Where are all the women?

Where are all the women? Why blockchains need women, and how and why we, as women, should mine crypto-currency.

Firstly, let me start by saying that — of course — there are amazing women in cryptocurrency. See Hackernoon’s pub. Stark, Demirors, Arefieva, to name a few, these are women who have worked within the industry and are intrinsic to many elements of its global progression, business development, and technological growth. And most of them don’t want their gender brought into it, which is fine, and is exactly how it should be. In an ideal world.

But we aren’t there yet. We still live in a system that has been corrupted by the patriarchy, and the world of cryptocurrency is not — yet — immune to its oppression. The women in cryptocurrency are too busy kicking ass to also fight for gender equality within the industry, and why should they be both trailblazers and freedom fighters? It is from the masses, the average Janes and Joes, so those of us — like myself — quietly mining and trading away in the background, who need to stand up and start taking up space in this industry, in this community. I believe it has the potential to act as an agent of praxis (change) for us in ways that extend beyond the educational, technological and financial. We have to get the word out to our friends, sisters, girlfriends, coworkers and other women that this is a field, a community, an opportunity, to not only make money, but to make some legitimate and far reaching change for the better.

What is the gender inequality, specifically the pay gap?

Now, I don’t know how to overcome gender inequality. I know we start with education, but to me to start to address such huge structural inequalities, we must dismantle or navigate around other systems that are also designed to create hierarchies of value from which to profit — such as the neoliberal market. It is difficult to address structural inequality in a global context that has been at the mercy of American Imperialism and its resource monopoly since, arguably, the Bretton Wood’s agreement in 1944 and the formation of OPEC in 1960.

I really don’t want to go into it here because it is exhausting, but OPEC is a group of nation states/families who essentially control the sale of oil to the world. It was formed with the help of Henry Kissinger (US president.) It made its member states/families incredibly wealthy, but it also made the US incredibly rich AND powerful. Why? Basically, because part of the deal included a provision that oil would only be sold in US dollars. On a planet that is run off oil and the money that it makes, the US secured itself as the essential cog in a wheel everyone needs to keep on turning. This made them even richer, and more powerful. For as long as the world needs oil, the world needs to buy USD.

But by now, you’re either bored, confused, or lost. Fair. Essentially — we can’t really do much to change big picture problems, as a population of ‘the people’ (so not a politician, CEO etc,) while we have so little control over our lives. The politicians and corporations who make decisions, shape policy and make profit, they are the ones with the control. And they are largely under the thumb of the fairly shadowy puppet theatre that is the IMF, the US Federal reserve and the government who controls them. Cryptocurrency has the potential to change the power exchange. Why? Because of its very nature. It is decentralised, and so the resource (the blocks on the block chain and the coins that are valued to them) cannot be controlled by one state or organisation, as it exists in a digital format that can be owned, controlled and traded by anyone. This means that if we all, as individuals, decided to start using a particular coin instead of the currency given to us to use by our governments, we would be able to drastically alter the power exchange between us, the governments and the corporations.

So how does this relate to women or cryptocurrency?

You can’t make huge change immediately. You have to start with individual actions and deliberation. Cryptocurrency still exists within our system, and so it has still fallen victim to the inequalities of that system. That is, it is largely controlled by and run for the profit and at the behest of men.

https://qz.com/1262167/the-first-rule-of-being-a-woman-in-crypto-is-you-do-not-talk-about-being-a-woman-in-crypto/

This sucks. But this is the case everywhere, in most industries, and particularly in the private sector. So how is crypto-currency different? Well as I said earlier, its transactions are largely anonymous, and the networking and relationship building is done by our computers (or GPU’s or whatever you have going on,) and their software, not by us. So how does dehumanising this process actually allow us to create more equality between humans? Well it takes away the variable that is used to create the inequality — our social identity. Let me explain myself a bit. So when we transact in business, set up deals, get hired, make profit, there is one thing that we do with all of those things — we build relationships. You build rapport with the interviewer, you make friends with the boss over drinks, you slide into the dms of someone whose whitepaper you like, etc etc — you build a relationship in order to get where you what to go, and in order to achieve your goals. Unfortunately, nobody gets a clean slate. We know that there is a boys’ club. We know that women are discriminated against in the workplace, at all levels. But let’s break that down a bit. Below I have a list of some of the causes of the gender pay gap in Australia (currently at 15.3%.) Then, I have put my reasoning as to how crypto has the potential to change this for the better.

