Decentralizing the Gender-blind Meritocracy: A technofeminist discourse analysis of women’s work in blockchain by Julie Frizzo-Barker B.A., Trinity Western University, 2002 M.A., Goldsmiths University of London, 2005 Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Communication Faculty of Communication, Arts, and Technology © Julie Frizzo-Barker 2021 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Summer 2021 Copyright in this work is held by the author. Please ensure that any reproduction or re-use is done in accordance with the relevant national copyright legislation. Declaration of Committee Name: Julie Frizzo-Barker Degree: Doctor of Philosophy (Communication) Title: Decentralizing the Gender-Blind Meritocracy: A Technofeminist Discourse Analysis of Women’s Work in Blockchain Committee: Chair: Ellen Balka Professor, School of Communication Peter Chow-White Senior Supervisor Associate Professor, School of Communication Richard Smith Committee Member Professor, School of Communication Alison Beale Committee Member Professor, School of Communication Edana Beauvais Internal Examiner Assistant Professor, Political Science Lana Swartz External Examiner Assistant Professor, Media Studies University of Virginia ii Ethics Statement iii Abstract Blockchain is the emerging, decentralized technology best known for powering cryptocurrencies. It connotes powerful narratives about socio-economic progress, democracy, transparency, and inclusion. Yet like many technology spaces, blockchain has a gender problem. According to a recent study of 100 blockchain startups, 14% of employees were women, and among those 7% were in leadership roles. Stakeholders have highlighted how gender-diverse tech teams are more innovative, profitable, and just. Yet proactive inclusion efforts are often dismissed as irrelevant in dominant tech cultures built on assumptions of postfeminist meritocracy. This dissertation cross- fertilizes macro-level discourses of the network society, meso-level discourses of the social shaping of technology, and micro-level discourses of technofeminism to offer new insights on how gender and technology shape one another. How do discourses about gender and technology enable or constrain women who work in blockchain? This study is based on a technofeminist discourse analysis of 30 interviews with women who work in the space, as well as 17 participant observations at blockchain meetups and conferences. It develops three discursive frames about gender and technology in blockchain into an analytical framework inspired by Hall's encoding/decoding model of communication. They include: (1) the dominant “gender-blind meritocracy,” (2) the negotiated, gender-conscious “lean into blockchain” frame and (3) the oppositional “intersectional inclusion” frame. Women perform the additional labour of ‘toggling’ between frames to navigate the material conditions of blockchain work. This study demonstrates how words do more than reflect reality. Words make worlds. Participants were both enabled and constrained by each of the discourses, depending on social context. The data suggests that both top-down organizational initiatives and bottom-up grassroots initiatives are necessary, but insufficient on their own, to create meaningful improvements for women in the space. Gender equity in tech spaces can not accurately be measured by the politics of representation, but by the politics of inclusion. This study offers new insights about broader sociotechnical shifts occurring at present with the rise of the equitable tech movement. Keywords: communication; technology; gender; blockchain; discourse; technofeminism iv Dedication For Lily and Sage. Acknowledgements It takes a village to complete a PhD - especially when you take two parental leaves and write a dissertation during a global pandemic. I have been incredibly fortunate to have outstanding scholarly, emotional, and practical support over the past decade from friends, family, and colleagues. Despite the many challenges a PhD inevitably brings, I can honestly say that I have enjoyed the experience of achieving this personal and professional goal because of the outstanding people around me. In the spirit of feminist research, I'd first like to acknowledge the people who invested the time, care, and labour to create the conditions that made this research possible. Thanks to all the members of the Frizzo and Barker sides of my Frizzo-Barker family for your support and encouragement. A heartfelt thanks especially to my husband Kyle Barker and my mother Susan Frizzo for encouraging me to apply to the program and ensuring they would support me through the journey, with no idea how long this arduous journey would actually be. As fellow lifelong learners they both supported me in this pursuit from start to finish. My deepest thanks to both of them and my mother-in-law Dot Barker for the countless hours spent holding down the fort and caring for the girls while I escaped to the cabin to write. Thanks also to those