We’re always fighting for and discussing representation and diversity. But one nice thing (beyond, of course, empowering and supporting women worldwide) is that including women makes just about everything better—not just for women, but for everyone. This week, we’re sharing stories about women’s opportunities to learn about blockchain and cryptocurrency, about the liabilities and opportunities surrounding the inequality women of color face in tech, about women at the top in business and finance, and more.
Meet Vitalik Buterin’s Mom. Her Mission Is Inclusion, Not Ethereum, from CoinDesk—“CryptoChicks isn’t turning to Ameline’s son’s business connections, such as Fenbushi Capital, to fund the first CryptoChicks hackathon in the Bahamas this August. In fact, sponsorship for past conferences came from companies like Microsoft, IBM and the Royal Bank of Canada, not crypto companies like the Ethereum Foundation. These programs range from coding workshops designed for women to youth hackathons.
‘We’re an educational organization, not a political organization,’ Ameline said. ‘We want to provide women and youth with the maximum opportunity to make their own choices.’”
For Women of Color in Tech, It’s ‘Hard to Grow’ Without Representation, from Built In Chicago—“Women of color constitute 39 percent of the female-identified population in the U.S., and will comprise the majority by 2060, according to the Kapor Center study. […] Those voices are needed to drive innovation, and a failure to include them shows up on the bottom line. Hidden biases cost corporate America $64 billion in employee turnover a year, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology report.”
The Last All-Male Board on the S&P 500 Just Added a Female Member, from Forbes—“Female participation on corporate boards has slowly increased over the years. According to a report by Equilar, a research firm that analyzes company’s boards, one in eight S&P 500 boards was all-male in 2012. Women now make up 27 percent of all board seats, a nearly 17 percent jump from 2012. Increased pressure from big investors like BlackRock, changing public sentiment in the #MeToo era and research linking board diversity to better financial performance have all spurred companies to recruit more women to their boards.”
Women Like Christine Lagarde Are the World’s Best Hope to Prevent Another Financial Crisis, from NBC News—“Women are acutely aware that they must represent something broader and more inclusive than the elite clubhouse to which they’ve been admitted. They now also speak for others who have suffered from being ignored or neglected by the powerful. Lagarde, the new European Central Bank president, referred to this outsider-insider attitude earlier in her career, when she was France’s finance minister. ‘I am not doing this for women,’ Lagarde wrote in 2010, ‘but as a woman I am, perhaps, more keenly aware of the damage that the crisis has done through greed, pride and a lack of transparency.’”
Want to receive early-bird invitations to our global events, custom-tailored content we think you’ll love, and exclusive access to “The World Women Report”?