Causes of the gender pay gap

Taken from (https://www.wgea.gov.au/addressing-pay-equity/what-gender-pay-gap or to read more https://www.wgea.gov.au/sites/default/files/International-gender-reporting.pdf)

So, the gender pay gap is influenced by a number of factors, including:

1. Discrimination and bias in hiring and pay decisions.

Crypto currency transactions, trading, rewards, profit and relationships (as I said earlier,) rely on connections built between computers, that have their trustworthiness, skill and value checked via complex mathematical algorithms. Human transactions, trading, rewards, profit and relationships rely on connections built between people that have their character and value assessed based on a complex and often offensive and oppressive set of attitudes, values and beliefs (aka ones that are sexist/racist/ableist/homophobic) that are generally unconscious anyway, and so are fairly unpredictable and therefore unreliable. This is what I meant earlier about the dehumanisation — it does not matter what gender you are, as your system does the networking for you. As long as your proofs check out, nobody cares about your pink/black/etc bits, and nobody knows about them, so they can’t unconsciously invalidate you based on old fashioned and ridiculous ideals. Seems like an effective way to eliminate discrimination — eliminate the ability to discriminate by changing the way we assess and build trust in our community, when it comes to our connections. Yes, you have to be active in the crypto world to begin with, but the networking from mining and trading happens on an anonymous platform, so nobody has to know. This means that profit — so coin rewards, mining, arbitrage, coin appreciation profits, these all happen without the need to build human relationships — so no gender bias.

What else?

2. Women and men working in different industries and different jobs, with female-dominated industries and jobs attracting lower wages

3. Women’s disproportionate share of unpaid caring and domestic work

4. Lack of workplace flexibility to accommodate caring and other responsibilities, especially in senior roles

5. Women’s greater time out of the workforce impacting career progression and opportunities.

Crypto currency mining is not a job. You don’t need a degree, a place of work, qualifications and licensing. You don’t need to network and rub shoulders and always have something witty to say, with a carefully ironed shirt on and the ‘right’ genitals (gender inequality is so weird.) You don’t even have to be able to leave your house. You just need the internet and basic computer skills. Crypto mining, in particular, is pretty set and forget. You point your rigs where you want them to go, you turn them on…and you’re good to go. Yes, if you want to experiment with smaller coins, you need to know the coins and watch the market and read the whitepapers, but you can make decent money mining Bitties and Eth, if you are interested in playing it safe. Or just find a mining pool and trust in the knowledge of the community — in crypto mining, you only make money if everyone is making money — and let them make the decisions for you. It is as in depth as you want it to be. This means that, in the case of unpaid caring and domestic work, you can have a machine, literally in your living room (see below photo of MY machine in MY living room — I have just saved up enough to invest in my own GPU rig, so I’m IN this now!) that makes money for you while you go about your day. You don’t even have to have a rig, you can mine on your phone if you want to.

I decided not to crop it so you can all marvel at my luxurious interior.

This is a system that is flexible — again, you can do it on your phone — that allows its user (and the person who profits from it) to fill their time with whatever they please. You can sit watching the blocks roll in, or go to work, or go have a lie down, or change a nappy, or play with your kids. It doesn’t depend on you to be attending to it or working on it, you can live your life on your terms.

No, it isn’t necessarily a cover all solution and I’m not going to tell you that you can make a living mining blocks on your phone (I make about enough to cover my petrol and electricity bills, which is actually pretty good as I live down under), but we (as a global culture) are just at the beginning of our cryptocurrency journey, and this technology gives you the potential to equalise your personal playing field. It is something that mothers can do, that full or part time workers can do, that anyone can do. While entering the field can be daunting, google really is your best friend. There are some amazing and easy to use resources out there that explain the how and the what in really user-friendly language, and the learning process is as time intensive as you want it to be. I don’t really have any computer knowledge outside basic office (excel etc) skills, my background is in literature and language, but it has not been a long or difficult journey for me to get into trading and mining. The most annoying part is honestly getting your wallets set up, and that just requires patience, and google.

Well, at least you have google, right?

Where are all the women? was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.