RE: Is There Really an Advantage to Being a Woman on Steemit?
Thank you so much for this! There's a lot of great information to dig into--this was exactly what I was hoping for in terms of collaboration. :)
I didn't do the research myself on the two confirmed witnesses, so I can't guarantee the methodology, but I asked the woman who did and she said she personally went through and looked through profiles to check for any indications of gender. Even though we don't know the genders for sure in many cases (a problem I came up against when I took my cursory look at the two metrics I mentioned), it's statistically pretty unlikely that the unknowns could include enough women enough that they'd hit the 16.67% mark.
I think the bottom line is that since we're dealing with a platform that is completely governed by its users, even if women and other minority groups were to become disproportionately represented in the higher ranks, there would still never be equality of power unless we got our number of users to be a little more even. But of course that's an entirely different question than whether or not being female gives you an advantage.
Yeah, I actually read that piece when it was first written, but only glanced at it again when I posted the above comment, as it was already after 2 AM...
As for your final point, the way Steemit works actually means that isn't true, because on Steemit, your SP is your power, and if the only women on Steemit were the top 100 SP-holders, then the platform would be decided by women, even though in absolute numbers their percentage would be tiny.
The top 40 users on the platform hold over 90% of the power on the platform...
But yes, such an environment does not lend itself to more women coming, which in turn doesn't lend itself to more women coming. Though I can say that of all the big internet communities I've been on, Steemit has a much higher representation of women, even if not in the higher echelons. Though it could be just the circles on Steemit I'm hanging around in.