As early as 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft addressed the oppression of women, then treated as commodities. She emphasized financial independence as a key lever for emancipation. Subsequently, other feminist movements emerged.

By opposing capitalism, Marxist feminism seems to have abandoned the issue of women’s ownership within an environment that remained capitalist, and thus did not encourage women’s involvement in the financial sphere. From this perspective, intersectional feminism strikes me as more materialistic, particularly when working with women from minority backgrounds. It likely inspired initiatives aimed at providing women with payment methods, including those without a trusted intermediary. Finally, liberal feminism could be the one most attuned to the issue of women’s capital; yet, tainted by conservatism, it now largely denies structural inequalities, save for a few women’s communities formed as business clubs or initiatives promoting women’s participation in tech and finance. Rarely accompanied by a feminist awareness-raising effort, these organizations are often nurtured within public institutions, sometimes even at the behest of dominant (neoliberal) political powers or private institutes funded by multinationals, billionaires, or their foundations. They are born of what I call “sacred trickle-down.”

In short, while the political left strives to abolish inheritance—and thus only fights locally, in the Global South, to reduce inheritance-based inequalities between men and women—the political right relies on the invisible hand and public funding, corporate sponsorship, or CSR budgets to develop what I see as “light” feminism: a feminism that promotes pro-women actions without challenging current economic structures or power hierarchies.

The Big Wall Right in Our Face

You might think that cyberfeminism has taken on the issue of digital ownership—but in fact, it hasn’t. If you browse the online version of the Cyberfeminist Index, you’ll find just one mention of the word “Bitcoin” and hardly anything about digital “ownership.” It’s worth noting that the print edition of the Cyberfeminism Index (and perhaps the online version too—it’s unclear) stops in 2020, right before the NFT boom. Maybe the next edition will address this.

Meanwhile, certain pro-women communities have indeed emerged in the Web3 space (SheFi, WOW, Women in Web3) exactly during that period, from 2020 to 2022. It’s great to see the rise of “safe spaces” for women and gender minorities to learn, start projects, and create.

However, if you dig a little deeper into their content, you may sense a lack of political drive: yes, it’s inspired by intersectional feminism, yes, it encourages inclusion, trains women developers, supports artistic and entrepreneurial projects… But the economic structure of crypto, the power dynamics, and the wall of sexism remain outside the frame.

I’ve experienced it first-hand after speaking publicly about my own encounters with sexism in the crypto-asset world: the backlash was severe, and I was subjected to massive harassment. I can understand why a women’s community—sometimes sponsored—might not be eager to engage with these issues head-on or defend other women who do.

Still, we have to wonder what will happen when these organizations have trained hundreds of women in Solidity, and they come up against the same old phallocratic culture found everywhere else—sometimes even more brazen, under the pretext of “anonymity” and decentralization. The threat of discrediting a women’s organization if it becomes “too feminist” by calling out sexist behavior is very real. In my view, aside from a few openly feminist and activist NFT collections, the industry currently practices a code of silence so as not to scare off newcomers and/or tarnish the image of companies in the sector. “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”

Toward a Transformative Cyberfeminism

In my view, we can no longer settle for “soft” feminism that merely populates this sector with competent, “educated” women and helps them network, without giving them the keys to capital, power, or ownership—beginning with that initial, even initiatory, step of feminist consciousness-raising. Without this deeper movement, we risk ending up with a cyberspace in which, yet again, men design the platforms and set the rules, while women are invited to “play” so long as they don’t make too much noise.

That’s why I believe cyberfeminism must take a radical turn: not just creating “women’s communities,” but ensuring that the very architecture of cyberspace finally reflects a feminist consciousness. This means encouraging women and men alike to think about the impact of what they build. It means daring to publicly name sexism and genuinely supporting those who call it out. It also means mobilizing so that digital ownership, protocol governance, and financial mechanisms no longer remain a gray area controlled by a new male elite. This is a crucial challenge for the next generation of young women, who will live in an even more digital society than ours.

I’d like to see us roll up our sleeves to make cyberspace a true commons. If we want real transformation, we need to go beyond simple representation and tackle the roots of governance and economic structures. That’s where my concept of the “transformative cyberfeminist flywheel” comes in, targeting ownership and placing feminism at the heart of the struggle for women’s emancipation in cyberspace.

