Hi Friends!
Happy International Women's Day. As a woman in a male dominated sector - this is a topic of great interest to me and has been something I've been really digging into lately.
Studies show that 90% of the people that own cryptocurrency are male. Check out this interesting graphic from Coin Desk below about demographic information on bitcoin owners.
I have my own rough ideas and thoughts based on personal experience, and behavior I've observed with female friends and associates when discussing crypto - but I'm looking to dig a little deeper. Obviously there have been plenty of articles, videos and discussions on this subject already - but I feel like many just kind of skim the surface. I'm looking to go a little deeper and better understand the core reasons as to why there is resistance or hesitation.
Why does this matter? Because obviously if we want to reach mass adoption and get to a place in society where people are actually using crypto in their daily lives - then we have to start bridging this gender gap and bringing more women into the space.
The reason I'm aiming to dig a little deeper is because if we don't fully understand the problem - then we can't really take action. Any action taken on mediocre information will only give mediocre results. Having information that actually goes to the core of the message though - allows us to take action in a way that will really make a difference.
So what am I asking of you? Your thoughts!
This is a safe, judgement free space. I'm not looking to defend any type of position. I'm truthfully and honestly just looking to get your thoughts on the subject to help me expand my own understanding and develop a stronger hypothesis. If you don't feel comfortable leaving a comment below - feel free to send me a DM on Discord at @Coruscate#6642.
Love you guys and I can't wait to read your thoughts below! I have been thinking about publishing this post for a while now, and couldn't think of a better day to do it than International Women's Day. I look forward to sharing my own thoughts on the subject in the future based on my research and personal experience.
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So much that I believe myself has already been said!
Investing money in 'stuff' is really risky so women tend to do less of it. Turn it around and you could say: once women get into any (crypto) project it's time to join them, because they really don't do so until they're very sure the project is low-risk.
That's why STEEM is such a great crypto space for women because it's low-risk and no initial investment is needed to start off here. That's why when I go to a 'blockchain' event I am one woman out of 100 men, and when I go to a Steem event I'm about 1 out of 2/3 men.
Curious to see what else you'll learn over the course of time :-)
I was so hoping you would see this post and comment! You always have such insightful things to say. ❤️
Such interesting points all around! I think you are spot on as to why Steem has been able to attract more female users than most other blockchains.
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts!
Thanks! I actually kept pondering about this question for some more time, and realized that also: Men are still statistically way more often involved in 'tech' in general. So I can imagine that waaaaay more men then women ever just simply 'set up a server and started mining because why not'. So might very well be that many men just simply 'took a chance' and had a nice start-up fund to trade/invest with before they even realised what value they were holding.
This to me is on top the already existing financial/economic differences between men and women.
Just another two cents :-) Cheers dear @coruscate!
Great points again! Crypto is at the intersection between tech and finance - two heavily male dominated sectors - and so that makes a lot of sense!
Nice pic!! 📸 Red looks great on you!! 🔥🔥🔥You’re a female crypto star!! ✨✨✨Thanks!! 🙏😁
aww thanks Brett! You've always been so supportive of my work and I really appreciate it! 😘
I'm a female accountant and old enough the be quite rare when I entered the field. And the higher I got in it, the less women there were. It's a general truth that many women leave all-things-money to the men in their lives.
But if you do not have a man to help you, you must come to some level of understanding about money in order to survive.
Crypto is even a further step, and is optional today. It is not widely adopted in the first place and so it can be safely ignored. A place that I think shows the change that might happen is Venezuela. Their monetary issues are so bad that people are jumping into crypto and learning it since it is more valuable and stable than their money these days.
The only reason I am here is that some of my content creating friends that were already here would not stop telling me how great steem is. When I took the leap, the crypto aspect was a downside for me in coming since I had no desire to learn it. Supposedly, I am a weight loss coach now.
But since getting here I have had to spend a significant amount of time learning crypto and I still barely understand it.
Interestingly, steem has more women than the wider crypto space. Few other coins have places where you can earn rewards by posting about crochet, for one example. The stat I have seen is 10% in crypto and 30% women in steem.
