Bitcoin Forum

For Bitcoin to succeed in the long term we need market acceptance. Going to Bitcoin meetups and conferences it seems to be a small number of women, and an even smaller number of minorities. There are plenty of women doing great things in the Bitcoin space, but if you look at our demographics as a whole women are a very small portion. Coinblog lists the number around 2.5% (http://coinblog.ca/how-big-is-the-bitcoin-gender-gap/), which is just dismal to say the least. So my question to you is:

1) Is the number of women in Bitcoin only tied to the fact that there is large disparity between women and men in Computer Science?
2) Has Bitcoin as a community been hostile to women?
3) If we do have a problem, how can we fix it?

1)yup
2)no
3)there is no problem, if women want to get into bitcoin they can, if they don't want, their choice.

Women are on average more risk-averse than men. Bitcoin is risky. When Bitcoin becomes more mainstream there will be more women who use Bitcoin.

Well most of the miners got girlfriends or are married already and their partners know how to use bitcoin somehow. I think when it will be mainstream it would be like that.

here we go again,

if you want to meet women at conventions .. go to cosplay conventions. bitcoin is about business and finance, not meeting woman. in my eyes woman are just as business savvi as men so whether male or female the mainstreaming will move forward at the same pace so making a point that more women are needed sounds more like you want to turn these bitcoin conventions into dating hook-up locations, rather then business meeting points.

women do not like guys glaring at them and hounding them. i have seen many a time that a woman in a convention would have more men lingering around her, as if she was made of catnip. then some other person that actually has a business plan worthy of hearing, would have lingerers.

this deters women from turning up to such events. and as such they would still be involved in the community, but not be tempted to attend conventions.

so my advice is to not think of ways to make bitcoin more friendly to women. but to make conventions less friendly to hormone filled basement dwellers with no bitcoin business plans. that way it would remove the lingerers that only attend for dating hookups, due to their immature thinking that they finally have something in common with a woman to talk about.

if this were achieved where bitcoin meetups were based on business as oppose to the social side of meeting women.. more woman would feel comfortable to attend. because there are plenty of women in the bitcoin community, you just wont see them at conventions (at the moment)

Women

Just wait. Computer science isn't a male-dominated field any more, and actually is projected to become female-dominated in the future. Bitcoin will follow.

Minorities

Like anything that involves money, Bitcoin lacks minorities. However, look at Bitcoin adoption in China and Africa. As these countries adopt Bitcoin, their diaspora will too.

correct. and bitcoin is technical, and girls usually dont like tech-stuff.

The problem is Bitcoins reaches the men first before the women in a relationship. Women are the ones who spend the $$ in the household if they aren't touching the mans bitcoin wallet for purchases then yes there would be no reason for women to be involved I suppose.

computing is not a male dominant field...

there are more men doing construction, mechanics etc. but when it comes to computing, you will find more women at a computer then men.. the whole women arnt into computing is the naive thought process of the adolescence that never hear many women on a xbox live group game, or see them at a geeky conference. its all due to the hounding and stalking that goes on.. but in actual workplace scenarios, women do dominate the computing market.

women are in the community, you just wont see them. what we need to do is concentrate on making bitcoin a serious business where ANYONE in business can attend, not being concerned about gender, but about the tone of the event.

EDIT:
while writing i see 2 posts have been done with sexist naive remarks about women. lol. this makes my point even more apparent.. men think of women as housewives that are not smart. this is where bitcoin needs to change..

There is no problem.

This is purely an effect of statistics.  Bitcoin is a "weird" and "extreme" technology, therefore it tends to attract people from the extreme tail end of the distribution, whether male or female.  When you look at attributes such as personality, political stance, or intelligence the distribution for women is narrower than the distribution for men.  The further away you go from the mean, the more men outnumber women.  

The reason there are so few female bitcoiners is the same reason there are so few female BASE jumpers, Nobel prize winners, and serial killers.

The more mainstream bitcoin becomes, the more "average" people it will attract, both male and female, and the more this effect will be diluted.

2) The bitcoin community is not hostile but it's full of geeks so it's not exactly attractive to women...

It is incredibly sexist to claim that fewer women are at extremes in personality, political stance, or intelligence. This is equivalent to saying that all women are similar. Such a statement is patently false.

Weird and extreme technologies attract women as easily as men. That is not an excuse for Bitcoin's gender gap. Rather, sexism and societal pressure is the primary cause of fewer women being attracted to Bitcoin. It is generally considered "uncool" for women to take interest in the frontier of technology. Luckily, this dated stance is changing and more and more women are entering frontier technologies such as nanotechnology and quantum computing. With a changing society, Bitcoin's demographics will change accordingly.

It is actually true for many intelligent tests that while the means are nearly identical the distributions are not, so neither sexist or anything else.  See eg:
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2010/07/great-male-variability-it’s-a-fact-but-it-can-sometimes-be-deadly/#mbl

http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/sexdifferences.aspx

Plus many more.

