Among the scathing self-referential critiques that make it to the top of the trending page these days complaining about the system (while simultaneously exploiting it), I've noticed a pattern of claims about women (or rather, "hot girls") having some sort of monetary advantage on this platform. I've only been here a month, but I have yet to witness such a phenomenon. In fact, I've actually been pleasantly surprised to discover that my gender doesn't seem to have much of an impact on anything. Even in my introductory post (which is in dire need of a reboot), in which I am very clearly visible, any comments about my appearance were, at most, compliments about my choice of hair color. (Okay, I'll admit, there was one animated gif of a bear with hearts coming out of its eyes, but it was reference to being able to read Sumerian.) I've been through hundreds of #introduceyourself posts on this platform featuring many young women who I would characterize as attractive, and I can't recall any creepy comments off the top of my head.
Now I must provide a caveat; I operate within a small corner of this site, primarily consisting of academics, historians, poets, and photographers. My modest following is probably split evenly among men and women, if I had to guess--which, as you'll see below, is not representative of the site as a whole. I also keep my NSFW filter on, so if there are many scantily clad women profiting handsomely from their photos and taking up the entirety of the trending page, I'm out of the loop. (No shade meant to be thrown at our scantily clad sisters--you do you, girl.)
But let's put aside the scantily clad element and talk about being a woman on this site in a more general sense. There have only been two times when anyone has mentioned this phenomenon directly to me, and each time it was the assertion that I, as a woman, will have an easier time developing a following and attracting upvotes. The irony in that statement is that, if that is indeed false, it would suggest that there may be a slight disadvantage because of the perception of an unfair advantage, which may make some more reluctant to upvote or support female content creators out of resentment. But that's just a theory.
Enough with the opinions--let's see some numbers!
I admit that I'm naturally inclined to believe that women are at a disadvantage in most aspects of life, and I can only speak from the perspective of someone with some disappointing experiences which have colored my beliefs, so I'm hardly objective. I have no desire to start a debate about wage gaps, so let's talk numbers here with respect to Steemit in particular (and I'm open to a collective brainstorm on how we might accomplish this in the most objective way possible).
According to Alexa, Steemit's demographics are overwhelmingly male. Eyeballing it, it looks something like 5-to-1 male to female. That sounds staggeringly high, but it's actually slightly lower than the ratio on Coinbase, so that makes sense, since the site is built on blockchain and is largely populated by crypto enthusiasts.
Taking the 5-to-1 ratio as a benchmark, I looked at lists of the most successful users on Steemit by various metrics. At first I was looking at Steem Power, but I realized that the lists were too populated with bots or accounts that weren't exactly tied to personalities for one reason or another, and so I went with numbers of followers and posting rewards. I could only find some lists that are slightly outdated, but that's good enough for me. The top posting rewards list would probably be the most representative because it means that the account is posting original content in one way or another and not just upvoting or resteeming for bribes.
Now, you'll have to allow some margin of error here and insert caveats about gender identity, as I was giving a cursory glance at each and noting if I could tell that the poster appears or presents themselves as female, or appears or presents themselves as male, or if I couldn't tell one way or another.
| Gender | Followers | Posting Rewards |
|---|---|---|
| Male | 31 | 27 |
| Female | 4 (+1 resteem account) | 8 |
| Unknown | 14 | 15 |
Although there are plenty of unknowns here, the point is that only 5 (but really 4) of the top 50 followed accounts, and 8 out of the top 50 most financially successful accounts, are held by users whom others would recognize as women (and are therefore capable of deriving any monetary advantage because of their gender). Even when you adjust for the high male-to-female ratio, women are at best slightly underrepresented among the most successful Steemit users. Of course, this sample size is small, and a thorough study would look at other metrics as well. I invite anyone to jump in on this if they feel inclined. It could be interesting to look at the genders of the most influential users (i.e., the "whales"), but I haven't been around long enough to have the encyclopedic knowledge required to do a deep dive into the matter (no pun intended).
If this pattern holds up, it would suggest to me that the simple fact of being female is not inherently financially advantageous on this site, even if a small number of women post in ways that take advantage of their gender or sexuality. (And as a final thought, I would argue that there is nothing inherently lesser about posting scantily clad pictures of oneself than posting about any other topic that interests you, but that's a discussion for another time.)
Edit: I just read in an illuminating post by @ladiesofsteemit that there are only two confirmed female witnesses (out of 400!). Obviously, that power imbalance far exceeds the 5-1 ratio of men to women on Steemit and certainly deserves a closer look.
I was very happy to see a relatively new female Steemian do very well in one of her posts: https://steemit.com/classical-music/@tin-tin/music-life-a-little-bit-of-cellist-hell-with-canon-in-d-and-some-sleepy-time-with-a-vivaldi-concerto
I have enjoyed your posts very much and perhaps because I have spent too much time doing the more 'creative' stuff I tend to run into female Steemians most of the time.
