The Otherside of #BalanceforBetter: Happy Women’s Day
Well another year and another campaign. What has changed and what has remained the same? Do not worry there will be some connection to cryptocurrency in this article (LOL). Disclaimer, this is not financial advice and any product or project mentioned or implied in this article is not an endorsement. This is merely the opinion and experience of the author. Do your own research, manage your risk, and do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
Happy Valentine's; I Mean Happy Women’s Day
There are many similarities between Women’s Day and Valentine’s Day (which are only about 3 weeks apart). The similarities are quiet intriguing. First if you are not in a relationship, Valentine’s Day evokes feelings of sadness, loneliness, and perhaps a sense of failure. If you are not employed as a women, you probably feel, well, a sense of sadness, loneliness, and perhaps a sense of failure. All this talk about women empowerment and you are not one of those who made it to the “successful” list seems eerily similar to those who are not part of a couple on Valentine’s Day. While both “Event Days” are important to celebrate, at least Women’s Day tries to re-address the balance where Valentine’s Day seems to only have a down side for the single. Although there are events now for singles too, especially seeing as there is quite a bit of money to made from this too (LOL).
It is interesting to make this comparison between these 2 days, because being a women, both days seem to have the same impact on me, and arguably, many women: I feel left out. I am not a high powered executive nor an unemployed woman where my status would be one that Women’s Day targets directly. However I am still not fully empowered. I still have a long way to go to earn the same salary that my male counterparts do in my industry, graphic design. That is one reason I set out on my own. While having my own business is empowering, it is not for a glamorous reason. The reason this does not make me a “fully empowered” women is two-fold. First, I have to go out on my own in order to make as much as men who are employed. Second, I have to work harder than my employed colleagues because I have to do my own marketing and advertising. While my income is good enough and my flexible hours are amazing, which allow me to write these blogs (on the topic of cryptocurrency as is clear from this article LOL), something is missing here. It was not really my choice to work for myself and it is not easy convincing people to go with an independent versus the big names in my game. When I weighed the loses with the gains, it made financial sense because of the potential salary and when I do become a Mom (after I solve my first problem, created by Valentines Day LOL, of getting married) I will get to decide whether I want to be a working or stay-at-home Mom. One benefit I am entitled to is maternity leave, so I do not lose out on that if I decided to continue working thanks to women empowerment and Women’s Day. My own business also means that I get to decide if I want to “make a comeback”, like the famous sport stars such as Lisa Curry(-Kenny to be absolutely accurate) LOL! What I mean is that if I decide to do the stay-at-home Mom thing, I can re-enter the workplace almost at any future date and way more easily than my employed colleagues who work for someone else.
Is this really gender equality? Still my bottom line is dependent on me, so if I do decide not to go back to work after being a Mom, I have no income for however long I am out of the work force. Re-entering, even with my own business, at a later date (even if it is later than my Due Date back at work three months later LOL) has its own challenges. You have to get back into things, learn trends, and re-train with new software or other technological advances, like decentralisation of the industry. By the time I have a child this latter scenario is likely to be a reality. See I slipped the cryptocurrency part of the article into this space LOL!
The Real Cryptocurrency Side of this Article
I have begun educating myself in the cryptospace specifically with the goal of economic empowerment in mind as many other women probably have done so too. Although we are clearly not a majority, idealistically cryptocurrency is supposed to help address the gender and minority balance. So those women who have joined the tech and crypto space are ahead of the curve in terms of empowerment. This is especially true of day traders where women do about the same amount of work as men and on average do better in profits. Although women are still in the minority!
However the numbers of women entering the tech and crypto space are still low and need boosting. Bill and Melinda Gates are working to make real and lasting changes in this area by putting cell phones into the hands of poor African women and giving them digital bank accounts. This will inevitably impact on the future of their families because to paraphrase Melinda Gates, these women then use that money for their families’ benefit.
Cryptocurrency is also playing its part to address the unbanked masses and poverty. There are a number of projects started up to address poverty through Bitcoin. Bancor has its figure in the empowerment pie with the cryptocurrency projects it is running in Africa. Ripple is another big cryptocurrency in this arena.
So there are real, grassroots projects addressing women empowerment and poverty. However for women like me, the correlation between empowerment and women is not so direct. I can earn passive income by HODLING Bitcoin and making an investment in my future and more importantly make an investment in myself through educating myself about cryptocurrency on-line, through courses like the ones offered through the Ivanontech Academy. As Ivan quiet rightly says, educating yourself in this area has a high probability of paying off when crypto goes mainstream. One day though I might be earning my living through cryptocurrency, whether in the graphic design or crypto space. It is worth investing in the education and keeping these options open.
Cryptocurrency: The Otherside of the Experimental Future
There is a possibility of cryptocurrency failing and fading into history as the first “cryptocurrencies” that not many people have heard of did. With institutional money and centralised use cases of the DLT (Decentralised Ledger Technology) flowing into the cryptospace, the scenario for crypto failing is unlikely. This is especially so when we look at the state of America’s debt and Brexit. Cryptocurrency is definitely a contender for a future economy that looks brighter than the one we are facing. However, in the case of this revolution not being mass adopted, it is has certainly revolutionised the world and empowered women and minorities. This has happened as I mentioned through projects that bring the minorities, women, and the unbanked into the economic sphere, especially in the tech sector. It seems clear to me that the tech sector in general has benefited from the introduction of cryptocurrency in the area of empowerment of these “groups” of people. The big question is will cryptocurrency become like the tech world in the future, a place where hope for a more fair world will dissolve into the same patterns and become yet another tool for monopolies to stay rich and just change the haves and the have nots from CEOs of computer giants like Facebook and Apple to computer geeks like Ripple and Stellar?
Summary
What are the actual gains and loses women have made? Realistically not much gain has been seen despite loads of calls for action. There are projects making a major dent into empowering women, minorities, and poor sectors of our global world. However the sad truth is we are still not feeling the impact of Women’s Day to the extent we probably should if you take into account how long we have celebrated Women’s Day for according to the statisticians that make up stats on one foot (LOL). On a more serious note, Women’s Day was started in 1909 and instituted as a yearly event the next year. So technically this year will be the 110th Women’s Day and next year will be the 110th anniversary of the yearly Women’s Day. Sadly logic, which is supposed to be a man’s strength (LOL), dictates that statistically, another supposed men’s dominant strength (LOL), we should be in a much better state and progressed to a point where Women’s Day should be a thing of the past because we do not need it any more as the imbalance has been addressed. Will history repeat itself where the “haves” just change from CEOs of monopolies to cryptogeeks or will decentralisation finally close the gap between haves and have nots to a margin that is insignificant statistically? Are the imbalances in wealth intrinsic to society and are they always going to be somehow directly linked to gender and/or minority groups?
