Image courtesy of TheBitcoinWife.com
One of the topics that’s been getting a lot of attention recently is that of women in the Bitcoin community. It’s certainly an underrepresented population, but one that is growing larger by the day. It has always been my feeling that women will be the key to broader adoption. While we may not fit the typical stereotypes anymore of housewives and mothers, we do tend to play a large role in household decisions and we do hold a lot of the purchasing power. I typically am not a big fan of needless consumerism or of promoting it, but I do understand the role it is going to play as the payment system moves further along. Pretending it doesn’t matter is a fallacy. We, as women, will play a very large part in the development of the Bitcoin economy and many of us will shape the businesses and services in the sector.
That is the part I’d like to focus on in this piece. The majority of the women who will be entering the community will not be particularly tech savvy nor will they be traders, programmers or developers. They will be women like me. I wrote about my introduction to Bitcoin and how it changed my life in an article called The Black Swan Chronicles. That introduction has rewarded me with some very welcome and very unexpected results. I am now writing for 2 online cryptocurrency publications – one of which I will be helping to develop, Bitcoinwoman Magazine – Africa . I’ve also found an amazing network of women who are as eager and excited about promoting Bitcoin as I am. A fantastic group (Women in Bitcoin) has been put together on Google Plus by Marni Melrose and Pua Pyland for anyone looking for more information. Stacy Herbert from The Keiser Report is also a member. I urge anyone with an interest in learning more to check it out. (Guys, you’re welcome too.)
There is something very special happening right now. Something I haven’t experienced before. It’s a renaissance of sorts. In this new space, we are free to create anything we want, any way we want. Innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity are abundant. Within the bitcoin economy, the old rules no longer exist. There is room for everyone and all who wish to participate are welcome. The opportunity for growth is infinite when each individual brings their full potential. I see so many small businesses and startups, and that is so exciting. It doesn’t mean that many won’t fail. To the contrary, many will. That is true capitalism. Within this self organizing collective, we have effectively carved out a niche removed from the old paradigm. In this framework, we can redefine how we work and how we live. If I’ve heard one common theme among the women I’ve encountered along the way, it is a dissatisfaction with quality of life when we are forced to participate in a corporate environment that demands everything from us, but offers little satisfaction, loyalty and balance in return.
Something I’ve never understood about the 9 to 5 grind is the obsessive need for a company to know exactly what its employees are doing, when they are doing it and where. It’s a slave owner mentality. It’s an effort to dump as many tasks onto each individual in as short a time frame and for as little pay as possible to make the largest profit for those who generally do none of the actual labor. It kills motivation and morale. And for a lot of women, it feeds a sense of resentment when they are not allowed to care for a sick child or are forced to pay exorbitant sums of money to put their children in daycare or camps because, somehow, we are mostly forced to work the same arbitrary weekly schedule. Also worth a mention is that so many jobs today can be done from home. Not only is that a family friendly approach, but isn’t it also the whole point of the so-called ‘green’ movement? Less travel=less traffic=less pollution=less consumption of resources. Am I missing something here, because some of the greenest companies around are still operating on that corporate mentality.
What if the Bitcoin community decided to do things differently? What if we decided that quality of life was more important than maximizing profit for shareholders, or that flexibility of scheduling was preferable over rigidity? I don’t know about you, but a fair wage on top of the freedom to prioritize and organize my schedule to benefit the people who matter most to me would make me about the most loyal, devoted and motivated employee in the world. And that’s where I think women will play a big role in Bitcoin in the future. We’ve done it all now. We’ve been housewives and mothers, corporate executives and entrepreneurs and everything in between. We know all the pitfalls. We understand what works and what doesn’t and we know exactly what needs to be changed to make the workplace accessible and family friendly for all. Glass ceilings? There never were any glass ceilings. They were just a side effect of an old paradigm that is rapidly going away.
As we promote Bitcoin and as more everyday women begin to take an active interest in it, I think the best selling point would be to show others the community and economy we will create. We will create it with our purchases of goods and services. If we allow small and family friendly businesses to thrive and grow, we will create an economic revolution. And we are not limited to our own countries. We have the ability to purchase goods and services all over the world now with a universal means of exchange. Those of us with ‘more’ have the power to redistribute large concentrations of ‘wealth’ more evenly. When we can afford to pay more for something in a third world country instead of exploiting the disparity, we effectively lift those communities up, giving them more control and autonomy over their lives. That to me, is something we owe to one another. We all deserve to be treated like human beings – not like cattle and commodities. When we all matter, everything changes.