In my view, two scenarios are possible: either feminists in general finally take on the question of cyberspace, or cyberfeminists, cryptofeminists, tech feminists, and all the other feminist and “pro-women” movements on the internet embark on a long-term project of feminist education and activism among the women and men who build the tools and infrastructure of the internet—including the organizations that govern them (companies, foundations, DAOs, and so on). Or both.

I’d now like to introduce the fruit of all these reflections: the transformative cyberfeminist flywheel of my dreams. It’s the first version, and to be honest, my further reading after writing the first draft of this article has already shaken some of its principles. It’s therefore very much a concept open for discussion.

Legend:

NCC (Non-Cyber-Centric) Feminisms
When I refer here to NCC feminisms, I’m talking about all feminist movements that fight for women’s emancipation without specifically aiming to emancipate them in cyberspace. These movements may very well use the internet to spread their message—as we’ve seen with fourth-wave feminism, which effectively leveraged online platforms for activism. The most recent buzz-worthy movement, “4B,” emerged from Korean forums and gained worldwide visibility via platforms like TikTok following Trump’s election. However, the 4B movement does not focus at all on women’s power on the internet. I use the term NCC feminisms simply to distinguish these movements from feminist initiatives that focus on the internet. Ideally, I should find another name.

Cryptofeminism
This movement doesn’t truly exist in a formal sense. Here, I use it to describe women who have created or joined web3 organizations (DAOs and NFT collections) or more institutional bodies (nonprofit organizations, business clubs) aimed at reducing gender inequality in the crypto-asset sector. Founded between 2020 and 2022, these women-led organizations fight for women’s digital inclusion and recognition of their participation in the crypto-asset field, as well as for their access to careers that are just as promising as men’s. Some identify with liberal feminism, others with intersectional feminism; a good number don’t even identify as feminist. I call these groups “pro-women” or “soft feminists.” Their aim of promoting women’s entrepreneurship and creativity in the sector sometimes aligns them with the broader “women in tech” movements. However, to my knowledge, they have no official political agenda to advance feminism in the corridors of power on the internet, nor to alter governance structures or the economy at large. They do, however, promote and build alternatives to the predatory capitalism that’s devouring the sector. Cryptofeminism does very little in terms of feminist education. In fact, the only NFT collection I’ve found that openly embraces a feminist stance is Pussy Riot, created by Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova and artist Gremplin in February 2022. There are also many individual feminist activists, too numerous to list, whom you might follow on X.

Cyberfeminism
Historically, cyberfeminism has focused on how women and marginalized groups interact online, on the symbolic and cultural structures of the internet, and on challenging the patriarchal biases embedded in digital culture. It claims not to be defined in a strict way.

Techfeminism
I haven’t yet had the chance to explore techfeminism in depth, but from what I gather, it’s an academic movement studying how gender norms shape the design and use of technologies, often to the detriment of women and marginalized groups. With an intersectional perspective, it highlights the biases built into digital tools and encourages rethinking their development for greater inclusivity.

More Women

• Objective: Reduce the digital divide and encourage more women to get involved in cyberspace.

• Limitation: If these women don’t have access to decision-making power, they remain relegated to operational roles.

More Power to Women

• Objective: Combat biases, internalized sexism in technology, and exclusion from governance forums.

• Goal: Hand women the reins of projects so they can guide design, strategy, and set the rules of the game (rather than merely following them).

More Ownership for Women

• Objective: Go beyond exercising power to actually own (communally or individually) the infrastructure, the capital, the protocols.

• Scope: This ownership guarantees financial autonomy and the ability to shape future economic and social models.

Right now, it seems to me that feminist efforts to increase women’s presence, power, and ownership in cyberspace follow roughly this pattern.

My Observations

1. Digital adoption means more women enter cyberspace.

2. NCC feminisms (as I define them) indirectly lead to more women becoming involved in digital technology, as well as gaining their rights and the power that comes from those rights, generally—including in cyberspace—but not in a specifically targeted way.

3. Feminisms centered on cyberspace help grant women more power.

4. In particular, cyberfeminism fosters feminist awareness in cyberspace, but its low profile and cultural approach don’t really boost women’s digital ownership in a major way.

