Web3 & #WomeninNFTs — some things I’ve learnt
Dr Merilyn Childs
Three months ago I thought an NFT was just a digital object on the blockchain. I quickly found my way into the #WomeninNFTs community, and then to an understanding that the sale of NFTs can be a mechanism for funding amazing projects and ideas, supported by involved and committed Discord communities.
I already knew that ‘Blockchain has a gender problem’, as argued byAdams et al (2019, p.1), pointing out that ‘Gender disparity in the tech sector remains a persistent, well-documented challenge for women’. While feminist scholars in the 1990s ‘celebrated the emancipatory potential of the Internet to close the gap of gender inequalities…these claims in many ways fell short’. The blockchain has been a ‘male dominated space’ that has been ‘characterized by stereotypes such as the ‘Bitcoin Bros’ (Bowles, 20018 in Adams et al 2019). The ‘bro space’ posed problems for me when I first became involved in the blockchain and cryptocurrencies, and was a key reason why I turned by back on #cryptotwitter a few years ago. I just couldn’t stand it.
But I came back to this space after my academic career ended. And I came to see that during 2021 women had began to question this misfit between ‘traditional patterns of discrimination and inequality’ and the potential of Web3.0, and this was in part expressed through the development and selling of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
I came back — and found the hashtag #WomeninNFTs! The hashtag #WomeninNFTs was first used by @jazdaartist on 9th March 2021. Since then, the number of women-led projects has grown exponentially. The timeline above began circulating on Twitter in early 2022, showcasing some of the successful women-led projects of 2021.
On the 13th January, the project CypherCHK wrote:
Women holders of NFTs have begun writing ‘genesis stories’ to create new spaces for women in Web3.
And there is a growth of women looking to learn about the Web3 space.
One of the important things I have learnt is that NFT’s can have utility, and that projects can have a purposes to improve the world. This is what many women-led projects aim to do.
Ankita Dhakar is the Managing Director of SecurityLit and is leading a project called Cyber Cosmos World. This project aims to invite more women into Web3 to counter the discrimination women face. ‘Women represent only 24% of the total cyber workforce. With the aim of spreading cyber awareness and increasing the count of women in our infosec industry, we’ve come up with 10,000 unique randomly generated cyber cosmos warriors’ to fund the aim to ‘bring 100,000 women into STEM by end of 2022 and create job opportunities through this project’.
As @TheBaussGirlNFT recently commented:
My first three months in the #NFT space has actually become a journey into #WomeninNFTs — a natural habitat for someone like me who has worked so hard in my professional life for inclusion, diversity, access and equity. This is a place where ‘badass’ women are celebrated, nurtured and encouraged.
There are many other #WomeninNFT projects I am either involved in, or watching with interest. If you are a woman reading this, come and join in! You’ll find it a welcoming space, and many projects provide learning opportunities for women to be savvy and safe in the NFT space.
Read More:
Disclaimer: I own art in the Cyber Cosmos World genesis collection.
