compared week-to-week. A woman can have it all and more than a man, but at once.

Despite an overwhelming amount of scientific research showing that changing levels of hormones can have significant influence on our bodies, emotions and mental capabilities, too little of this knowledge has been translated into daily wisdom. Too little of this knowledge is used by women and men in their intimate relationships or at work.

Therefore a brand-new mobile application starts its journey on the domain www.theflow-app.com launching its public iOS version 1.1 in the App Store on July the 5th 2014.

The Flow is based on scientific research, experience and literature about the menstrual cycle. Primarily it uses concepts developed by Miranda Gray in her book The Optimized Woman to translate the research into practical understanding which women and men can easily employ on a daily and weekly basis to enhance their work and life.

The Flow is an innovative mobile lifestyle application designed to teach women and men about the positive aspects of a menstrual cycle and how to utilize them and plan in line with her flow.

In addition to embedding these positive aspects, The Flow offers a simple interface with many features available at a click:
• Period tracking and forecast
• Fertility tracking and forecast
• Weight tracking
• Base body temperature tracking
• Ovulation tracking
• Journaling displaying past entries grouped by cycle day
• Tagging of days by cycle day
• Structured tips on what to consider in each cycle phase
• Calendar integration

Some of the initial tips were written by Miranda Gray such as Optimum time, Sex Tips for Women, Sex Tips for Men; tips on exercising yoga are based on Geeta S. Iyengar & Bobby Clennell.

With upcoming releases more tips will be released covering all aspects of female life from career planning, business performance, through family, motherhood, sports, food and relaxation, creativity, spirituality and religion. Version 1.1 is localized into English, Spanish, German and Slovak.

The ultimate goal of The Flow is to contribute towards:

• Higher participation of women in senior leadership (less than 20% in 2014)
• Closing the wage gap between men and women
• Decrease of depression diagnosis in women (twice as many as men in 2014).

The initial version 1.0 of The Flow took place in partnership with the Menstrual Hygiene Day (MHD, www.menstrualhygieneday.org run by Wash United GmbH) to support its message that menstruation matters, and to support first public and global screening of the movie Monthlies by Diana Fabianova, author of the award winning movie The Moon Inside you.

Following the release of the iOS version, it is planned to release an Android version in fall 2014, continue adding new surprise features not available on the app market yet, integrate the app with measuring devices and gadgets, develop an ecosystem allowing better understanding of the female performance throughout the menstrual cycle, and actively sharing gained understanding with the user base.