Building a More Inclusive Blockchain Community for Women / Zeynep Ecenaz Altınok

Transcript

[Applause] okay okay it is really happening hello everyone and where is the camera I also want to say hi to my mom hello mom um welcome to my speech that will be about building a more inclusive blockchain community for women but before that I want to introduce myself a little bit to board you a lot of things uh it's zainab I'm coming from turkey and I'm literally just 22 years old and have been working in the blockchain space since 2020 I'm currently working at a local Exchange in turkey named Queen CR but I involved many different web 2 projects so far since uh two and a half year and I am also

Turkish chapter lead of C5 maybe you have heard about it but if you don't shifai is a global women empowerment community in webtree space that more related to my topic actually um I wanted to talk about um challenges and the other solving solving points for that challenges in each product because um how can I say that it is as far as I remembered one of the research one of the latest research demonstrates that only 40 percentage of Workforce in USA includes women and only 27.2 percentage of that workflow

includes uh tech industry like uh in whole bubble only 20 uh per 20 percentage of women work in the Tech Industries right now and in blockchain especially we have literally so many spaces for everyone but I wanted to emphasize that even though there is enough space for women not only women for all people especially women are not still enough comfortable in the space and I wanted to talk about how we can build both inclusive but more comfortable space for women and uh this is my schedule right now start with the current situation

challenges for women and why we need to highlight these these issues and also how we can overcome all of them uh as you can imagine the current situation for women in the web 2 ecosystem is version number three like in web3 it is way better but there is a interesting rate actually between a small size tech companies and big size time companies like in big size tech companies uh 27th percent of uh people are women that work for that company but if we go um if you look up the small Sizer ones it is increasing and I also wanted to

emphasize the last three points that I found them on the first article of shifai that published three years ago by Maggie law that um almost more than 60 percentage of women feel insecure about their financial knowledge I mean they are not enough comfortable to talk about some maybe crypto coins but not only crypto Queens in tech industry there in tech knowledge in general and um this is how can I say that um this is one of the reasons that why Chief I founded and why I am talking about that topic because we need to overcome all of these discouraging

discouraging situations and build a more comfortable space for them but even though there are some some negative points that you can see on the screen women in their 20s like me are increasing the female represents in the world and this is literally so nice that uh younger women are how can I say that more uh encouraged to one step into this ecosystem and it also gives a more hope for all of us actually not only women and um you have some you already seen some negative situations but why uh why they are happening it is because uh maybe

this is the first of this my one of the most biggest one is gender by stereotypes like imagine have you ever heard about women and supply chain industry talk like women in nursing women in healthcare industry no but we always talk about women in finance women in Tech and maybe women in civil engineering this kind of stuff this kind of topics because we all not only women we all grow up this kind of patriarchy story type word like um in my childhood all of the people that are around me say that you're gonna

be a great teacher or maybe you're gonna be a great doctor to my friends but why I won't be a the next executive director of ethereum foundation after miyaguchi I literally love her by the way she's literally one of my role models love to her and but as you can imagine not you could you will be a great CFO you will be a great CEO it's always something related to um how can I say that's something that pointed being a female like teaching nursing and this kind of stuff and that's why most of the um women are not enough comfortable in

their job in Tekken tech industry and also male are tend to think that um female are not enough capable for doing this kind of stuff but it is all bias and you may think that being the only woman in the room might not be as bad but it is literally so bad because um it is so natural that women can understand the other women better than a male it is Supernatural and um being only woman in the room in the company um makes most of the women feeling isolated the constantly constant need to

prove our competence like uh we need to prove ourselves um a more than male actually like um imagine a who a room full of male developers and you are I mean me are the only women developer in that room I mostly tend to feel like that I need to prove myself a bit more to be there to um to present my how can I say that existence in that room and I'm gonna give you an example and I don't feel embarrassed about that a couple months or maybe one year ago I cannot clearly remember that I can I I was working at the office and I was also working in a

Webster company that day and I got my period and literally I couldn't find any menstrual products around me because they were also they were all male and this is one of the reasons that still that I don't want to go to office it literally breaks my motorways and I'm pretty sure that most of the women are also facing that problem it might be how can I say that maybe not a problem too but it is literally a problem for women and um in web 3 this is better I mean the situation is better about gender pay Gap in tech industry but it is literally still a huge problem in web 2 world that

you can see the some ratios almost 28 women earn less money in the same positions by men I mean comparing by men like we do the same job maybe we have the same background but 28 percentage of women earn less than male like how we can encourage women to join the space without fixing that problem it is still a huge problem and imposter syndrome also causes causing because of gender pay Gap actually imposter syndrome is not only for women obviously but it is maybe some