We might have to get someone from #blockchainbi to look into this one. Incidentally, @paulag is doing a tremendous job leading the group and no doubt would have a few sapiosexual (a word I just learnt yesterday) admirers!
thanks for the shout out.... its very difficult to find the gender ratio because as @malloryblythe points out, there are too many unknowns. But I do have an idea on something I can work on to contribute to this discussion....thanks for the inspiration
I really enjoyed the last couple of posts that you wrote up, and have been looking for ideas myself to contribute, but as you can see I have been spreading myself a bit thin as usual :p
Also, I think it would be great if #blockchainbi is interested in contributing an article to the @steemfreepress project that @tonyr has started. I thought it would by a good idea to have some factual articles about the Steemit blockchain to balance the creative and literary articles in it so perhaps this could be something to keep in mind.
And I am always happy to promote the great work that you and the team at #blockchainbi rea doing, especially to people that might not be aware of it :)
Awesome! I'd love to hear more about that. Let me know if I can help.
I am feeling the same as Teamgirlpowa about where on earth have you been my 3 months here at steemit !! LOL . I want to follow everyone you are following , because I need to increase that demographic in my feed and also want to read their posts, of course. I find this post to be a balanced and reasonable inquiry. I , too, find that those posts that exist only to complain about the supposed hot girl phenomenon weirdly neglect to mention all the people making money with relatively empty posts, such as complaining about hot girls on steemit... i dont know. But also there are so many posts all over steemit that don't necessarily have much real value but they earn like a $200 SBD because of the "star power" / hottness of the author. I thought that was one of the things that Steemit wants us to do? Cultivate star power (some kind of following due to some kind of hotness of mind, body, spirit, whatever) and that is how you will earn every time you cough out anything. So I am not sure why these guys are mad at the women who follow this formula whether they post about their favorite movies or whether they use cute pictures of themselves... they are following the formula presented to all of us as the way to earn , here. So my longwinded response is that why do "hot women" get complained about or shamed for doing the very thing we are all encouraged to do?
Since I came into Steemit looking for a platform to connect with other creatives in fashion-marketing-content creation- writing sphere I feel like I did quite a bit of poking around before making my first initial posts. I felt like I have seen quite a few "hot girls" posting more empty-ish posts but, exactly! Work that curation power - as a marketing professional I get it. "Market" yourself girl. Also, I'm predominantly tracking #fashion and fashion related tags. So a lot of #OOTD posts.
Its super interesting and I'm glad @malloryblythe posted this article because it does definitliey have me thinking a lot more in regards to the community as a whole.
Thank you! You gals (and guys) are making me feel so welcome. I think they're mad because they think it's unfair that women get to take advantage of their looks and they think that men don't (even though they totally could... I mean there are dudes out there that post pictures of their six packs with plenty of drooling admirers; granted, it's less frequent). For some of them, maybe they've felt burned by women because they don't get the attention they think they deserve. It's silly for many reasons, not the least of which is that it's not like it's any different than having any other genetic leg up in life. If you're profiting from being an athlete or a personal trainer and posting workout videos, you're honing a talent that was likely aided by natural genetic ability, and is much harder for women to achieve at the same level.
Holy shit!!!! Im having heart palpitations!!!!! Where have you been all my steemit life? Are yiu in tgp? How did i miss such a badass person?!?!?! -limabeing aka capn girlpowa
Hi! Thank you! I actually didn't know teamgirlpowa was a thing; I was just searching around for feminist tags for my post hahaha. But if that's a thing then I'm totally down.
Hell yeah!!!
I think your point down in the comment section about "The more male-dominated a scene is, the more that any woman that is seen stands out" is pretty great. I hadn't thought of it in that sense before, but it does check out.
Regarding the data, a couple of things I'll point out:
First, in terms of followers, women are massively underrepresented, assuming that we look only at the "gendered" pool, they're 11.4-13.8%.
But in terms of posting rewards, looking just at the gendered group it's 22.8%, which is a good deal above the 16.67% of 1-to-5 ratio (Assuming it's 1-to-5 and not 1-in-5, in which case it's 20%, and only slightly over-represented).
The other point is about the witnesses. It's important to note the key word there is "confirmed." We don't know the gender of many witnesses. Especially outside of the top 50 or so (and most interfaces actively don't show you anyone but the top 50, including Steemit's own dedicated page for it), and out of those top 50, quite a few are collectives or companies, rather than "people" (such as Curie, Utopian-io, and quite a few others).
There's still a massive disparity, but the presentation of the edit is more than a bit misleading. The two mentioned female witnesses are very high profile, and no, not just because of the thing I noted at the outset of this comment - Patrice's influence on Steemit, and Crimsonclad's on basically all Discord servers related to Steemit is huge.
