Men in suits with banker’s bags. Jargon for jargon’s sake. Ninety-eight percent of funding goes to people with a Y chromosome. When it comes to traditional finance, women have not only been left out of the conversation, they’ve been completely written off and excluded. And Silicon Valley has historically and notoriously been a world of tech siblings—a shame, since the industry has been among the fastest-growing and most lucrative for decades, ever since the dot-com boom of the 1990s. The bottom line: major obstacles for women in accumulating wealth and reaching leadership positions.

We hate for history to repeat itself, but unfortunately, we have deja vu. Cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and the metaverse are getting all the attention. And they’re all part of Web3, which is, in short, the next iteration of the Internet. Similar to how social media and e-commerce changed the way we live, work, and shop, Web3 will affect everything from your investment portfolio to your future job prospects, online safety, and more. McKinsey predicts that by 2030, the market value of the metaverse could skyrocket to $5 trillion. However, about 43 percent of men ages 18 to 29 have invested, traded, or used a cryptocurrency, compared to 19 percent of their female peers, according to Pew Research. Of 121 of the world’s top crypto companies, only five included a female founder (opens in a new tab). Even female NFT artists are outnumbered in the space; Research shows that 77 percent of NFT sales go to male creators, with women making up less than 20 percent of the market.