By Ailsa Sherrington, editorial and comms lead at Protos.

Today is International Women’s Day — a holiday exploited for commercial gain just like any other. But today also marks a year since I joined Protos.

I’ve kept a low profile in that time. Hiding behind a company’s Twitter account was easier because, quite frankly, I didn’t want to deal with the accompanying problems of putting yourself out there.

Got an opinion? “You clearly don’t know enough about it.” For a woman working in a male-dominated space, Twitter can be exceptionally punishing.

I’ve been told I’m too young; too opinionated; too dumb; too assertive. I’ve been groped at conferences; I’ve been offered jobs in exchange for sex.

And this was all offline. I couldn’t imagine logging into Twitter to face what I assumed to be more of the same.

This huge barrier to entry means fewer women are sharing their work with the world. It’s been bothering me.

I’ve achieved things that I would have loved to hear about when I was an aspiring journalist. I was the second full-time hire at Protos. When I joined, the company was only five months old.

At first I managed the company’s social presence, but my role rapidly snowballed: writing my own stories, editing others, and developing a newsroom from scratch alongside our director of news, David Canellis.

When we finally shared our masthead, I was excited for people to see that Protos wasn’t just male-led.

The thing is, what brought me into tech was access to other role-models — of all genders — that didn’t care what other people were saying about them online. My name on a webpage wasn’t enough.

So I joined Twitter. If I can attract other women to the space by shining a spotlight on some of my own achievements, no matter how daunting, then so be it.

I’ve only just begun to dip my toes, but these are some of the women on Twitter who inspire me to take the plunge:

Maya Zehavi

Zehavi is an experienced market analyst and business development exec. She takes to Twitter to opine about crypto and fintech.

Bloomberg: Vildana Hajric, Akayla Gardner, and Emily Nicolle

Hajric, Gardner, and Nicolle write about crypto, fintech, and banking for Bloomberg News. A recent piece, written by Nicolle and assisted by Gardner and Hajric, reports Ukraine’s crypto donation scams.

Frances Coppola

Spicy tweets on banking, crypto, and finance. Rightfully fed up with some of the people she deals with online.

Coppola offers succinct financial takes on current affairs in her blog Coppola Comment. Her latest piece on the significance of 2014 leading up to the Ukraine-Russia war is out now.

Read more: [Coinbase won’t ban Russian crypto traders but strangely bans Crimea]

Molly White

Creator of popular site Web3 is Going Great, White has deeply impacted the crypto space. The blog showcases the centralization of blockchain and crypto projects in a clear and easy-to-digest way.

Crypto Twitter has more to offer

There are lots of names I haven’t mentioned and many more to discover. Let me know who I should follow next.

Looking for bite-sized news? We’re on Twitter.

Out now: the first three episodes of our new investigative podcast series Innovated: Blockchain City.