Also, I don't hold much weight by "witnesses" - the top 20 get to make decisions on changes to the platform. The people at the bottom are just people who run servers (and basically anyone can do it) and who have no real impact on the platform. You'll see plenty of people march around them being witnesses without it doing anything, and without them having any real understanding of the platform either :-/
@paulag does data analysis of Steemit under the utopian-io initiative. Might be worth hitting her up to see if she could and is interested in having a deeper look at the topic (assuming she hadn't and I just didn't see it, which is quite possible). Edit: I see she replied to the top comment, my bad. I blame lack of sleep and antibiotics.
Thank you so much for this! There's a lot of great information to dig into--this was exactly what I was hoping for in terms of collaboration. :)
I didn't do the research myself on the two confirmed witnesses, so I can't guarantee the methodology, but I asked the woman who did and she said she personally went through and looked through profiles to check for any indications of gender. Even though we don't know the genders for sure in many cases (a problem I came up against when I took my cursory look at the two metrics I mentioned), it's statistically pretty unlikely that the unknowns could include enough women enough that they'd hit the 16.67% mark.
I think the bottom line is that since we're dealing with a platform that is completely governed by its users, even if women and other minority groups were to become disproportionately represented in the higher ranks, there would still never be equality of power unless we got our number of users to be a little more even. But of course that's an entirely different question than whether or not being female gives you an advantage.
Yeah, I actually read that piece when it was first written, but only glanced at it again when I posted the above comment, as it was already after 2 AM...
As for your final point, the way Steemit works actually means that isn't true, because on Steemit, your SP is your power, and if the only women on Steemit were the top 100 SP-holders, then the platform would be decided by women, even though in absolute numbers their percentage would be tiny.
The top 40 users on the platform hold over 90% of the power on the platform...
But yes, such an environment does not lend itself to more women coming, which in turn doesn't lend itself to more women coming. Though I can say that of all the big internet communities I've been on, Steemit has a much higher representation of women, even if not in the higher echelons. Though it could be just the circles on Steemit I'm hanging around in.
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This is cool. I think when people get into new frontier territory there's this preconceived idea that the population will be male dominated, and that because of the lack of females, the females that do venture here will be able to take advantage of the over enthusiastic male audience, which is bullshit. This isn't the wild west, and I'm assuming that (most of) the men on here aren't sex crazed, and (most of) the females aren't really interesting in making a profit off of their bodies.
My theory is that the more male dominated a space is, the more that the men in it tend to believe that the women are favored, because female success stands out to them so much and that's what really sticks in their memories. In my experience, in spaces where there's a more even split and access to opportunity, gender doesn't come up at all.
This. But even if they did profit off their bodies who cares? I really thought it was anything goes around here. There are people who profit off their name recognition, their wealth that they had before they came here, or other mystique that doesnt quite have to do with the quality of their posts. So I think its really fair for cute women to be as cute as they want if that ups their SBD so be it. But you are so right Mallory, it also stands out because the ratio is so off here.
Yeah, I've noticed that, too. I think men generally overestimate this sort of thing, unconsciously.
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An interesting investigation, but I am not sure of the results, but mostly I guess, it doesn't matter much to me. If I look at who I follow, and the content I enjoy, and the people in chat I interact with, for me it seems to be about a 30% male 50% female 20% unknown. But it really does not matter, People are People. I see some women with a lot of earning on steemit, and I see some men with small earnings on steemit. It is the amount of work a person is willing to put in that ultimately determines the earnings, or reputation. But earnings and reputation can be bought if a person wants to do such a thing. The only real way to figure out advantage/disadvantage is to only compare the organic growth factor of accounts. But it was interesting reading.
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I suppose my point was more to erode the resentment against women that I see in some corners of this site because of a perception of favoritism that I don't believe actually exists, and I think it might actually go the other way. I actually heard today that there are only 2 female witnesses (out of several hundred), which is a serious gender imbalance if I've ever heard one. I don't think it applies to us (or to #newbieresteemday in general) because of the demographic that enjoys the content we make, but it does apply to the overall inequality in influence and power on this site if men are holding the vast majority of the SP while simultaneously believing (wrongly) that women have an unfair advantage.
Thank you so much for the upvote, as always!
It seems that not enough rich women have found steemit. But then again most of the rich women are out in the real world trying to help real people. (I know some are just shopping and buying and stuff like that, but I prefer my fantasy vision of rich women, wanting to help others, not indulge themselves.) Not that we are not real, mind you. it could also have something to do with genetics, where women tend to be more family, nurture, caregiver, and men , well we are kind of like "what do you want me to do to fix it" mentality or screw them it's mine mine I tell ya, it's all mine. But at the end of the day none of us have an unfair advantage. Except the really rich people, and without there being rich people there is nothing to strive for, nothing to reach for or reach beyond. I guess I kind of see through rose colored glasses at times, I started here like the vast majority without putting in a single dime of my own money, so any growth, or lack of growth is my doing, not because it is "unfair" here on steemit. (Uhmm my thoughts shut down).