5. Cryptofeminism, meanwhile, promotes women’s digital ownership (NFTs, crypto-assets, founding companies in the crypto sector, etc.).

My Critique

Not all women are feminists. Women who are not feminists, and who are deprived of exercising their rights—even if they arrive in massive numbers—still can’t break women’s exclusion from cyberspace. Similarly, niche actions by “pro-women” organizations aren’t enough to spark a full-blown conquest of cyberspace by women.

To build my transformative cyberfeminist “flywheel,” I start with an axiom that remains to be proven: more feminists implies greater women’s digital ownership and more power for women in cyberspace.

In Summary

• Current State
  The current strategy is to increase the number of women in cyberspace and in tech sectors, assuming that this increase will automatically lead to a more balanced distribution of digital power and ownership between women and men. In my view, this isn’t really working. In the specific case of liberal feminism or “women’s empowerment,” the strategy is more “top-to-bottom,” but if the women who gain power aren’t feminists, that doesn’t work either.

• My Proposal
  Having more feminist women in positions of ownership and power leads to more women with ownership and power overall. More feminists in power leads to a greater women’s presence. Therefore, feminism should choose a top-to-bottom strategy, but without individualism—placing the emphasis on acquiring territory in cyberspace by trained feminists. The next question is whether we should train feminists on the ins and outs of cyberspace or train cyber professionals in feminism. Probably both.

A More Concrete Description of the Flywheel

Once women—and especially feminist allies—hold assets, control protocols, and occupy cyberspace territories, they can reinvest in and reinvent the ecosystem, thereby bringing in even more women, who then gain even more power, and so on. The more feminist owners and decision-makers there are, the more they can empower women in cyberspace, ultimately attracting other women as well.

Disclaimer: This virtuous circle is just an intuition that emerged from my brain and my reading. I’ll need a lot more research to prove its effectiveness and fully theorize all its components.

Why Choose Cyberfeminism Rather Than Create a New Movement?

I’ll delve deeper into this question in future articles, but cyberfeminism is native to cyberspace; it was shaped by women who seized upon digital tools at the earliest stages. Furthermore, it explicitly refuses a strict definition, which is convenient because it allows me to say that what I propose here is part of it. Lastly, its cultural component—which I haven’t developed at all here—matters greatly to me and will be extremely useful to us.

The challenge now is to translate this strategic idea into concrete tactics. Of course, I’m open to any constructive criticism of this text, which is the fruit of extensive research but is very likely biased. Below you’ll find the sources I’ve used.

This article, which isn’t specifically “about” cyberfeminism as I initially said it would be, has at least helped me open several avenues for future pieces: from cyberfeminism’s refusal to be strictly defined, to its cultural dimension, various cyberfeminist approaches, and possibly discussions of past campaigns or profiles of key figures in the movement. At the very least, it gave me an excuse to review a wide array of feminist concepts and dynamics.

See you soon…

@agathedavray.eth

Disclaimer: This text reflects my personal thoughts on cyberfeminism, informed by my readings and experiences.

Originally published on January 3, 2025, in French on Medium, and translated by ChatGPT: https://medium.com/@agathe.laurent.richard/propri%C3%A9t%C3%A9-et-pouvoir-des-femmes-dans-le-cyberspace-46ae0c58458f

Miscellaneous Sources Not Necessarily Directly Related to the Subject:

Cyberfeminism Index

Brace, L. (2002). ‘Not Empire, but Equality’: Mary Wollstonecraft, the Marriage State and the Sexual Contract. Journal of Political Philosophy, 8, 433-455. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9760.00111.

Vernet, J., Vala, J., Amâncio, L., & Butera, F. (2009). Conscientization of Social Cryptomnesia Reduces Hostile Sexism and Rejection of Feminists. Social Psychology, 40, 130-137. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335.40.3.130.

Lauri, J. (2021). Feminism Means Business: Business Feminism, Sisterhood and Visibility. NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 29, 83 - 95. https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2021.1877193.

Rudmin, F. (1994). Gender differences in the semantics of ownership: A quantitative phenomenological survey study. Journal of Economic Psychology, 15, 487-510. https://doi.org/10.1016/0167-4870(94)90026-4.

https://positions-revue.fr/a-lassaut-de-lempire-masculin/