IQ tests were designed by males and initially applied to test differences between males, who were the primary school population at the time. It is no surprise that the test accentuates the intelligence variability in males. This does not prove that males are more "variable" than females, only that a test designed to measure male variability shows greater male variability than females.

Really? There will be more women in computer science but there's no trend that points to a future where there will be more women in computer science than men. Men and women generally have different interests and there's nothing wrong with that. It's safe to figure that in 20 years there will still be more men in CS than women just like there will likely be more women in fashion than men.


Chinese are actually the majority of world citizens. ;)

Besides there are many Jews in finance and they are definitely a minority everywhere except in Israel.

I see a good opportunity for a marketing study or two.

Get some real actionable data on the issue rather than generalizations and speculation.

The bitcoin community is about bitcoin, not about finding a boyfriend  :-\ it is not that you have to be attracted by people here

Using computers != computer science

Yes but people inspire each other to get involved with things... And geeks can 't inspire absolutely nothing that has tits on it...

Really, Zuckerberg couldn't flog his website to women if his life depended on it. ;D

I didn't get interested/involved with bitcoin because of the community, although it has been helpful.

Question is, what drives a person regardless of sex to seek an alternative currency?
-awareness that fiat and that system are on the verge of collapse?
-frustration with current money systems?
-desire for freedom?
-investment opportunity?
???

I could go on. let's get to the motivation side of the equation, rather than the "women avoid technology and geeky stuff"

Those are the standards for intelligence that exist. Sure, if we slanted the test for females, then they would 'win'. If women do match up as well as men, then they should have no problem with a standard human intelligence test. Its not a popularity contest.

Are you aware of for whom this test was initially designed?

The IQ test was originally designed for school-aged children. At that time, many women did not attend school. Thus, it primarily measures the mental aptitudes of men, and that is the population that it differentiates best. If I decided to measure intelligence with height, for which there is definitely a correlation, it may work well initially with men. When I then apply this test to women, the scale is not useful for comparing across genders because of physiological differences.

Many of the "standards" were designed long ago for a primarily male population. It is unfair to claim that these tests are appropriate for all people when they were designed for only a subset of people.

Were these standards never updated / modernized? I find that hard to believe.

Agreed. I'm not saying women aren't intelligent, just suggesting that these intelligence tests have an actual purpose beyond superficial equality issues.

lol

the IQ test was designed for all, aimed at measuring the intellect of children. its about maths and puzzles. which both males and females can accomplish. there is nothing sexist about IQ tests.

what is sexist is the Ego of men.. those with high IQ will show off, join mensa and get books deals to write about their lifestory being smart. where as women are not as ego-centered to publicise their intelligence.

thus it is found that male EGO's make statistics look more favorable to males. because the statistics look at how many men vs women are in mensa. not how many men/women get the minimal IQ requirements to join.

and this point is proven by the OP. he based his idea that women don't understand bitcoin, not based on talking to women, but based on how many, or lack of women there were at a convention.

to those that actually have girlfriends, wives etc. we all know when arguing with a women, us men will never win. they are very clever and whitty to get what they want, in many ways. and they are subtle about it too. they dont show off their intelligence they do it with cunning and strategy...

once the naive hormone induced bitcoin fans make sense of this, and that bitcoin conventions become more about official business instead of dating hook-up spots. you will see a few more women turn up.

I hope my wife never finds my bitcoin wallet or im gonna have to figure out a way to block bitmit.  :D

Most women don't play computer games, they don't even know computer much or graphic cards much.

Do you have the stats to back this up, or is this from preconceived notions? It seems the latter is unfortunately common in the Bitcoin community.

This, that's what make women more capable at something.

Funny story with me, while my wife probably will never post on here.  She was averse to the whole voodoo of Bitcoin, until I provided her with deposits into our savings/gas card/pre-paid card/other purchases from bitcoin earnings, now she's on it like a hawk.  If she's at home and my miners go down she's letting me know right away to get those cash boxes running again lol.... it's kind of funny but true.  I'm sure there are more women involved in Bitcoin than what is represented on these forums.  It's also not an overly social topic she's likely to be bringing up with her friends etc. but she's keeping an eye on it more all the same in my house.

Honestly fear how nasty the first big bitcoiner divorce will go down... after all w/out the priv key, how do you split the bitcoins...