To say that what she is offering is a complaint of unfairness would be very unecessary diminiutive. When talking about your personal experience and the large scale of steemit there is a vast difference!
But the question is--- is there a perception that women have it easier? That they can just be cute (well damn, im out) and start bathing in riches?? Id say yes. and id also mentioned that there are people who are whales to have also not put anything in but they came in early on.
But yet we don't see those people getting interviewed by a lot of the other people are doing that type of thing. We don't see them on steam panels. Well not until now not until some of us started complaining about it and some of us being me.
Also every time I mention to the people that I am in a group with, Who are women, that we should become a witness it becomes this huge thing. Why? My guess is because a lot of women do not want to make waves so on the surface we can say oh yeah steam it is very excepting of women but is soon as you start to poke holes in that surface you will get a lot of shit. This is and to say that I don't love steam. And fact I think I think the block chain is is very malleable and we have a lot of opportunity in this way. Additionally being that the whole concept is freedom of speech and decentralization et , can't really shut us down when we are talking about feminism or issues like this. But it can be a slippery slope because this is a meritocracy which also often turns into you know of a popularity contest. If people who have more power than you don't like you then you're screwed. But if you find the right people who get your shit and who support you then it's awesome
I don't think she was complaining about unfairness, I think she was trying to point out the question, is there or is there not unfairness - - Like her - - - I just don't know. I don't look for it, so I may not see it, a forest for the trees thing. I do understand that some people came in early and have made it to whale status without putting their own money in, by being themselves and by being organic grown by steemit. Two of the people I hold in extremely high esteem on steemit happen to be women, In fact I have more respect for those two than any of the men, (including the founders), on steemit. The third person I hold in very high esteem on steemit is not even a whale, and does actually happen to be a he. Most of the people I meet on steemit, I have no clue as to their sex, and generally genuinly do not care. They are either nice, or not.
These are all great things but that surface level when you're talking about how things are happening and you go beyond your network then it's where are you start to see that this kind of thinking is a problem. That's when you start to see that it's a façade of saying well oh gender doesn't matter. The fact is that although we are on the Internet And this is a "decentralized freedom block chain" there are people that make the rules and we follow those rules. There are people that make changes and we have to do with those changes. And most importantly there are general consensus among the largest of groups. Steam is very small and although we can easily get locked intoour own little world. We it's still very like you can see everything happening if you just try and look. We have flag wars and we have people you know talking crap about one witness and you know #Feminism alone is something that is disturbing for anyone who's interested in women's empowerment outside of the block chain. That's kind of a situation where it's like it's great that if you stay in your little bubble and you stay in your lane then you can you know do OK without getting harassed to much. Yes some of my favorite people on steam it are meant if you check my blog you will see that I like man! And I also really love seeing women break out of traditional roles actually I love seeing men breakout of traditional roles too I love uplifting people who are struggling to own their identity because other people tell them that it's wrong . And honestly those people don't get too much shit but they kind of get ignored if it's not in a chat room or something like that. But again these are not numbers this is just my opinion and my personal experience so we can probably go back-and-forth and get nowhere
Well, I'll put it this way... if there is unfairness based on gender, the data says that it's not in favor of women. Since I'm still new I spend a lot of time looking at #introduceyourself and newly submitted posts finding hidden gems to follow, so I get a pretty broad taste of what's on this site, and the vast majority of it is written by men because of the 5-to-1 ratio. When you get to trending, there are even fewer female authors. This post was inspired by two recent trending articles that each made hundreds of dollars, and in each case the articles prominently featured complaints about how "hot girls" make so much money (ironically), with plenty of cheering on in the comments. So from what I see there is serious resentment against women among some very popular male authors here.
On the other hand, my feed looks very different because it's heavily curated to my tastes, and I know that we more or less run in the same crowd. I don't follow any men who make sexist comments about women, but I do follow many badass super talented women with excellent taste in resteems, as well as many badass super talented men. If the whole site looked like my feed, this would probably be the most awesomely not sexist social media platform on the whole entire internet. ;)
Yeah, exactly--that's what I'm getting at. In the larger Steemit ecosystem (which is much more expansive than the one that @bashadow and I occupy), there is an attitude that, as you said women "can just be cute and start bathing in riches," and if you look at the data, that's just not the reality here. As I mentioned in another comment above, I think that the more male dominated a space is, the more that men notice the rare instance when a woman is successful, and that's what sticks in their memory and gets blown out of proportion as something "unfair."