of the biggest problem in between women because I gave an example that I am the only developer woman in a space that I have to prove my capability more than the others it it's important makes me feel like that but I am not enough capable of them it starts to thinking like that and it always happens in this kind of sessions like when you beat it only a example of your represents on your of your existence imposter syndrome affects you a little bit more and um there are so many challenges that I

could talk until tomorrow maybe but um I literally wanted to highlight all of this because visibility like me I mean I am 22 years old I didn't even finish my college I'm still a college student and I have I get an opportunity to talk about this topic in each Prague and edcon will be also talking in HCC as well that I one of my main aim is encourage the other woman encourage the other young people in the psycho system because I believe that seeing a role model like I'm not a role model baby but sing a role model on the stage sing

another young people and other women in on the stage encourage the people encourage the other people so uh visibility literally helps women and young people a bit more to involved in their web 3 world and also we need to close the gender gender pay Gap as soon as possible because one of the reasons researchers demonstrate that it will take uh 260 268 years to close that Gap I mean if I would know that maybe I wouldn't join tech industry at all it is literally so and discouraging thing for women and

diversity is also necessary for not only Tech space or webtree it also needs to be everywhere because um if we build our community and on team in general with different approach without looking their age race or gender we will collect different type of people that comes from different cultures and it will help us to um build or product build or what we are building it doesn't literally matter how can I set a more diverse and in a good way in general and I'm gonna talk

about how we can build them a little bit this is one of the best slides probably of my speech because we all talk about how we can encourage the woman how we can educate the woman how we can do something for women but we mostly I attempt to talk about this kind of things but we don't speak how we can educate men because the whole problem is coming from not directly man but coming from patriarchy coming from the patriarchy in general and I wanted to start first with that it is a nice article actually written by man I found it on undp in Bosnia a website you may just wanted to check out later

um if you are a man that saw one of your women colleagues arrested in workspace you should be the one who raised your voice a louder than everyone because we are more empowerment with your support actually with especially support of men because we as women are always supporting each other are always um how can I say that hug each other but seeing a support I mean receiving a support with the other people especially in men more encouraged to women actually because we feel like that uh you literally want to see us in this ecosystem so it is priceless actually

and um we support a mentorship system is also so important I'm going to talk about a little bit Chief I that I am one of the representers of shifa I know that uh shifai is for women and non-binary people at the same time that is a community Global Community organized uh two cohorts in one year and one cohort to uh 14 weeks that starts with what is web 3 and a little bit deep dive to the web 3 ecosystem and um it is literally helping a lot to onboard women and non-binary fall to the web 3 space because uh we are all women I mean

literally no one just any other woman uh we always ask each other we always ask for each other questions and it is only five minutes sorry and it makes them more comfortable to talk about what they didn't understand it could be any basic uh thing actually might be how she can open their metamask account it is literally simple but still more women are suffering from asking these kind of basic questions but in shifai and hurdle as well this kind of communities helps a lot for women on boarding to the

ecosystem and educating yourself is a nice headline as well I or I also took it you can see it right now and website name carrier flow that um standing okay standing in front of these kind of stations might be hard for all of us but we are getting more how can I say that be more [Music] um caring these kind of things I mean um in previous years probably I wouldn't be there I mean maybe 40 years ago but it is getting better day by day and advocating ourselves like speaking up about any uh discouraging or negative

sessions to women and find the alleys in this ecosystem like shifai members like me or the other supporters other friends of you and education firstly ourselves and later on the others will also help the others to encourage help the other woman to encourage to accelerate their journey to web3 and I literally want to talk about this topic so many hours but it is end of my speech um you can just find me on this scanning these characters and thank you for listening to me thank you very much saying that round of applause everyone that was really lovely thank you very much

um we have a couple of minutes left has anyone got any questions they would like to ask or topics they'd like to raise yeah okay zainab thank you for a very important talk um my question I think I think web3 is um unique space because of um you know being a little bit more friendly to pseudonymous to people Anonymous people how do you think you know do you think this industry um has like any any sort of like I don't know how to ask this question do you do you think there are women who are specifically deciding to be anonymous just to kind of be involved in a

different way in this in this industry to kind of hide hide their identity yeah probably yes also I have a friend from turkey that one of the shifa's community I literally know uh know her name in or first in real life meeting and she said what happened okay she said um she never says his name uh his name and her name and she prefers to be anonymous in Twitter and when a group of people um saw hear her voice in Zoom chess or the others they didn't she said that they didn't believe her at all that she she's a woman I mean the voice is

belonging a woman and that's why um some of the women try to hide their identities in the space because uh judging judging by the others and maybe they don't feel enough comfortable to show their full identities it's a still barrier but I'm pretty sure that it is getting better day by day with these kind of approaches and in web 3 mindset in general wonderful thank you very much we all need to do our part Round of Applause everyone thank you very much saying it the next talk will be up in a few minutes we're going I think it's Dao hour which I'm very excited about

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