"Satoshi is a woman!"

This is how New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney gathered the crowd on May 13 at the "Women on the Block" event in Brooklyn, New York, where more than 300 people gathered to talk about cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.

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The event comes at a time of tension within the crypto community, as blockchain stars such as Elizabeth Stark, executive director of Lightning Labs, are asking interviewers to stop asking what it is like to be a woman in the ecosystem.

"Stop marginalizing and write about the incredible work that women are doing," Stark tweeted in February.

But for the ladies at the event, it is less about creating a gap and more about a welcome relief from the perennial challenge of being treated as a cryptographic unicorn, when they just want to discuss use cases and applications.

True to that, many of the day's discussions focused on the commercial opportunities within the space, from the use of technology to shed light on the opaque real estate industry to the use of blockchain for the management of the supply chain within of the food sector.

However, the fact is that women are still underrepresented in positions of privilege and power in all areas, and the industry of block chains is no exception.

According to the results of a Quartz international survey of 378 crypto and blockchain companies supported by capitalization founded between January 2012 and January 2018, approximately 8.5% had a woman in the founding team, compared to 17.7% in the industry technological development.

And according to many women at the event, this lack of gender parity could significantly delay the nascent industry.

"Women have a better understanding and different priorities with this technology," European Parliament Member Eva Kaili of Greece told the crowd, adding:

"We believe that with these tools, it can have a great influence in the future."

A true need

Indeed, the women at the event, including German entrepreneur Masha McConaghy, co-founder of BigchainDB and the Ocean Protocol, told CoinDesk that women could benefit from blockchain technology, perhaps even more than men.

That's because women still face issues related to financial access and empowerment - women make up the majority of the world's poor, according to the World Bank - and a pseudonym and censorship-resistant system could provide a solution .

For example, in Saudi Arabia, women are still legally prohibited from obtaining a commercial loan or license until two men testify on their behalf. And according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, at least 94% of women who suffered domestic abuse were also victims of economic abuse, where the bully controlled their access to income or financial services.

McConaghy told CoinDesk, "We still have freedom, but we're moving towards that."

Echoing that, Nigerian engineer Ese Mentie, who works with ConsenSys on the blockchain uPort identity project, told CoinDesk:

"There are still women whose husbands and fathers control and can not access their own money."

For her, inclusive corporate practices are the key to building effective blockchain solutions that take into account these different problems faced by women.

"If there is diversity, those conversations will be presented," he said.

And that could happen sooner than some expect. Kaili celebrated the fact that women are taking leadership positions very quickly within the space, not only in terms of entrepreneurship, but also in terms of legal research, diplomacy and open source projects.

That makes sense, he continued, considering that the rise of cryptocurrencies is popularizing the conversations that women have been having over the years about access and financial control.

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Focus on education

For many attendees at the event, who on Mother's Day brought moms, daughters and sisters, the key to getting more women in space is education.

Educational programs and data exchange initiatives, such as Women Who Code, were hot topics. And it was even proposed that the events of Women in the Block should follow their course.

Speaking of this in a panel on investment in blockchain technology, Liz Rabban, vice president of business development at Celsius Network, a decentralized lending platform, said:

 "The concept of decentralization and empowerment can only exist if we have education."

And these statements about education in general got more applause than even Maloney's initial statement about Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that originally stimulated all this emotion.

However, Kaili was quick to point out that the blockchain industry will only "duplicate the problems we already have" if the leaders do not prioritize gender parity.

But knowing the struggles that women face in the industry, and even more broadly, the tone of the day was not discouraged. In fact, many of the women joked about the current advantages of being a minority in space, including the fact that there is almost never a line for women's toilets.

The organizer of Women on the Block, Alexandra Levin-Kramer, joked quickly:

"Not for much longer!"

Source: CoinDesk