I think that my post actually does very little complaining or hurling accusations, and I was deliberate in backing off of larger conversations about feminism or using feminist language (hence why I said I don't want to start a discussion about wage gaps). It's kind of annoying that I had to do that, but I wanted to make this post broadly accessible. No matter what there are going to be people who read this and think I am being "aggressive" because of the subject matter, but I wanted to mitigate that a little and get a real conversation started (to the best of my ability).
You were literally tapping into every single thing that drives me insane. Have you looked at #Feminism ?
I haven't! I'm still pretty new here so I'm just finding my group, but I'll definitely browse and see what's there! Sounds like my kinda people.
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I haven't been a Steemian long but I have noticed that some of the people who post "hot girl" pics here — whether they themselves fit that description or not — are putting obstacles in the way of their own reward success. For instance, they post too many introduceyourself entries (each Steemian is meant to post approximately one), or they otherwise engage in tag spamming (often inadvertently, I believe), or they post photos found elsewhere on the web and thus get deprecated, if not actually flagged, for lack of originality. As far as the perception that they "have it too easy" goes, I'd bet they could have it much easier if they were smarter about how they post.
So much for that. Now, as for what really matters — you can actually read Sumerian?!
I've definitely seen people chewed out for posting too many #introduceyourself articles, or for tag spamming/unoriginal content. I haven't seen much of the hot girl stuff but it's probably because of my NSFW filter.
Yeah, I can! I was a historian specializing in Mesopotamia in my former life (before I decided to come home and change career trajectories), so I studied a couple of ancient languages.
Thank you for stopping by!
OK, I'll bite. Which other ancient language did you study?
I studied Sumerian and Akkadian in grad school, and dabbled in Egyptian for a short time, and Ancient Greek as an undergrad. I know Latin well enough to tutor high school kids in it (so, basically, Cambridge Latin Course Latin... I'm not like an expert in medieval Latin or anything). Sadly, I'm pretty bad at modern languages... would be really cool if I could speak Spanish or something. :/
I once read a rumor that Sumerian and Akkadian are pretty different.
Haha, that they are!
very interesting post @malloryblythe I'm so surprised there are only two confirmed female witnesses out there (although many people do like the anonymity of the platform so maybe there are some unconfirmed women hiding??? I hope lol )
I hope so! It's just that I doubt that they would be the 65 or so that they'd need to be to be representative of the gender ratio on Steemit :/
yeah.. 65..prob not hiding that many lol
mallory have you looked into the racial demographics of the witnesses also? or country of origin? just curious what that looks like.
I haven't, but I'd love to do that.
This is very interesting, and I quite agree with your analysis. I have also found that a lot of my comments (when I upload posts that include pictures of myself) tend to focus on my appearance, and not at all about the content of the post. It is obviously not only this platform that struggles with that, but I definitely do see your point. I looove the pins too, by the way!
Thanks! Yeah, my ballet teacher was awesome. I was a punk in high school and apparently she was one in the 80s, so she took a liking to me and mentored me a lot. :)
Nothing prevents women from becoming witnesses on steemit. They just simply aren't doing it.
(Tagging @dflo so she sees this)
Warning: long comment ahead (because there’s a lot to unpack here!). I’ll link to a couple of sources here, since you asked, @neoxian.
The underlying problem that you’re coming up against is akin to the debates we have all the time about underrepresentation among minorities in positions of power. For instance, I grew up in a city that is nearly 50% Latinx and over 8% black, but our public university (UCLA) is only slightly above 20% Latinx and 5% black, and that’s despite scholarships and other programs designed to recruit minority students. Why are rates of incarceration and poverty still so much higher among African Americans, who make up 34% of our prison population? We can see the numbers very clearly, and (I hope) we can all agree that black people and Latinx people aren’t just inherently born with a lack of motivation to succeed, and numbers like that aren’t coincidence.
Now, to focus it more on some of my theories about underrepresentation on Steemit, particularly among witnesses. It could have to do with the severe underrepresentation of women in tech in general. There is requisite technical knowledge that people have to have to be witnesses, and women are underrepresented in those fields. But still, the percentage of witnesses is much lower than the percentages of women in tech in general. Why is that?
I’ll draw on direct experience. This post was responding to two different articles I read on here that made literally hundreds of dollars, in which a significant chunk of both articles were expressing extreme resentment toward women on this platform, for reasons which I think I’ve adequately refuted with numbers (or at least set a solid foundation to refute). In response to those articles, there were many comments congratulating or endorsing those views, as if the upvotes aren’t enough to express how widely that article was approved of in this community. When I commented back, I personally was objectified and asked to show pictures to evaluate my “hotness” (see my screenshot above)—no efforts made to actually engage with or respond to my comment. When women read articles that are that hateful toward us and see them rewarded like that, and comments by women are dismissed, it sends a clear message that women are unwelcome and not respected intellectually. Something tells me that the man who wrote that article (who clearly has a lot of power on this site), and all of those people approving of that article, are not prone to vote for female witnesses, if their sexism is really so ingrained that they're completely overlooking how toxic and harmful their behavior is toward women.