??
hmm i see the opposite, i see women playing Wii games all the time, facebook games, online bingo games, which when combined far outpace the amount of call of duty/Warcraft population

and what do graphics cards have to do with bitcoin anymore.. i think your stuck in the past, much like your sexist comments.

its more likely that these people with sexist comments don't themselves see many women in their life to actually judge what women know or don't know. after all while sat at home playing your xbox how many women cross your path everyday? maybe the girls you do hook up with that from your experience dont know much about computing is more of an admission of the 'type' of girl you prefer, rather then a observation of ALL women in general.

now if you went to a work place you would see more women working cash registers, being secretary's, PA's, receptionist's, accountants, etc (computer roles). while the men are in the warehouses or restocking shelves, mending things, etc.

women these days are more handy with a cellphone, ipad then men are.

but this thread totally proves the point of why women don't attend bitcoin conventions, because of the mindset of men here do not respect women, do not see them as equals, as intelligent or as business savvi.

so that is what needs to change to get more women involved.

From a psychological perspective, specifically looking at jungian personality, there is an easy explanation.

If you look at the poll taken of bitcointalk members, you will see that bitcoiners are overwhelmingly "INTJ" and "INTP" personality types (meyers-briggs).  Among these types, males outnumber females about 3:1 over the general population.  

on the development sub forum i agree with you. but in the main bitcoin forum area i believe they are more like this:
comedy trolls(ESFP) 10%
basement dwelling trolls(INFP) 10%
donators/investors(ENFP) 40%
coders(INTP) 20%
project developers(INTJ) 20%

you will never know exactly how many women are into bitcoin because the last time a few females i know of personally signed up, they were receiving personal messages from members once people realised they were female..

so most females use the anonymity of bitcoin to its max, by never telling anyone what gender they are and ignoring silly polls

Why is it sexist? Being at the extremes does not imply superiority, neither moral nor functional.  For example, well-balanced people tend to do better in the modern workplace than people with extreme personality traits.

"Freakish" people are not better than "average" people, they are just different, that's all.


No, it's equivalent to saying that most women are similar, as are most men.  


The word "excuse" implies that the gender gap is something pathological that needs to be fought.  In fact, it's just a result of fewer women being interested in bitcoin than men.

You know what is really sexist?  Claiming that women ought to be more interested in bitcoin, even after the fact that they have chosen not to. That is basically treating them like children who "don't know what's best for them".

PFFFT I don't even have a basement :P

Anyway, AFAIK most people here are INTX (as in <85% based on the last poll), and NTs in general are predominantly male.  No, not all the NTs here are working on projects related to Bitcoin, but they're definitely the vast majority.  I'm fairly certain the last poll was in the main Bitcoin forum, or at least somewhere most people would've found it, so I see no reason to mistrust it.

I'm not sure where you get this data. As personal experience goes, in my Computer Engineering classes, if there are about 100 people per class, there has never been more than 5 girls.

i can disprove most peoples belief that over 85% of them think they are strategists or engineers.. most men when doing tests exadurate their positives and undervalue their negatives..

such as. teenage gamers that stay home all day.. most of the world would say they are loners.. but to them. they are communicating with the world via the internet so they will always put social skill questions as being a high rating..

also. being objective. while these same teenage gamers set an objective of staying up 40 hours to watch a TV series marathon or get to level 50 Uber god mode on a game. thus thinking to rate objectivity as high.. their family will see that they havnt taken a shower or done the chores for 3 months.. same with neat and orderly.. he looks into his computer case and sees all the cables all zip tied nicely... but ignores the laundry basket in the corner.

these tests should be taken with a pinch of salt

I understand why women would avoid meetings, but the gender gap is huge even on the forum, and on a forum you are just a nick and the sex does not matter.

This isn't exactly helping   :D Playing farmville and wii and bingo isn't exactly something to be proud of in my humble opinion  :D

The only game you should be proud of playing is Candy Crush

Ok, maybe I should change my answer a little.

Women are not so hardcore into computer games, which doesn't need high end GPU to play. base on my understanding, a lot people started mining with their current computer to test it before going big.

Do you know of any polls or studies done that support this? I'd be happy to know it's true but working in IT, it's not what I've personally seen.

  Eeny Meeny Miney Mo
       When you looking for a ho female bitcoin fan
  Check beneath her skirt real quick,
      'Cuz you might find she has a dick.

Anyone has some real statistics on credit cards usage by gender?
I could only come up with 81% percent of men and 75% for women for US.

Look's like there's no gender gap; this is conclusive evidence ;)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=382267

lol

Here's the difference between men and women and the reason you see so few women involved with bitcoin.

#1: Men are curious. If there's a new technology, we take the time to figure it out and we form ambitious goals around it.
#2: One such goal is making money. In order to make money, we must take on risk (in this case, investing in a risky, volatile asset). Women tend to be risk-averse.

Once bitcoin becomes more user friendly and goes mainstream (if that happens) you'll see women using it, but don't count on them to ever figure it out and take any particular interest in it. That's just how our brains are wired. How many female mechanics do you see at the garage when you take your car in? Not sexist, it's just nature.

Relevant: https://soundcloud.com/sovryntech/sovryn-tech-special-0014-the