It’s a common mix-up, but equity and equality are one in the same and designed to achieve the same goal.  Essentially, equity leads to equality. Equity involves the process of fairness for men and women equally, while equality is the desired end result. This debate has been going on for centuries, and it’s apparent in everyday life. Equal pay, rights, freedoms and privileges are just some of the battles woman face on a daily basis. The UN reports that from the 775 million in the world who are illiterate, nearly two thirds are women. 

Traditionally in the UK decades and centuries before, women stayed at home helping the children while the men would go to work. That is now changing. For example, in 2017–2018, over half (57%) of students enrolled in higher education were women. An impressive stat that shows how the world is waking up to equality and improved opportunities for all, whatever your gender. Equity is about providing the right resources and offering choices to any sex. It hasn’t completely changed yet, with the World Economic Forum expecting another 100 years before a full transformation. Breaking down these barriers is key, and it may take years to implement global change.

Enter technology, this marvellous wonder crafted to increase efficiency and generally make life lot easier. That’s not all, technology can work its magic to drastically advanced gender equality. The struggle for equal rights has had dramatic movement as a result to technological advancements in the last two decades. Like with most things, the internet has been able to provide a welcome platform where women can speak up and make their voices heard across the globe. The inspirational #MeToo campaign saw women earn their place as the Time’s Person of the Year 2017, with the movement empowering women to come forward and talk about sexual harassment more openly. 

Just as the internet paved the way to a more informed future, revolutionising the dissemination of information in the 90s, blockchain is poised to disrupt the flow of all kinds of data. Simply put, blockchains are databases maintained by the users of the blockchains as opposed to some third parties who control the databases. The great thing is that the information stored on the blockchain is resistant to any tampering. This is ensured by millions of miners who agree upon the shared ledger in a decentralised way, meaning blockchains are able to provide equal opportunities to everyone in the world to use them without the fear of getting censored or stopped. Interestingly totalitarian governments or big corporations cannot prevent anyone’s access to blockchains on a whim and blockchains have already been used to support controversial services like WikiLeaks. 

Gender inequality is very closely linked to financial independence, women in developing countries with limited access to banking solutions struggle. Without a safe place to save and store money, they end up entirely dependant on their husbands. A dangerous situation that allows an abuser incredible amounts of power over their victim. Fortunately, survivors can disinter-mediate their abusers and use blockchain to provide a secure ID,  access to legal contracts and secure transactions. This innovative system could substantially reduce financial abuse and help women break free with their credit and economic futures intact. 

What Blockchain can do is give support to those who need it, offering financial aid and improved security. Working on a digital ledger, fingerprint technology and secure payment transactions can provide women in impoverished countries with their own bank accounts and ensure their own private accounts. Organisations such as Miss Blockchain, Diversity in Blockchain and Women on the Block are already leading the way to achieve a gender equity balance. These systems can provide the stepping stone to a brighter future. Women basically need the right support and opportunities to work on a similar system to men, which is difficult to move when so many in high positions hold the cards. Therefore, technology and Blockchain could offer a solution.

At present, there are several campaigns to use blockchain to further promote its use for social impact like the ‘Decade of Women’ campaign. This is an ambitious campaign of action to harness frontier technologies to transform women’s lives worldwide, leveraging the power of emerging technologies across blockchain and digital assets to achieve economic engagement and financial independence for all women finally. Blockchain decentralised token communities will allow large groups of like-minded people to connect and allow members to determine causes worth supporting and to what extent they can help. Together, all these initiatives will help further the cause of Gender equality, especially in developing countries. 

The Alacrity Network works on a decentralised network of ownership and trust, meaning data can not be tampered with or altered in anyway. Documents can not be forged or manipulated on behalf of a woman to give them less opportunities, providing a more equal playing field. Data can be shared on a large network, but only accessed by those with the essential keys to unlock its system. For years women have been overlooked in some quarters, but Blockchain can change all of that. Secure payments can be made on the Alacrity Blockchain instantly, giving full control to the user and not a third party, family member or man in position of power in the workplace. The built in Oracle system will also help with extracting data from a number of external sources, meaning a number of options will be provided to the user, whatever the gender. When you add up all of these solutions that a Blockchain can offer, in the future women will have a better opportunity to excel in society.

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