As for the wider problem of women in tech, I can speak from life experience. I was a computer nerd as a kid. As a 10 year old, in the infancy of the internet, I was at home taking apart and putting computers back together. I taught myself how to code as a middle schooler. Some of the things I was exposed to as a female child were just… awful. I had to hide my gender to avoid harassment. I dropped computer programming in 9th grade. As a 25 year old, I worked in a computer repair shop for a brief period of time, and the sexual harassment I faced was just ridiculous. My supervisor asked to put my period on the calendar so he could schedule himself around me. It was a joke, but it was a really hurtful and embarrassing one. Customers would constantly express surprise to learn that I was in fact not the receptionist, and would ask to speak to a real technician. I started feeling extremely depressed and constantly kicked down, so I left the job after 6 months.
I do hope you’ll keep an open mind to these points and consider them, as I have genuinely considered yours.
Maybe, maybe not. But the question is why.
That's a great question.
There is no magic force that prevents women from researching online the mechanics of becoming a witness. Nothing prevents them from purchasing a computer or a hosted service. Nothing prevents them from downloading the software needed. Nothing prevents them from reading the documentation or asking questions or figuring out how to do it.
Nothing prevents them from campaigning for votes.
You are saying "maybe". Is there any question of this?
I vote for Patrice by the way, she does quite well, so it's theoretically possible.
The truth is that most women just don't want to bother with it.
the "they simply arent doing it" question is one of those chicken-or-the-egg questions that always gets brought up when people don't want to recognize a cultural pressure or scenario that does not give everyone an equal footing. Women CAN work to become witnesses and they totally should. But there are particular challenges that they face when trying to step out front as leaders, that most men never have to face. Many women give up if those challenges keep flying at them and they see that men are havingt an easier time climbing the ladder. Anyway there are TOMES of data and information available online and in books and so on that explain why and how cultual biases and systemic issues do make it more challenging. I am not sure why you say most women dont want to bother with it. The core of that issue is also the same problem. I am a part of many womens leadership groups in a few different feilds. Some feilds have more diversity than others. Crypto and blockchain are not one of those feilds and its not because women dont WANT to bother with it. Its deeper and more nuanced than that.
Bullshit. I knew someone would bring this up. Some vague boogieman that somehow prevents woman from doing the activities above.
Again, if you wanted to become a witness, what specifically would prevent you from doing the activities above? If there are tomes of data, then feel free to specifically quote something. Don't let me hold you back.
Nothing prevents women from getting into crypto-currencies and blockchains. All the software, wallets, computers, etc are freely available or purchasable by women.
Be specific, what challenge would emerge that would prevent a women from being a witness, that a man wouldn't face?
Put the responsibility in the right place, most women choose not to do these things.
I don't want to get into a big debate of this kind with someone who doesn't want to hear about the issues. It is not access as much as it is attitudes and subtle bias that push back when women enter these spaces. Its not a boogieman. Its also not IMPOSSIBLE to deal with but it does deter a lot of women who would rather not deal with it. That is where the choice part does lie. Some women keep pushing through and they succeed. There are just many more who will give up when they are treated for example like sex objects, or like people think they are trying to be sex objects, day in and day out at work.. or when a woman says her idea in a meeting and then 3 seconds later a man says the exact same thing and acts like it was his idea. Or when a woman stands up to present a plan when she is in a leadership position, her ideas get picked apart in a way that never happens to men. The standards are often different. Not always. but often enough to make it really tiring. This stuff happens in tiny ways continuously and some women are deterred by it and some are not. I agree with you thats a choice that women do make when they step out of those scenarios. Sometimes they do it for their health though. But it definitely happens in a very large scale way. It is not a barrier in the sens that you are trying to make it, where there is just a big NO sign and no access and a boogyman. There are just lots of tiny things along the way that add up. I dont want to get in a pissing match over it though. If you dont agree or believe this that is sincerely alright with me.
And I don't like to debate someone who puts words into my mouth or attempts to strawman my position.
Exactly where did I say that I didn't want to hear the issues? Didn't I do precisely the opposite in fact and ask you for specific examples and quotes from all those Tomes of books?
To your point about sex objects, no one treats Patrice like a sex object. I have never seen this. At least, no one who matters, there is always some random minnow or asshole, but I get random insults from no-name minnows myself.
Welcome to the Internet, eveyone needs a thick skin, not just women.
Wow, tell me how I can enter this magic universe where my ideas never get picked apart. Everyone's ideas get picked part in Steemit. You are picking apart my ideas right now, oops, better shutdown my witness...or maybe not. I'm picking apart your ideas. Are you going to leave Steemit now?