Good luck for your project.
I think one of the reason aligns with the same reason women tend to be better investors than men. GENERALLY women are more patient, less aggressive, and less overconfident than men are. Honestly, crypto is still a wild ass speculation.... one that I willingly participate in.
I have material positions in cryptocurrency but there is no way anyone can make the argument it is still not in its infancy relative to other types of money. Ten years is nothing with respect to a new currency, and there is still a lot to prove. I am willing to make a speculative investment into crypto but its not because I am sure that I am right, I just have a high risk tolerance.
It’s tough to say without sounding like a sweeping generalization but I do think that women GENERALLY may be more risk adverse than men, specially with respect to investing and this is one of the reasons the demo is so skewed.
Great question @coruscate! I hope we get a lot opinions to shed some light on this :)
Thanks for taking the time to write out your thoughts and share them @goldmatters! One point in my current working hypothesis is about a primal need to feel safe - which really ties into your thoughts on risk aversion.
Risk aversion has been pointed many times.
IMO Women in general are spend thrifts. They not only spend on themselves but care for others around them. If they have money they think of buying gifts where as men have totally different mindset of securing future for him or the family. Investment is the last thing on woman’s mind. This is not generalisation though
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I actually agree with all the comments thus far, especially about women generally being more risk adverse, but I'd like to lean into the comment from @fitinfun and add my own take.
The conversations I have with male mates, versus my female friends are so incredibly different... for example, when we hiked through the Grand Canyon last year, my female friends wanted to know what it was like, how tough was it, what did we see, who did we meet, what did we eat, etc. My mates however, wanted to know all about how far down did we go, what was the highest point, how many miles did we walk each day. It was so weird that the same experience produced such wildly different conversations... my partners family is super into sports, one team in particular (Geelong for the MattClarkes out there) and my partner's Mum and Sister always talk about amazing sporting moments, where her Dad and I talk about all the stats behind the team... basically, my super-long-winded point is that dudes just eat up all the stats, they love it, and crypto is all graphs and stats and comparisons, it plays so well into dudes interests, it's pretty much the Fantasy Football of money.
Basically, crypto is just so much more interesting to dudes than it is to women, but as blockchains like Steem (and Narrative, and games, and funner Dapps) are built, I think we'll see that line shift. I'd hazard a guess that we'll never see the stats so male dominated like this ever again in the crypto space.
First off Happy Women's Day :)
This has been a hot topic of discussion for years! I don't know the actual reason(s), However, my best guess is perhaps it's bc many women don't see a connection with their hobbies, jobs or general interests & crypto. Perhaps if Dapps were aimed more towards female interests/needs the crypto idiom we would see more crypto-babes !
There may also be some correlation in the fact that The SteemBirds are not posting as regularly 😎😎
This is the truest statement that has been said in this entire thread. 😂 Crypto babes everywhere are devastated that you guys only post every once in a while now!
I think you are spot on with your earlier points about most women not seeing how this actually impacts their life. Everyone is so busy in their regular, normal lives - that if this isn't a part of that, then why would they spend the time to look into it? Women DO spend a lot of time on apps though (instagram, youtube etc.) and so your point about making more dapps that appeal to their interests is a good one.
Happy Women's Days, ladies!
Crypto is very experimental and risky as an investment. Nearly any measurable behavioral trait such as willingness to take risks is normally distributed in the population. Men's and women's curves differ in terms of median somewhat, maybe not to a huge degree, but even a small difference in the middle has huge consequences in both tails of the distribution. Because crypto is such a marginal thing and perceived somewhat as violating social norms, it is to be expected that nearly every pioneer will be a man and that the majority of early adopters will be men. It's just one of those things. But if you want more women in crypto, it is certain that wider adoption will make the sex distribution more even.
Excellent question and observation. We certainly need to be appealing to both demographics.
I've always assumed women are generally more risk-averse, so more likely to steer clear of volatile investments.
