From what I've experienced on STEEMIT so far, the ratio of females to males seems quite reasonable, and almost surprisingly balanced to me (granted, still more males, but not excessively so). Not to mention, the platform seems to attract many more "quality" females than other social media platforms.
Perhaps that's partly because it takes a certain type of personality to be curious and forward-thinking enough to be a relatively "early-adopter" in the crypto-space (male or female) in the first place. You'll find a lot more people on STEEMIT, men and women alike, much more likely to post up some great insightful content, as opposed to little more than their latest "hot" selfie!
Here are some additional posts for reference:
Link: A Question Over Coffee--What is the Ratio of Men to Women on steemit?
Link: STEEM - A Crypto Currency That ACTUALLY Has Female Users!
merej9969 : A very interesting question and one that I might actually ask Shellie @everlove - She attended Steemfest last year and if attendance was any indication, we have A LOT MORE WOMEN on this platform than any other crypto site. Kinda cool right? I need a coffee refill now. Badly. I wonder why???
Personal observations are extremely subjective, and are mostly used as secondary and tertiary sources to support the primary argument (which should be fact-based). The usual exception is when the point is about personal observation or personal "editorialism."
As for the links, the first reference's thesis is that Steemian women outnumber men. The second link is an example of faulty, logical deduction. Based on internet statistics that were complied in 2006 -- 2006, ten YEARS before Steemit launched!! -- the author claims that because women use the internet as much as men, 50% of Steemit users are female.
Traffic statistics pulled from Alexa.com proves this statement is completely false -- as I wrote in my original post, Steemit sharply skews male. Furthermore, the aforementioned author claims that prior to Steemit's launch, "basically the entire crypto currency ecosystem was a bunch of 16-60 year old male neckbeards sitting around gambling, watching porn and selling drugs."
I'd really like to know where he got his data to make such claims. I personally believe that it stems from the mass integration of "delusions of grandeur." Because he observed something from his perspective, he deduced that his observations are the norm for the entire system in question.
Again, personal observations are extremely subjective. I need to see hard data (such as the data provided by Alexa.com) for me to reconsider the fact that Steemit skews male.
you're absolutely right @bullishmoney, I meant to add that it's still mostly "anecdotal" data, and apologize for leaving out that point. I can say that I have heard this from quite a few others, and it has been my experience as well. It's tricky to get hard evidence on this, and I'm sure you know how easy it is to manipulate even hard statistics to "prove a point" as well. It's kind of like trading, you can run all the studies and stats and backtests you want, but at the end of the day, I have yet to be able to match results obtained from outright observation and understanding of what's really going on.
Perhaps an in-depth analysis of active male versus female accounts above a certain reputation may provide more concrete insight into what quite a few of us seem to observe in various degrees.
Another interesting idea may be to analyze, say, the top few thousand recently active STEEMIT accounts over 6 months old that have at least 1 to 4 times the number of followers versus follows (to weed out those who follow everyone), and try to determine which accounts they follow are male versus female (also attempting to weed out bot accounts, of course). Unfortunately, that maybe the trickiest part, because there really is no way of automating that process that I'm aware of, since STEEMIT doesn't track accounts as male/female/bot (as far as I am aware, at least).
I can tell you though, given you mentioned "hard data" from alexa.com, my past experience is that a good portion of alexa data tends to be highly questionable as well, not to mention possibly gamed in various ways. And even if it were relatively accurate, there's really no way they could reliably assess the level of activity of the various genders on STEEMIT, or anywhere else for that matter. For reference, I offer you these links:
Link: How Accurate are Alexa, Compete, DoubleClick and Google Trends?
Link: How Does Alexa Track Traffic – Do They Really Have a Grasp of Your Traffic?
Perhaps the word "balanced" that I used wasn't quite right either. It may be more accurate to say that the ratio appears to be "constantly improving". I'd also like to add (anecdotally, of course), that when I often come across posts such as this, it really does make you think STEEMIT is onto something here...
Link: CryptoGranny says hello & thank you for your kind welcome!
Regardless, I'll definitely keep an eye out if I do come across more concrete data that can help provide a more complete picture.
I certainly hope that the ratio is improving for the better -- obviously, by engaging more women, you are utilizing essentially half of the human population. And I'm all for it because at the end of the day, without women, Steemit will get nowhere.
Alexa data may not be completely accurate, but it's useful for apples-to-apples comparisons. For example, Alexa demonstrates that Facebook has roughly a 50/50 gender mix, as do other social media platforms. One interesting point is that Infowars.com, the popular conspiracy website, skews heavily female. I didn't expect that, but it makes sense given women's penchant for juicy rumors and interesting stories.
As far as the available evidence is concerned, Steemit skews male, perhaps due to the fact that cryptos are generally male centric. That's an area that I believe is seeing improvement, to your point. I personally believe, though, that the rate needs to change dramatically because it's damn difficult to grow a social media network like Steemit by only attracting half the consumer base.
But I'm optimistic, so we'll see what happens!