How the Mycelium was born

A year ago I visited MWC Barcelona — a huge tech conference with over 100K visitors. I expected to see an equal amount of men and women; I expected to witness how tech levels the playing field and takes us towards gender equality.

I saw a stark majority of dicks in suits. I saw women used as decorations for the exhibitors’ stalls. I saw proof for gender equality being 150 years in to the future (which is like saying ‘never’).

This sent me thinking about everything that’s wrong in the world — poverty, hunger, lack of access to clean water, lack of proper medical care, lack of access to education, pollution, and wars.

The group that suffers the most from all of the above are women and their minor children. If we improve the situation for them — we fix the world.

Surely, I’m not the first person to think about it. Many brilliant and capable people are doing something about those problems… what are they missing?

One of the pillars of equality is ‘no discrimination’. In an equitable system, absence of discrimination maintains the balance. But what if the system is not equitable?

Cue ‘Positive Discrimination’ — favorable conditions given to a disadvantaged group to equalize their abilities with the advantaged group. The trivial examples are reserved seats on public transport and extra time during exams.

In the patriarchy, a system which sees women as second-best, enabling to filter a search for service providers by their gender opens the door to filtering out women. This is discrimination that upholds the bad status quo.

Unfortunately, that rule also prevents positive discrimination — it complicates filtering out men and choosing only women.

Discrimination changes the balance of the system. If the system is imbalanced in favor of one side, we need positive discrimination to change the existing balance.

Women are the primary consumers of their households — they are responsible for the majority of purchasing decisions. Giving them an easy way to choose women-owned services and products will naturally redirect the flow of money to women.

Money means power. If every woman becomes slightly more conscious with directing the money she already spends, within a few years we’d have only women in positions of control in every country that already claims ‘gender-equality’. Then international pressure will force a change in the countries where gender-equality is illegal.

My optimistic schedule says we can have global Matriarchy in a decade.

Looking at the problem (the patriarchy), the visionary goal (global Matriarchy), and the gap between them is paralyzing. What can “tiny insignificant” me do to change the world? How can I fight all that power and expect to win? In a decade, no less!

I’m not just an impatient goblin, I’m also a practical goblin.

Here are my practical steps — choose the ones that work for you

1. I’m also a woman. Every time I do good for myself — I do good for a woman. Choosing my comfort over a man’s comfort, promoting my business, speaking up for myself… all count.

2. Buy from women — choose women-owned local shops over supermarket chains. Every purchase counts; I still do a combination of local and supermarket.

3. Hire women — in services and employees, choose women over men.

Those last two aren’t trivial because all the search engines don’t let you filter by gender because DiScRiMiNaTiOn…

Thus the Mycelium was born — a searchable database of women-owned businesses. It started from a spreadsheet and grew into a website with better search. Next steps are adding a map, to allow searching for businesses around you, and adding products made by women that can be found in physical stores.

How you can help

Join the Mycelium — reply to this email with your LinkedIn profile link and I will add you.

Add more women-owned businesses — after login you can add other women.

Tell people about the Mycelium — women and men can search the list and pay women for their services.

Let’s change the world, Queens 💕

Yours,
Ela