Women and Cryptocurrency: How Steemit Can Attract Women to the Crypto World
A few day ago, @gavvet shared a post about some interesting demographic data about Steemit that showed how male presence is still highly dominant on Steemit. I wasn't surprised. When I first started my journey on Steemit and learning more about the crypto world I knew I was getting into a male territory since, similarly to other tech-powered communities, anything related to cryptocurrency is still predominantly male.
The reason to that can be attributed to the social mindset that lean some fields to the male or female side. Men get interested in the crypto world because other men are starting to invest on it. Women don't because it's not an area they feel women should step their feet into. In addition, the lack of women in the crypto world is due to the fact that in many places, like Brazil and India, a big part of women are still not financially independent and still rely on the males of their family for money-related decision making.
The Female Representation on the Cryptocurrency World
Although women, in general, haven't been attracted to cryptocurrency subjects, there are some important names representing the gender, such as Michele Seven. Known as Bitcoin Belle, she participates in discussions and podcasts about the future of Bitcoin and together with Pua Pyland, the author of the blog The Bitcoin Wife hosts a chat where 130 women from all around the world discuss cryptocurrencies and blockchain.
The Forum led to the creation of the London Women in Bitcoin meetups, organized by Rhian Lewis - a digital journalist at thetimes.co.uk, co-developer of CountMyCrypto, a cryptocurrency calculator, and altcoin monitor - and Magdalena, also known as Bitcoin Mama.
The advantage of these meetups comparing to any other similar to them are that women feel more comfortable to participate and learn since general crypto meetups are regularly perceived as directed towards men. Where women perhaps would never have courage or the desire to participate in discussions with men whom they would perceive as being intimidatingly knowledgeable to adress beginner questions. So it's important to remark that the question of the inclusion of women in the crypto community is directly related to how its promoters address the wider community.
How Steemit Can Help
Although cryptocurrency is generally a male environment, Steemit promotes it by using a tool that is demographically neutral and slightly favorable to women: Blogging. Women like to write and read in the blog format. As we saw above, many important names of women engaged in promoting cryptocurrency, do it by blogging. Women love to share knowledge. So they come to Steemit ready to participate and eventually and consequently educate themselves on cryptocurrency, even if it's not the topic of their pages.
When I started my journey here, I had the slightest idea about the crypto world and how powerful and strong it was. I wasn't interested in it because everything sounded overly complicated. Diving in to Steemit, cryptocurrency became more interesting and exciting. I ended up learning and I'm still learning about it in a natural way as I use the platform. If it wasn't for Steemit, I'd still be behind to something that is changing the future of the financial world.
Why Woman Can Be Great Investors of Cryptocurrency
There is no specific reason why women shouldn't invest their energy, time, interest and money on cryptocurrency. They have everything to be as successful as men in this field and are pointed to be better investors for two reasons: First, women save more. A research from Fidelity Investments showed that while men save 7.9% of their income, women save 8.3%. That may not sound very significant, but it adds up to hundreds of dollars a year and a lot of money over a lifetime of saving.
Second, women are more successful investors. Another research on this subject showed that women outperform men annually by about 1 percentage point. A study from Betterment explains why: Looking at the accounts of around 60,000 investors, about one-quarter of them being women showed that female investors signed into their accounts 45% less frequently and changed their asset allocation 20% less frequently than male investors did. Concluding that when women invest, they do better. The only problem is that too many of them don't do it.
Hopefully Steemit and Steemit users keep supporting the female presence so we can find our place in such a promising field for us.
Source:
http://fortune.com/2015/04/10/why-women-are-better-investors-than-men/
Further readings:
http://www.coinfox.info/news/reviews/5444-women-for-bitcoin-and-bitcoin-for-women
http://www.moneyobserver.com/our-analysis/how-can-we-get-more-women-investing
http://www.businessinsider.com/arianna-simpson-on-women-and-bitcoin-2014-2
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Awesome article!! Followed, Resteemed, Upvoted~ I also posted in a FB group that is dedicated to encouraging Indian Women to start investing. Also, I can back up your claims that women are better investors than men. I held an Investment Competition with real cash prizes and I had 17 people sign up. The average returns of all the women was 12.26% in just 3 months! The average returns of all the men was only 2.16%. The interesting thing is that number matches pretty much the standard for most investment firms. I wonder how much a women-led firm could make? I totally believe in the potential of financially independent (free) women! Keep up the good work and let me know if you have more ideas how to encourage women to get into crypto investing. Would love to share with my group. thanks
thanks alot for this post I resteemed it for my wife to read you should check out her post as well if you would like let me know
By simply continuing to be passionate, responsible, ethical, open, equality focused, visionary, and compassionate it seems to me that crypto space is uniquely qualified as an industry accessible to women and diversity in general.
Great post, I hadn't looked at crypto from the gender angle, the stereotype we all grew up with was that the man worked and the woman spent the money. I know several women who I believe will be very interested in crypto and I'm trying to get more ladies onto Steemit as well.
Great article
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