Women live longer than men on average. If this is a health issue, then shouldn't women have the advantage here?
I do call it a boogyman, because it exists mostly in the minds of people who need an excuse never to try anything that takes effort, or as an excuse on why they gave up.
Defeat this boogyman and be amazing. Do the things you want to do.
Feminism, heh. Replying to myself so I can track down this chat I had 5 years ago.
As a man, I see countless times here in Portugal that women are harmed numerous times, socially, professionally, in relationships, etc. situations. But one thing I can say is that because of the impact that feminism has had, women are starting to get more value than men. At least in my country. And that was not supposed to happen. Feminist is equality. One example is that we, men, have to pay twice as women only to enter in a disco (I'm not really a fan of disco, but hey, I see the prices); Women are being hired to work, thanks to feminism to be in force, and leaving many men behind.
I emphasize with this you know? I am in favor of feminism. Yes, feminism, not feminazism. And believe me or not, I have seen many women claiming to be feminists and not being feminist, only feminazi.
You have to know the difference. So my country still has a lot going forward and evolving if it really wants equality for all rights.
Regarding Steemit and what you said, I'm not sure if it will be true because I have not done much research yet. But on the question "You're hot or not" it depends a lot on the taste of men. If they really find some women more beautiful than others, it varies greatly from person to person. The same can be said for us men. I do not consider myself beautiful, nor do I want to be judged by it here. My content is what really matters.
What do you think about what I said?
I would like to discuss this subject further and learn more about what is really happening in the world of women, and to be able to give you my support as a man. Because yes, there are men who support equality, and I am one of them.
Cheers,
@ t-miles
Thank you for your thoughts! I certainly appreciate the comments, though I have some responses:
I'll start with the most minor one, about women paying half as much to enter a disco. That's actually an example of the opposite of women's equality and/or feminism, and personally, I stay away from any club that does that. The reason that they pay half as much is that women are seen as sex objects and they are encouraged to come into the disco so that men can be attracted to go there to objectify them and prey on them. The financial incentive is paid for by our safety.
For some reason people tend to separate out feminism and activism to bring up members of any minority, so I'm going to bring those two back together in discussing the issue of disproportionate numbers of women entering the work force. In the US at least, we have a very diverse country but many of the better paying jobs are heavily dominated by white men. The fact is that we could spend two generations waiting for it to even out and continuing to have white men making much more money than people of color and women, or we could actively recruit people into those roles who haven't had an equal chance. Even still, we still have a tech industry where only 5% of CEOs of startups are women, and entry level engineers are less than 25% female, so men still have a strong advantage whether or not we're actively trying to bring women in (I posted a link to the exact statistics in another comment above). I actually think it's valid to argue whether or not affirmative action is "fair" and I don't necessarily think that everyone who thinks it's unfair is coming from a place of sexism or racism, but personally I think we're still not doing enough and affirmative action is one of the only ways we can speed up the process, because we need to take direct action if we want to speed up the process of gaining equality for women and people of color.
Also... I know you don't mean that this way but "feminazism" is super offensive. I'm Jewish and my great grandparents were lucky to make it out of Ukraine and Poland before the Holocaust, but a lot of members of my extended family didn't. Even the most aggressive feminists out there are certainly not equivalent to Nazis. I'll be the first to say that there are corners of the feminist movement that I wouldn't personally participate in, but I do understand the anger and frustration when so many women out there have been the victims of violence themselves. After you've survived being beaten or sexually assaulted, often numerous times, it's a lot to ask of a woman to be polite talking to someone telling them that they have some kind of advantage in life.
There are some pretty hateful women out there under the cover of "feminism", and their talk about men is not all that different from how Hitler and his followers used to talk about jews...I am sorry to hear about you ancestors...
Well, first of all, I want to apologize for the term I used. I don't know any other way of expressing a woman who wants to be, in terms of superiority, over man. Femist? I don't know, could you give me the correct word? :)
About what you said, I'm so sorry for them ... really. It hurts me when I thought about what Germany did in the last century, and about what USA did to Japan (I love Japan so much).
So I can understand your pain, and your frustration too. I can understand even the frustration of women when they are angry at the men. But you know, let's imagine if all the women were angry at men? What were the possibilities? War? Women vs. Men? No more child? No more love between opposite genres? So many things I could say that many people don't think.
That's not the solution to all the problems that women have. The solution is like you and I said, no more one above each other. It's equal rights, and change the mind of the future generation. All the problems are in the mind. And it's always one against the other, but what matters is that in the future we could have a moment of harmony and that the harmony could end up with the disrespect for women in the past, and the superiority of men. No one is superior to anyone. No one is inferior to anyone.
