Latin American women are becoming more interested in Web3, as groups try to encourage involvement by providing instructional materials and grants.
Despite the weak market in cryptocurrencies, interest in Web3 is still rising. According to a recent McKinsey report, Web3 received venture capital investments totalling more than $18 billion in the first half of 2022. According to Cointelegraph Research’s findings, Web3 was the area of the blockchain that caught venture capitalists’ attention the most during the second quarter of this year.
Although noticeable, a dearth of diversity has emerged in the Web3 industry. For instance, it was discovered that just 16% of those who create nonfungible tokens (NFTs) are women. Women are showing interest in owning digital assets, notwithstanding the limited number. As a result, according to industry experts, women are finding it difficult to enter the field of Web3, especially those from underrepresented regions like Latin America.
Encouraging Latina Women to Join WBE3
According to Sandy Carter, senior vice president and channel chief of Unstoppable Domains, a distributor of NFT domain names and a digital identity platform, women in Brazil, Columbia, and numerous other Spanish-speaking nations, including Spain, are increasingly interested in Web3 material.
She spoke about her organization-, Unstoppable Women of Web3 which is a diversity and education organisation that focuses on developing talent to level the playing field in Web3 and was created by Unstoppable Domains on March 8, 2022. After that, more Latinas contacted her asking for Web3 content in various languages.
Carter stated that Unstoppable Domains just established a target to onboard 5 million Latin American women into Web3 by 2030 in order to satisfy these requirements. Carter stated that this effort is being launched in collaboration with the Spanish-language cryptocurrency education portal CryptoConexión and the women-led developer DAO H.E.R. DAO LATAM, which promotes diversity.
According to her The first step in creating a more inclusive Web3 is education. To assist in the development of Spanish-language teaching materials about Web3, her organisation has teamed with women from 25 various organisations. Additionally, they are providing five million Latinas with free NFT domains valued at over $25 million as a method to assist them to create and maintain their digital identity and opening doors to the market.
The fact that women who are natives of or have Latin American ancestry continue to be underrepresented in the tech sector, in Carter’s opinion, makes initiatives like this all the more crucial. In order to put this into perspective, data from the online digital community Built In revealed that women of Latin American heritage only hold 2% of computing-related employment in the United States. The same is true for Latin America, where women are notably underrepresented in fields related to science, technology, engineering, and math, per an IDB study.
Founder of CryptoConexión, Monica Talan has an initiative called “WAGMI LatAm,” where their mission is to ensure access to Web3 content in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, the motivation is to make that organization must take an education-first approach that incorporates different languages to bridge the Web3 diversity gap.
Furthermore, Laura Navarro Muoz, the governor of H.E.R. DAO LATAM, informed Cointelegraph that the group supports Latin American women in their migration to Web3 by offering travel grants for conferences and hackathons.
Organizations like CryptoConexión and H.E.R. DAO LATAM have already begun to have an influence. After receiving a scholarship from H.E.R. DAO LATAM to attend a cryptocurrency event, Bricia Gabriela Guzmán Chávez, community manager at Web3Equity, a Web3 platform promoting gender equality, told Cointelegraph that she landed her first job in the industry.
Guzmán Chávez claims that H.E.R. DAO LATAM also founded the “Hacker Mom Scholar” scholarship programme after ETH Mexico, which allowed her to attend Devcon VI with her three kids. She is currently working full-time remotely on Web3 projects, and any opportunity that these projects give her to attend Web3 events is a chance to enhance the quality of her life, according to Guzmán Chávez.
Talan added that given the demand for Web3 in the area, particularly in countries like Mexico, it is crucial for Latin American women to participate in the industry.
Mexico was the second-largest beneficiary of remittances in the world last year, according to data from the World Bank. Due to this, a lot of Web3 businesses are opening offices in Mexico to facilitate cryptocurrency transfers. The company requires information on the applications of cryptocurrency remittances. If there are more women producing these goods, then it can be assumed that the goal can be accomplished more effectively, according to Talan.
Women in Latin America face challenges when seeking jobs in the Web3 sector
While it’s noteworthy that groups are working to increase the number of Latin American women working in the Web3 sector, obstacles including hiring restrictions and lack of access to technology could make adoption more difficult. For instance, statistics from Crypto Jobs List showed that compared to the last bull market in February 2022, there are around 30%-40% fewer job listings and people engaged in the sector.
On the other hand, Web3 is opening up more remote employment options, which might promote a diverse workforce. Web3 is assisting people, wherever they may be, in obtaining high-paying jobs. Since all they require are the necessary abilities, education comes first, Navarro Muoz noted.
Web3 researcher Diana Carolyn Olvera Gómez told Cointelegraph that H.E.R. DAO LATAM gave her the chance to take part in her first hackathon. She was also given Spanish-language teaching materials by the group. Olvera Gómez responded by revealing that she contributes remotely to Coinmiles, a Bitcoin rewards network, and Web3Montréal, a Canadian nonprofit organisation specialising in Web3.
However, Olvera Gómez pointed out that for many women living in areas like Latin America, access to technology, such as Web3 efforts, might be challenging. However, she thinks that as more women participate, a domino effect would increase their involvement.
According to Carter, women-focused Web3 networks offer a chance to address the gender gap in the workplace and there is a demand among women who want to engage in Web3, but the next problem is to provide the appropriate instructional content: Even if the market is in a bear market, now is the time to build. There is still a lot of passion and energy in the area. Just exactly what education can be to folks who are interested in knowing more?