girls, Lily and Sage, for cheering me on even when it meant time apart, and for inspiring me to achieve this milestone. I will always think of my 30s as the decade I birthed two humans and a PhD - things I would never wish to repeat but will forever be grateful for. Next I must thank my supervisor Dr. Peter Chow-White for his support and mentorship over the years, from coaching me on how to transform a course paper on women and smartphone apps into my first journal article, through to many successful publication collaborations in the GeNA Lab at SFU's School of Communication. I was fortunate to be a member of this productive, supportive space on campus, where I enjoyed teamwork, friendship, and co-learning with fellow scholars including Pippa Adams, Dung Ha, Alberto Lusoli, Anh PhanVu, Jen Mentanko, and Betty Ackah. Proud to have been on the PhD journey with each of you, and cheering each of you on to the finish line. To the recently-minted Dr. Ackah, I'm so glad we defended in the same month after our journey v as doctoral moms, and I look forward to collaborating on publishing our global perspectives on women in blockchain. I also want to thank some of the kind, creative scholars I met during the PhD who have become good friends and given me solid advice in my work, including Dr. Maggie MacAulay, Dr. Nawal Musleh Motut, and Dr. Rebecca Yoshizawa. Thank you, Dr. Kate Miltner, for your generous support that went from Twitter right to phone calls and emails. Insights from all of your work have inspired and supported my own. Thank you, Madison Trusolino, for your friendship and support, and to Ann Brody for our chats about blockchain, academia, and life. You are both next to cross the finish line with your important research. I also want to acknowledge my sister, and some of my oldest friends who have known me for decades, who constantly cheered me on via text, email, and social media. They joined me at the cabin to work, hike, and cook meals as I wrote ‘til all hours - thank you so much Dr. Christina Frizzo, Nina Pak Lui, Bethanne Kinmonth, Annie Brandner, and Sara Vander Woude. I'm also grateful that my longtime friend Annie invited a new friend, Jenn Cusick, along on one of our writing retreats - she became a great support as a fellow late-night writer who frequently checked in as we pulled long hours on ambitious projects and juggled family life. Thank you also to my dear friend Dana Kraft, who has supported me in so many phases of life since our MA days in London. This dissertation discusses infrastructures of support for women's work. Some of the infrastructures that benefited me most were digital networks of like-minded scholars, including the many brilliant communication scholars who share their thoughts and work via social media. For example, some of the conference highlights I was able to observe through Twitter helped to shape some of my interview protocol. In addition, the 'I Should Be Writing' Facebook group and its corresponding podcast 'Academic Womxn Amplified' were useful for helping me to develop a more balanced, sustainable mindset toward lifelong academic writing and publishing as a radical act. The 'Doctoral Moms' Facebook group provided constant encouragement with members sharing their struggles and successful defence photos, as well as practical resources for how to approach various aspects of the dissertation. And Tara Brabazon's video blogs were the perfect instructional PhD pep talks I turned to when I couldn't write another line but wanted to vi keep working out my ideas late at night. These supplementary supports were invaluable in the day-to-day flow of my work. I am also indebted to my incredible interviewees, without whom this project would not have existed. I am grateful for their time and generosity in sharing their experiences in this new space, as just one aspect of their full and meaningful lives. Thanks to the many experts in the space I continue to keep in touch with, especially Jamie Moy for your inspiring advocacy and friendship. I hope this work will eventually make a difference for others like you. Finally, a big thank you to my dissertation committee for engaging with my work in a supportive, productive way: Dr. Peter Chow-White for being a weekly sounding board as I sought to make sense of my thoughts and observations - "that's a finding." I missed our weekly team gatherings in the lab during the pandemic, which shows how important they were. Dr. Richard Smith, for your enthusiasm about my work and even the platforms and processes I used, including NVivo and Zotero. Dr. Alison Beale, for bringing your expertise on feminism and public interest to my work. My external examiner, Dr. Lana Swartz - I can not think of a more ideally qualified scholar to examine my work and envision how to effectively develop it further. We presented at the same ICA pre- conference many moons ago, and your research was perfectly poised to make a meaningful contribution on blockchain and digital money as communication.