International Women’s Day 2022 focuses on bringing women to Web3

At its core, Web3 is about regaining control from centralized online experiences, allowing creators to interact within peer-to-peer (P2P) ecosystems focused on music, film, artwork, fashion and other popular topics. This has also given rise to nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and digital ecosystems often referred to as the Metaverse. 

Given the broad range of interests Web3 touches upon, the sector is not only attracting typical “tech bros” but has also captured the attention of many females looking to further build and develop the decentralized web. The movement of women entering Web3 has especially become apparent now, as the sector is still in its infancy.

Sandy Carter, senior vice president of Unstoppable Domains — a blockchain domain name provider — told Cointelegraph that Web3 today presents women with a phenomenal opportunity to make an impact since the space is still being developed. This isn’t always the case though, as Carter explained that before joining Unstoppable Domains in Dec. 2021, she was one of the few women executives at Amazon Web Services:

“As I transitioned to Unstoppable Domains, I was disappointed in Web2 and how much lack of diversity I found. Oftentimes 20% of the room would be women at conferences. It has also been shown that less than 5% of entrepreneurs in the Web2 space are female. This was mind blowing.”

International Women’s Day 2022

In order to help bring more women to the Web3 space, Carter said that Unstoppable Domains has partnered with 66 leading Web2 and Web3 companies to form a new initiative called “Unstoppable Women of Web3” — a diversity and education group focused on training the next generation of talent for the Web3 era.

Carter said that organizations supporting this initiative include major corporations like Google Cloud and Deloitte, along with blockchain companies such as Decentraland, BlockFi and Binance.US. “All partners have signed a pledge to feature work created by historically marginalized groups in at least half of all materials used for Web3 education,” said Carter.

While Carter believes that the Web3 space is starting to see an influx of women, she still thinks that the sector is often misunderstood and, therefore, intimidating. “I do think there is potential for women to enter Web3, but education is still required. For instance, if women look at a Web3 job offering and only meet certain criteria they may not apply. So, we are trying to break this down,” she said. 

As a starting point, Carter noted that Unstoppable Women of Web3 will host a 24-hour Twitter spaces discussion on March 8 — International Women’s Day — to discuss Web3 related topics. She also noted that Unstoppable Domains will publish a list of 100 influential women in Web3 on International Women’s Day to demonstrate innovation in this new sector.

NFT marketplace Rarible is also hoping to drive women’s participation in Web3 by promoting female-empowerment projects during International Women’s Day this year. Masha Vyazemskaya, head of communications at Rarible, told Cointelegraph that while nonfungible tokens have created incredible opportunities for creatives, only 16% of NFT creators are women. “Even lesser known is the generation of female artists that have been involved in the NFT space since the early days, building the foundation of what the industry is today,” said Vyazemskaya.

Given this, Vyazemskaya explained that Rarible is placing a heavy focus on female-led NFT projects on March 8 to ensure that diverse voices are recognized. For example, Vyazemskaya explained that Rarible will be highlighting one of its first female NFT artists, Lirona. According to Vyazemskaya, Lirona started from scratch in the NFT space and has since launched her widely successful “#boiz” collection on the Rarible marketplace, which has garnered over $700,000 in sales. Vyazemskaya said:

“What’s amazing is that Lirona started on Rarible in early 2021 with her collections selling for 0.1 ETH and now they are selling for 20-30 ETH. This represents a very important journey for us, demonstrating how we work closely with artists and support their needs.”

Vyazemskaya added that Rarible will be launching “Metafemale” on March 8, which is an NFT collection that serves as a community for female creators and entrepreneurs in the space. “This project will also provide access to a private members club for female creatives in the metaverse,” she said. Vyazemskaya further remarked that Rarible will be promoting “Women Rise” this year, which is an NFT series supporting women activists, artists, scientists and coders.

Initiatives are needed

While initiatives to drive female participation in Web3 are notable, it’s important to point out that Web3 may be catering to a more diverse audience in general. For instance, Tegan Kline, co-founder of Edge and Node — the development team behind open-source indexing protocol The…