This week we spoke with Rachel Holmes, facilitator of Panvala’s Women-Led Web3 Coalition, a group for all genders to gather and share stories, knowledge, support, and deep conversation around the experience of women in Web3.
A Place to Gather, Share, and Support
A few weeks ago, Rachel Holmes and I connected over Zoom and chatted about Panvala’s Women-Led Web3 Coalition. For those not yet familiar with Panvala’s coalitions, these are essentially subgroups within the Panvala League that form around a common goal, interest, or specific connection (Click here to view a list of Panvala’s existing coalitions). The Women-Led Web3 Coalition is about—you guessed it—women in Web3! But the group welcomes all gender expressions and often has several men present at the monthly meetings. Rachel spoke candidly about the group—about its history, intention, goals, and even some of the criticism it has received amid the praise. A bit about Rachel—among many other things she is the Founder of MetaSpace and a long-time contributor to Panvala; she also has ample experience holding space for groups to explore conversations with complex content. As Panvala’s coalitions began to take shape last Spring, Rachel was asked to facilitate this group and has since allowed it to unfold naturally.
“The first call we did had a huge turn out,” Rachel shared. “We went around and shared our names, where we were from, what organization we were working with, what we were all about, etc.” She went on to say that she quickly realized how this format could get old with time and wouldn’t encourage people to continue showing up each month. “After the second call I changed the format to offering questions that are relevant to women who work in Web3, but also just to women in general.” One question from the prior week’s meeting included: Do you feel like events and conferences have safe spaces for women? Participants commented on how web3 events often feel designed exclusively for men—where women are exposed to harassment and the feeling of being tokenized or invited but not really involved. For certain participants, having the space to share these kinds of stories and experiences has been described as healing and rare—most women note that this does not exist within the Web3 world. Other participants push the group to look towards solutions to these problems. Rachel noted, “Generally speaking, my intention is to create a safe space. Within that, women sometimes get angry or express anger towards how they’ve been treated.” At the same time, Rachel expressed how offering the space for women to share candidly about their experiences has allowed for patterns to emerge—patterns that the group can face together and figure out how to work with.
Rachel is pleased with the trajectory of the coalition so far. The group is currently planning a women-led retreat for 2022, and in November hosted a woman-specific event at NFT.NYC that went really well. The group also plans to try and create pop-up events at major conferences so that women have more safe spaces to go. In an anonymous survey about how things are going in the group, participants described the coalition as “healing,” “encouraging,” and “connected.” One participant lamented that they wished there were more new members...
Join a Meeting!
If you are interested in joining the Women-Led Web3 Coalition or simply attending one of their meetings to see what it is all about, you can register for the next call by entering your info here. The next meeting is on 12/16 at 11:30am EST. We hope to see you there!
Thank you to Rachel and the Women-Led Web3 Coalition for encouraging meaningful conversation around gender within Web3 and creating the space to explore ways to support a more diverse community.