The gender gap that needs to be addressed

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Non­fun­gi­ble tokens (NFTs) have received a lot of media atten­tion, but experts agree that their impact will go beyond sell­ing dig­i­tal art­work or tweets and alter how peo­ple com­mu­ni­cate ideas forever.

Despite its promise of shat­ter­ing the mold, the world­wide NFT mar­ket is just as pale, male and old-fash­ioned as the con­ven­tion­al art indus­try. The most recent sta­tis­tics indi­cate only 16% of NFT cre­ators are women — a star­tling gen­der dis­par­i­ty that reflects the under­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of women in today’s NFT ecosys­tem.

Accord­ing to a sur­vey con­duct­ed by Art Tac­tic and pub­lished by Bloomberg, female artists account­ed for only 5% of sales in the NFT mar­ket. In com­par­i­son, male artist cre­ations made up 77% of sales (16% were unknown artists, and 2% were col­lec­tive­ly created).

How­ev­er, spe­cif­ic NFT projects are attempt­ing to over­come the issue. Rari­ble is one of them. Rari­ble has pri­or­i­tized sup­port­ing female-led NFT projects. Coin­tele­graph spoke with indus­try experts Masha Vyazem­skaya, the Head of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Rari­ble, and Rebekah Kei­da, Chief Mar­ket­ing Offi­cer at XBTO, about the gen­der dis­par­i­ty in the NFT space.

Accord­ing to Vyazem­skaya, the tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor has always been a male-dom­i­nat­ed one, which she believes “fos­ters a sense of intim­i­da­tion for many women who want to enter the NFT space.” She adds:

“As the indus­try con­tin­ues to mature, it is impor­tant that we cham­pi­on our female artists and inno­va­tors, pro­mot­ing and encour­ag­ing their work and giv­ing them greater oppor­tu­ni­ty to shape the future of the industry.”

She describes the chal­lenges faced by female cre­ators when they first enter the NFT sec­tor as based on “the broad­er tech­nol­o­gy indus­try.” Accord­ing to her, “the tra­di­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy indus­try has his­tor­i­cal­ly always catered towards male ambi­tions and suc­cess, cre­at­ing a mis­guid­ed expec­ta­tion that tech is pri­mar­i­ly for men.”

Aware­ness, accord­ing to Vyazem­skaya, is a cru­cial first step in encour­ag­ing more women to get involved in the NFT indus­try. As she puts it, by cham­pi­oning suc­cess­ful female cre­ators and women-led ini­tia­tives, we estab­lish a prece­dent for future gen­er­a­tions of inno­va­tors that the NFT sec­tor is a “com­mu­ni­ty for women.”

Accord­ing to XBTO’s Rebekah Kei­da, two impor­tant mea­sures for increas­ing the num­ber of women involved in the NFT and Web3 spaces are “enrolling more peo­ple in cryp­tocur­ren­cy edu­ca­tion and fos­ter­ing a greater sense of inclusion.”

“Truth­ful­ly, this indus­try is still so young and snow­balling, so no one is tru­ly an ‘expert.’ We are all learn­ing togeth­er. The more we can pro­mote this con­cept of inclu­siv­i­ty, the more wel­com­ing the space will become to new cryp­to users and women look­ing to get involved.” 

What would they advise any lady con­sid­er­ing a career in the NFT sec­tor? Vyazem­skaya sug­gest­ed that it’s a good idea to get start­ed inter­act­ing with oth­er cre­ators and col­lec­tors as soon as possible.

Relat­ed: The Sand­box part­ners with World of Women to dri­ve female edu­ca­tion and mentorship

The NFT com­mu­ni­ty, accord­ing to her, is one of the “most sup­port­ive,” and much of real­ly valu­able com­mu­ni­ca­tion and inter­ac­tion occurs on social media and inter­net mar­ket­places like Rarible.

Kei­da, on the oth­er hand, advised that while it appears to be easy to start, sim­ply start. She adds, “do your research.” She con­sid­ers one-on-one con­ver­sa­tions, whether via Twit­ter or Dis­cord, extreme­ly valu­able. The medi­a’s typ­i­cal cov­er­age of NFT invest­ment sto­ries is opti­mistic — either a spec­tac­u­lar suc­cess or a cat­a­stroph­ic failure.

“When you reach out and start build­ing indi­vid­ual con­nec­tions, you real­ize there is so much more insight to gather.” 

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