If you’ve made it this far, you know that I’m all about action and access. That’s why Bad Ass Bitches [in Tech] is looking for writers with personal experience navigating the structural and social barriers built up by decades of tech bro dominance in Webs 1 and 2.

I don’t know about you, but I read a lot of tech bros and “how to” guys, I’m not ashamed to admit how much I enjoy their insight into some of the highest echelons of tech power; their experience is invaluable. But I can love a good tech bro and still be dying for some variety.

It’s very easy for us to like and relate to this demographic, because we see them represented so often in success stories, even when that success was predicated on parental financial and social capital. Don’t get me wrong, this is a perfectly valid way to start a project or a company — and certainly an effective way to succeed — but we’ve heard this story already.

We know that there are many different pathways to “success”, just as there are many different ways to measure that “success”. We also know that the most interesting stories often don’t end with any sense of “success” at all. These are the stories we want to publish and promote.

Wed 3 is all about failure. Far too many of us were raised on the idea that “failure is not an option” and spent a lot of time and effort unlearning this mantra. In the Web 3 world, failure is the price of entry.

Bad Ass Bitches [in Tech] is all about sharing knowledge, providing women and people of the global majority with access to ideas and advice from others who’ve faced, overcome, or been defeated by similar struggles.

We’re not here to question or invalidate individual experiences, but we are interested in learning from them. We’re not here to compete with one another; we’re here to build a community.

The entire premise of Web 3 is community, we care about engagement and interaction, supporting one another by reading each other’s work and starting discussions across comment sections. More engagement on our stories means more chances to get noticed by Medium editors; the more we get noticed by Medium’s editors, the more traffic Bad Ass Bitches [in Tech] gets and, importantly, the more eyeballs you get on your work.

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Beyond tech bros and “how to” guys was originally published in Bad Ass Bitches (in Tech) on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When I decided to publish this, I wasn’t sure how to write an honest “women supporting women” article without first addressing the inherent hypocrisy of doing so.

Too many women have told this story — and told it well — too many times but far too little has come out of this effort considering the resources put into it. I, like so many of the marginalized voices slowly getting into Web 3, believe in actually making things happen, rather than talking about what needs to be done.

As a disclaimer of sorts: I’m a woman of action. It’s why I founded BABs (Bad Ass Bitches) Labs, why I led a team that’s 90% women, and why I often feel out of place in “women-led” groups which talk a big game about getting more women into Web 3, but lose steam when it comes to making this happen.

However — and, trust me, I see the irony here — precisely because I spend so much time acting on the need to diversify Web 3, I haven’t spent much time talking about the how and the what of this much-needed diversification.

Decentralization is impossible without diversity

First, let me address the problem in a little more detail. I work in Web 3, the third generation of web technologies which is more explicitly user-centered. Web 3 technologies and their associated industries focus on human engagement and decentralization, taking power away from huge tech corporations and democratizing it, giving power back to the people.

At its core, democracy is about diversity, which is why any democratizing movement within tech demands representation. Decentralization — and therefore the entire premise of Web 3 — is impossible without diversity.

The diversity Web 3 demands, however, is about far more than quotas or some moralistic “woke” sense of justice versus injustice. The data is clear: The more perspectives you bring in, the more creative products and services you’re able to create, and the larger your potential market is going to be.

I’m trying to avoid overkill here, but to plug BABs Labs again, this is why our motto is “diversity breeds creativity”. I have first-hand experience of the impact diversification can have on the bottomline of a startup, having started up several myself — including one of very few PR firms dealing exclusively with Web 3 marketing.

As I’ve said on my LinkedIn — where I’m most visibly connected to VCs, entrepreneurs, and other movers in the Web 3 world — when a company takes on a female CEO and diversifies its leadership makeup, the innovative capacity of the entire team increases:

Studies have proven that companies become more innovative when the top leadership of a company are inherently diverse, for example in terms of gender, ethnicity, background or sexual orientation. However, what also drives innovative potential is what these Harvard Business Review writers call “acquired diversity”. Experience working in diverse teams can make individual team members more innovative by increasing their acquired diversity.

In practical, everyday terms, this means that the industry itself — that Web 3 itself — already incentivises diversity. All we have to do is put it into action.

What can we do to actually support diversity in tech?

There are more than enough women who “support women” explaining how diverse voices have a positive impact on profit margins. We can say it until we’re blue in the face, the predominantly straight, white men making investment decisions on behalf of their predominantly straight, white male clients can either take our word for it or not. And don’t get me wrong, some do, but not half as many as perhaps should.

I worry that many of them may still see us as housewives with passion projects, rather than seeing the inherent value of housewives with passion projects. Women and people of the global majority aren’t only underrepresented in board rooms, at the VC pitch table, or at Web 3 panels and events, we represent a huge, untapped, global market for Web 3 products and services.

As I said when pitching to investors in Dubai last year: When you give women power, which they wouldn’t have had in “traditional” circumstances, you open yourself up not only to new ways of thinking and problem-solving, but entirely new ideas and even markets.

The first thing we can do to actually support diversity in tech is to connect these markets to projects run by and for people who represent them: Women, POC, LGBTQIA+. The bulk of this work is marketing, telling and selling the story of this connection and why it’s important.

If this means pushing our clients to look at doing more work in Latin America or Eastern Europe instead of North America or APAC because there is a greater need for these stories and this connection there, then we do it. If it means pushing our clients to target women and the femme population as a whole, then we do it.

The second thing we can do is connect these markets and projects to venture capital, but not the type of VC that sits around waiting for the next hottest internet trend built by and branded for a very narrow section of the world’s most entitled and privileged. These may be valid, meaningful projects, but these stories are already being told — and told well.

We need to be the VCs that get excited over diverse projects because we see ourselves in them. It’s not enough for women leaders in Web 3 to be talking about the need for more women in Web 3, we need to be funding them.

Some of us have already started

The action-oriented players in the Web 3 world are, unsurprisingly, those from the communities that need it most: Latinx and POC creators, developers, organizers and, yes, VCs. People like Web3 Familia and Hola Metaverso, who are working on community-led education projects, or Lolita Taub investing in community-led projects.

People who haven’t only had to struggle against gender norms and limitations, but against structural barriers that discriminate based on non-Anglicized surnames and ethnicity-based red-lining.

And if you’re not quite ready to take my word for it that this discrimination exists, here’s an Oxford University which found that people with ethnic names have to send 70–90% more applications to get a job than those with English names. At the same time, women are 30% less likely to get hired than a man with the same qualifications.

We all know how this plays out in the VC world, which is why more of us who succeed against all these odds need to be looking back with more than just kind words and vocal support. We need to be looking back with the intent to invest in those who look, sound, think and feel like us.

We need to be investing in every step of the supply chain. From scholarships and research funding for talented women and people of the global majority, grants and funds to support women who choose to have children but still very much have the capacity to create and innovate, to straight-up start-up capital for women-led projects. We need to be funding women, not pontificating about how we need to support each other.

Diversification isn’t going to happen by itself, no matter how much we talk about it. We need to be intentional and we need to drive this change now.

An Injustice!

Why Aren’t Women Actually Supporting Women In Tech? was originally published in An Injustice! on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.