One of the reasons I see such a great future for Steem, is that its so community focused; and women are much more likely to value and appreciate the power and promise of community. It's an interesting dynamic at our Adelaide meetups.
Women are more likely to come along to the meets; (we've actually had a couple of meetups where women were in the majority, which is pretty great.)
Back when it was just bitcoin, it was an individual endeavour.
Now crypto has group efforts going on the girls are starting to shine :)
My #poecomp Path of Exile race just started, and we have our first female competitor, and our second and our third.
That's certainly encouraging.
SUCH good points Matt! Not just about risk aversion, but about community. You are right - owning or mining bitcoin used to be just an individual action, but the blockchain space is now building communities.
I think any blockchain that has both a community and a host of interesting dapps will be well positioned to attract more of the mass market - which is also why i'm so bullish on steem too.
There is another dimension to it, apart from the aforementioned tendency for men to engage more in high-risk (money-wise and otherwise) behaviour than woman.
A lot of the original crypto people came from the computer geek community. If you think of the origins of Cryptocurrency, BitCoin and Cryptography, e.t.c, they came from the Maths, Physics and Computer Science people. That's why most of the original miners of Bitcoin were usually from the IT (Information Technology) and Computer Programming/Security fields. The vast majority of these people are men.
The computer gaming community also jumped on it quite quickly - because of the kind of gamification of the mining process - again another community of majority men/boys.
Of course there are some women that got into it early too, but they also tended to be from those communities, in which they'd been the tiny minority.
As Crypto gets more of a smily face (like Steem), hopefully there will be more mass adoption by the general public.
Great points @adetorrent! The 90% number isn't necesarily representative of the current active crypto users - as so many of the early miners and accumulators were men - and so it will take a LOT of women owning crypto to start changing that number.
hahah this actually made me smile! Way more fun than just saying "user friendly"... but YES couldn't agree more that mass adoption to the general public will likely come through chains like steem that can offer more mainstream feeling dapps.
I am not a woman but the women I know tend to be risk averse. They work hard to make capital and putting money towards anything volatile would be risking resources used to provide for themselves and their family.
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couldnt have said it better myself although i put my own version of why further below
not much difference than yours just terminology which im not great at lol
cheers
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts @rubenalexander! Risk aversion definitely seems to be a common thread so far in the comments.
I really liked your point about women working hard to make capital in the first place. Although there have been big strides in society for more equitable pay - perhaps a lower level of confidence in their ability to earn more in the future ties into risk aversion.
Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts!
I think it is just like in Silicon Valley, where there are not many womens, mostly because of historical reasons and also, as you said, the majority of developers in technology are male centric.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! It's definitely not surprising that there are more men in this space, like you said. Crypto is a cross of technology and finance - both of which are more male dominated sectors.
Exactly, crypto falls in the same category...
good article
i think women are more careful with their money and dont take as many chances
and im talking about your average person in general not absolutely everybody
Happy International Woman’s Day!
I think it is a fact that most (not all) women are more risk averse given their resourcefulness. However, I also think that it is due to the the inequality they have had in Corporate America despite the changes over the years.
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Such great points my friend!! Especially going a little deeper than the "risk aversion" comment to better understand why. One of those reasons could easily be income inequality and how it's harder for women to earn money in the first place, and so when they do start to build wealth, they are less likely to get involved in a "risky" investment because they don't feel confident that they can go out and get another high paying job if they lose the one they have.
Besides the married part, it looks like I’m a typical Bitcoiner... although I do question how does anyone have accurate demographics of bitcoin users 🤔
I also tend to see countless, very successful women in crypto, including yourself, on and off of the STEEM blockchain
aww thanks my friend! 😘 You make a good point about the legitimacy of demographic information... I wonder how they got that!