Cheers,
@t-miles
I think you definitely see an advantage. I think there are catfish accounts all over on here. I once got a spam warning one time, not even sure why it was in the first few days on here. I noticed there were a fair amount of blatant spam accounts on here that happen to have a nice young woman pictured in the corner, and they had been a spam account for months. So I changed my account picture to some picture of an attractive women I found online and posted to my account and message the server (I think I was cheetah or another one like that) "Don't worry problem solved!" They didn't think it was very funny and they threatened to flag me. I apologized and I am now extremely careful to not bring any account monitoring automated bot by my account again.
It may seem like that qualitatively because it's easier to notice successful women when there aren't very many of them, but the numbers are showing that women are actually disadvantaged, especially when it comes to positions of power in the upper echelons (becoming a witness and/or a whale). Women are lagging behind a lot. It's ironic but the more disadvantaged that a minority group is, the more that people tend to think that they have an advantage because of selection bias.
Ahh good point. This is why I try not to generalize too much because usually I AM ALWAYS WRONG like here now that I take a step back. I read the article and agree with a lot of it. Actually in my experience I find it statistically irrelevant the positives vs negatives in any particular gender. Neither is superior, they both are very human, that's usually where I leave it, but this time I didn't and look where it gets me, nowhere. Anyone that finds a person's background a skill or liability as far as things they cannot help is committing a civil rights violation in my opinion, end of story. Employers are allowed to be shady in this respect up to a point because more often than not, that's the law, whether we like it or not. Until the exact wording and full enforcement of the law is carried out, the behavior continues until it is outgrown and rightfully shamed out of (especially mainstream) existence. That's why I wish reformers would more so lobby collectively for their vote to truly matter and get the attention of everybody in higher office, like in PACs, or whatever legal option there is to form collective single issue interests. I have not read it because I cannot locate the title at the moment, but there was a book I'd really like to read by someone who studies the Quakers, and found that they had been on the ground floor of countless social change in the United States, even worldwide. The author laid out about 20 principles, of which only a few I can remember him discussing on the radio, one was not caring about getting credit for your accomplishment or caring who gets credit for the accomplishment. Another was carrying out the movement for the social change throughout your lifetime and accepting that you may not live to see the in this desired social change in your lifetime. All I could remember was that they were the polar opposite of the most tightly held ideals, at the minimum of national politics as of today, lol. Of course the Abolitionist Movement of the 19th century comes to mind there and the Civil Rights Reforms of the 1960's (and ongoing). That's what I get for generalizing, like usual wrong again.
Oh that's alright! We're here to untangle this and think through it together. :) The problem with a platform like this that is completely decentralized and lawless is that there's no way to enforce anything unless you get everyone to bandwagon on it, and mob rule can be really... bad. And if we're in a situation where women are outnumbered 5 to 1 then obviously women's interests aren't going to be pushed by the mob. IMO, the only solution is for us to bring more women onto this platform. Same goes for any underrepresented group on here. We need more diverse voices. Only then will the balance of power even out!
Yes, agreed, you get bat (excriment) peasant revolution craziness like this. I visited your blog because I saw you on @davemccoy 's page earlier as well on as on asher's abh12345. I actual started the day before @davemccoy did, and we have been chatting up ever since very early on here. I am on most of the same discord servers (cryptkeeper17 #6637) if you would ever like to explore some options in how to organically grow your account with others I have been lucky enough to work with. Thanks for the great chat, if not interested best of luck keep up the great work!
I added you on discord. I’m always up for sharing ideas!
I'm all for a "level playing field" and I think that your pic:
Is pretty awesome, for anyone! Especially the "Limits Exist only in your MIND" pin. THAT is the biggest hurdle for anyone, overcoming your own self-imposed limits. Then the ones that others set for us, although most of our own limits are programmed from birth by societal norms. Is it easier being a Man? I believe so. We have a new but quickly growing Discord Group, and my top 2 officers are WOMEN. AFAIK, they are both over 30, as a point of reference... I treat them as my EQUALS, intentionally so. I have not once knowingly "pulled rank" nor have we set it up as such, but I happen to be what Discord calls the administrator. As far as possible in the Discord Controls, we all have the same powers. I believe that leads to a better result in our endeavors on Steemit. In this sense, we are all practicing the "Golden Rule" and it is working. Top to Bottom, all our officer stations are 50/50 females and males. I believe our membership MAY be slightly female dominated... but we don't required gender announcement. Some that I thought might be men are actually women, once they use an avatar. We are not going to recruit males to fill any perceived "deficits" nor do we view it that way! ;)
Great Article, @malloryblythe! If you are interested in our group, I am on Discord
That’s awesome, thanks for stopping by! What’s your group?
This is the community Bot Account for #minnowbootcamp. @underground is my 'handler' and the bot has the supporters on auto-vote. Currently almost 90% full in membership. I'll insert a discord link.
https://discord.gg/F87xnMB
I am looking for people to be NCO's (non-commissioned officers) to help Herd the Swarm :D
I added you!