Diversity is everywhere! Barack Obama is the first black president and with Hilary Clinton we may get the first female president. Yet, gender diversity is not only a topic for politics but also plays a role for online communities. In this post I want to discuss why gender diversity is important and present statistics about Steemit’s gender distribution.

While social networks are usually used by both genders there are quite a few platforms that actually have more women then men such as Instagram or Pinterest. These networks focus on female users who like to interact with others or share creative content with their friends. For classic social networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn diversity is not as important because it has less of an impact for the end-user experience. Most of these social platforms are designed to interact with friends and like-minded people. The content that is being shared on these sites is mostly very personal und nobody really thinks about what and why they post certain things. It is a tool that is used for networking and sharing personal info.

Image Credit: Pingdom

In contrast, platforms such as medium.com or reddit.com are different to classic social network. Here content is the focus and diversity plays a bigger role. On these platforms people share their stories, give advice, talk about experiences and they share insight knowledge with each other. There is more overall value to networks like steemit and reddit because people actually take the time to create something meaningful for a greater audience.

Diversity is crucial on these kind of networks. We all know intuitively that variety with regards to gender or race matters in pure business terms; however, it also has a profound effect on a community. Latest research has found that companies who have a more diverse workforce are more likely to have financial returns above the industry mean.

It is also known that diverse companies have an easier time to attract top talents, they offer higher employee satisfaction and improve decision-making processes. Even though these findings are all business related it can be tied to any community since any company is basically just a form of a community.

While there is a lot of excitement about Steemit right now, we see a lack of variety in terms of gender. Since the whole blockchain topic is very technical and most users have probably found out about the site trough technical sites and communities, women were so far hard to attract. I have created some statistics that will show the current ratio of male and female users on Steemit. The trend is clear: Steemit’s community influencers is predominantly made up of men. Yet, it is nice to see an uptick of female authors in July.

The non-author influencers (witnesses and top Steem Power owners) seem to be made up of very few women, if any. Coincidentally the same is happening in the real world with the 20 richest people in the world and most CEOs being male. One could argue that this will balance over time automatically but it will probably take a while until this eventually happens. In general, this may not be beneficial for promoting articles that interest women.

Here is why I see it being very important to the community and I hope my fellow girl steemians are with me on this:

• Diversity of Thought: Women bring different perspectives to the community and have a different point of view.

• Representation: Steemit should be perceived as an open community for everybody, not only techy guys who are into crypto. It’s really important to strengthen the brand early on, especially because both founders are guys as well. More women as witnesses or within the top 20 Steem Power owners would be great.

• Competitive Advantage: Having a diverse pool of writers and influencers could be a competitive advantage for Steemit. It will generate a more balanced community with lots of valuable content.

• Different Skills: We all know the stereotypes of content where women are cooking, baking and doing make up tutorials. Yes, these are all girly topics but there is much more to it. Women can add great skills to the community and are usually more emotional when it comes to content creation. They can tell great stories and are more open to share thoughts with others.

There is a huge untapped pool of talent waiting for our community.

Maybe we can start an initiative with this post and ask every man reading it to invite one women to our community :)

Raw Data

Gender of Top 30 Authors: Overall

Rank	Name	Gender
1	@stellabelle	F	Source
2	@cryptoctopus	M	Source
3	@donkeypong	M	his family -> Source
4	@steempower	M	Source
5	@xeroc	M	Fabian (Male Name) -> Source
6	@tuck-fheman	M (Probably)	man in name and made male comment
7	@rok-sivante	M	Source
8	@dantheman	M	Daniel Larimer **
9	@gavvet	M	Source
10	@blocktrades	M (Probably)	Speaking for Men Source
11	@steemrollin	M	Source
12	@cryptogee	M	Source
13	@cass	M	Source -> Google+
14	@anwenbaumeister	F	Source
15	@piedpiper	M	Source
16	@arhag	?	-
17	@pfunk	M	Source
18	@nanzo-scoop	M	Source
19	@dan	M	Daniel Larimer **
20	@steemship	M	Richard (Male Name) -> Source
21	@benjojo	M	Source
22	@kencode	M	YouTube Channel -> Source
23	@steemservices	?	-
24	@clains	M	Source
25	@dana-edwards	?	-
26	@pharesim	M	Michael (Male Name) -> Source
27	@steemitblog	?	-
28	@the-alien	M	Source
29	@inboundinken	F	Me :)
30	@void	M	Source

**Daniel Larimer is a duplicate and is only counted once in charts
Ranking from Steemwhales.com 3. August 22:00 UTC

Gender of Top 30 Authors: July

Rank	Name	Gender
1	@xeroc	M	Fabian (Male Name) -> Source
2	@gavvet	M	Source
3	@heiditravels	F	Source
4	@anwenbaumeister	F	Source
5	@cass	M	Source -> Google+
6	@rok-sivante	M	Source
7	@guerrint	F	Source
8	@roelandp	M	Source
9	@infovore	M	Source
10	@complexring	M	Source
11	@stellabelle	F	Source
12	@cryptoctopus	M	Source
13	@fyrstikken	M	Source
14	@steempower	M	Source
15	@piedpiper	M	Source
16	@masteryoda	M	Source
17	@kencode	M	YouTube Channel -> Source
18	@jlwkolb	F	Source
19	@arhag	?	-
20	@cryptogee	M	Source
21	@dan	M	Daniel Larimer
22	@blueorgy	?	-
23	@b0y2k	M	Source
24	@clains	M	Source
25	@jl777	M	Source
26	@kevinpham20	M	Source
27	@pfunk	M	Source
28	@inboundinken	F	Me :)
29	@steemdrive	M	Source
30	@manthostsakirid	M	Source

Ranking from July Top 30 SBD Earners

Gender of Top 19 Witnesses

Rank	Name	Gender
1	@witness.svk	M	Source -> Git
2	@roadscape	?	-
3	@pharesim	M	Michael (Male Name) -> Source
4-8	@riverhead @smooth.witness @xeldal @bhuz @arhag	?	-
9	@wackou	M	Nicolas (Male Name) -> Source -> Git
10	@complexring	M	Source
11	@blocktrades	M (Probably)	Speaking for Men Source
12	@silversteem	M	Kyle (Male Name) -> Source
13-15	@abit @datasecuritynode @steemed	?	-
16	@joseph	M	Source
17	@kushed	?	-
18	@clayop	M	Jaewoo Cho(Male Name) -> Source
19	@delegate.lafona	M	Source

Witnesses from steemd.com 3. August 23:00 UTC

Gender of Top 20 Steem Power Owners

Rank	Name	Gender
1	@steemit	?	-
2	@ned	M	Ned Scott
3	@dan	M	Daniel Larimer
4	@blocktrades	M (Probably)	Speaking for Men Source
5-9	@jamesc @ben @berniesanders @smooth @val-a	?	-
10	@dantheman	M	Daniel Larimer
11-20	@mottler @tombstone @itsascam @rainman @steemed @val-b @michael-b @michael-a @summon @blackjack	?	-

Top Steem Power Owners from steemd.com 3. August 23:00 UTC

* I wasn't able to gather some data due to lack of proof for gender. Please leave a comment if you see yourself in the statistic and want to call out your gender. Thanks!