Yeah it was funny for me to read through all of the demographics because I am most of them as well! Maybe the demo info is pretty good after all. 😂
My guess is it was from a poll conducted by Coindesk... which gives more insight into the demographics of CoinDesk readers but not necessarily all bitcoin users. No one knows if Satoshi itself was black, white, purple, male, female, multiple people or even extraterrestrial 🤷🏻♂️, that’s the case for a lot of bitcoin addresses out there that haven’t been tied to human identity
i think many "high end geeks" are men. these are the guys who push the technology to new frontiers thus have a competitive advantage in the field. all knowledge is self taught and there is no (social) accepted university course for it. So guys like vatlik buterin or @dan dominate the field (until now).
bye the way: here is one of the smartest women in crypto:
Oooh I like her!! She's got a cool vibe.
Great points about most "geeks" being men and they are the ones that are usually on the front line of adapting new technologies.
Great thought provoking post - I think it’s just a legacy thing; bitcoin was a bit technical for most and while there are many women in to tech things, the IT department is still majority males. This is of course shifting a bit. I think as crypto is evolving and more user friendly/less techo interfaces are built more women will come.
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Great points @wizardzap! Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I started taking bitcoin for my tarot readings two years ago. I'm glad I did!!!
That's so cool!! How did you originally find out about bitcoin and get involved in crypto?
I got involved with cryptos through my interest in fringe ideas and trends, and most of the content that I consume is mostly read and listened to by males. Maybe that is the segue for a lot of people which might explain why women are underrepresented in the space.
I’m doing my part to spread the word to older women. Just sent a friend her first tokens yesterday.
I think the risk aversion point made is also a good reason why so few women haven’t dived in to cryptos. My style is to accumulate slowly and strategically. I have only invested what I could lose without too many regrets.
As other pointed out: Women are risk averse. That's because risk taking is linked to testosterone. It's most obvious with transexual on hormone replacement therapy. They risk taking / fear of risks changes as there hormones changes.
At the end of the day we are just a biochemical machine. But of course there are always exceptions in biology. Nothing in biology us set in stone. So enjoy your crypto investment.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts @vermithrax! Super interesting point about risk taking being linked to testosterone levels - making it less of a gender question and more of a biological question.
Would have never learned about crypto if it weren't for the Silk Rd. I fell in love with the concept after having to indirectly learn about fiat currency and what a scam it is. We all have our reasons for being involved and I dont think its gender based. My reason is self reliance and a call to educate people that there's a different way.
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Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and what your road to crypto looked like!
I think it's because many aren't confident enough to try a new technique or they're told it's too complicated and so they even give up the idea before trying.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts @patschwork! Based on your profile pic - it seems that you are a women so I'm hoping to ask you one more follow up question. What helped you overcome those barriers and actually get involved in the crypto space? Thanks again!
Oh there are two reasons. The first and most important one: I found Steemit for me as a great platform to share my content. And I'm working as software developer and so I'm anyway used to learn new technical stuff. But I also go along with the other commentators: when my husband first started experimenting with bitcoin I didn't feel safe about that as an investment.
Thanks for your interest! :)
“Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men.”
― Joseph Conrad, Chance
Good !!
I haven’t read other comments so apologies if I am repeating the same ideas others have shared.
I know for me crypto is still super intimidating because you can’t get into it easily. I can’t just whip out my credit card buy some steem or litecoin or eos or bitcoin. There are exchanges and and you need to link them to your bank account and the transactions can take awhile, and who knows if these business’s are trustworthy.... that is why steem is great. I just opened an account, started blogging and now have a crypto investment with zero risk or any fiat put into the system. Plus, it has given me the opportunity to learn about crypto from folks who are less risk adverse.
So yes.... ease of entry and risk adverse.
I think age matters too. The younger a person is the more investment risks a person can take.
Additionally, men of all ages still generally earn more than women and start families later. This gives men more freedom to take financial risks without fearing a long term negative impact.
Way off topic, but for some reason I found that specific background music selection distracting where my ear was listening to the beat and losing focus on your most of your message. Lovely topic and video of course, just wanted to share my 2 cents differently since I'm not sure I have anything extra to add to these comments.
@coruscate - I cannot speak to why women (generically) are not more involved in the cryptocurrency, but I can share why my wife struggles.
The following are some of our differences. I believe my wife represents women as a whole on some of the following:
Just some thoughts!