Is the DeFi future female?
DeFi or decentralized finance is traditional — and not so traditional — financial tools and services reimagined in a peer-to-peer network and is one of the fastest growing spaces in Ethereum. While the innovations in DeFi make it an incredibly exciting time to be part of the crypto scene, it’s discouraging to see a lack of women participating in and benefitting from DeFi. If there isn’t a proactive effort to educate and engage more women, there will likely be a similar or larger financial literacy gap than the one that exists in our current system.
To give you an idea of some of the current financial gaps, here are some data points from a study by Allianz Financial:
- A quarter of women in the study say they currently engage a financial professional, which is down from 30% in the 2016 study
- Over half of women (57%) say they wish they were more confident in their financial decision making
- Fewer women say they feel financially secure (62% in 2019 compared with 68% in 2016)
Why should women care about DeFi? Building wealth isn’t always easy, unless of course, a person has a certain amount of wealth and financial literacy to begin with. DeFi broadens access to wealth building tools and services by enabling anyone anywhere with an internet connection and a small amount of capital to onboard without an arduous KYC or approval process. With DeFi, the opportunity to build personal wealth is unprecedented in terms of financial gains and accessibility. Women can take ownership of and grow their financial power and confidence with DeFi tools and services.
“According to research put together by New York Life Investment Management, 51% of the personal wealth in the U.S. is controlled by women — an estimated $22 trillion worth.”
What is SheFi? When it comes to learning about and using these platforms and services, most published documentation is geared towards the crypto and financial literate. The desire to both reduce the financial literacy gap and empower women to participate in DeFi led me to launch a new program called SheFi. SheFi is a DeFi educational program that is also a vehicle to donate funds to nonprofits that educate women in STEM programs.
How does the SheFi program work? SheFi is an educational course that teaches women about a new DeFi project monthly. As a cohort, women pool together funds that they all agree will be donated to a nonprofit at the end of the course. During the course, this pool of money is put in different DeFi projects that the group learns about. Each month, the cohort both learns about and uses a DeFi project together. These sessions are held over zoom and recorded to share with those who could not attend a session.
Why are we pooling funds together? In my experience and with talking to others, there is cognitive dissonance between HODLing your Ethereum and using it to explore a new, risky, interest bearing protocol. Therefore, by pooling together funds, a woman isn’t playing with her own personal crypto stash — the group is practicing with money that they’ve already agreed to give away (nonprofit donation). This reduces the reservations one may have about experimenting with these new DeFi projects.
“Don’t just stand for the success of other women — insist on it.” — Gail Blanke
Also, there are many benefits to creating and gathering as a community. If I were to only develop and publish DeFi content online, I would miss the opportunity to engage with other women 1-on-1 or in a small group setting to understand questions, challenges, aha moments, etc. With a cohort that meets bi-weekly, women can ask questions, give feedback, share stories of successes and mishaps, and most importantly, support each other on our collective DeFi journey. Learning about a topic like this alone can be fraught with uncertainty and reservations. Learning and making decisions together will enable all participants to understand and assimilate healthy decision making patterns as they learn from experts, or at least those with greater experience.
Now that you know at a high level how it works, here are the SheFi vision, mission, and goals.
Vision: A financial economy built on Web 3.0 in which women are active participants and leaders, therefore creating a more inclusive, diverse, and sustainable industry.
Mission: To empower women in the area of decentralized finance through education and experimentation while supporting charities that focus on educating females in STEM.
Goals:
- Empower women to participate in decentralized finance protocols
- Educate women on decentralized finance projects and tools
- Experiment with different decentralized finance protocols and projects.
- Donate more money to a nonprofit, which focuses on educating women STEM programs, than the pool originally started with at the end of the cohort
- Create a global community of women who can promote adoption of DeFi among banked, underbanked, and unbanked women globally
Status and plans: Right now, we are piloting SheFi within ConsenSys, and it will likely stay an internal pilot throughout most of the coming year.We’ve had four sessions to date, pooled together $150 of DAI — an Ethereum token that is pegged 1-to-1 with USD, and put it in Compound Finance — a lending protocol. I am also partnering with the wonderful Lili, an amazing designer in the crypto space, to build out the brand identity for SheFi. Eventually, the plan is to open SheFi up to the community and to all genders. Stay tuned for updates on scaling and roadmap.
To stay up to date with the SheFi’s progress and a variety of DeFi topics, sign up for SheFi Shorts via an email newsletter here. I’ll also be blogging about the different topics we cover in a “What The Fi is DeFi” column in Decrypt. All of this content is put together assuming that you are not an expert, and SheFi is here to help make you one.
If you have a project that you think we should cover in the SheFi educational program and also be written up about please reach out to me at maggie@shefi.org.
Want to learn about DeFi and stay informed? Sign up on the SheFi Website.
Check Out: SheFi Website, SheFi Twitter, SheFi LinkedIn
Questions? Email me at maggie@shefi.org
