With more than 73,000 Twitter followers, Mónica Taher is an influential thought leader focused on personal finance, fashion and entrepreneurship, who is passionate about empowering women in El Salvador and internationally through Bitcoin.

As a native of San Salvador and technology and economic international affairs advisor for El Salvador’s trade investments secretariat, Taher has played a significant role in guiding her country to lead the world in Bitcoin adoption. In this exclusive interview for Bitcoin Magazine, she shared her thoughts on the big picture of Bitcoin adoption specifically for women in El Salvador, as well as worldwide.

What cultural barriers keep women from thriving in the Bitcoin space?

If you look at numbers in the U.S. within the technology ecosystem, only 24% of those people happen to be women, so it is just a consequence that we’re going to have similar numbers for Bitcoin.

For us in El Salvador and in any other Latin American society, we also have another factor that impedes women from competing at the same level with men: machismo. It does exist, we cannot deny it. It’s very hard to penetrate an area that is traditionally male dominated because we’re also talking about the finance and banking industries, which are dominated by men. If you add the fact that there are less women on [corporate] boards here in El Salvador, I think it is just a reflection of what we see in technology in general.

Author’s Note: “Machismo” is a heavily-loaded word in Latin American culture and not just the Latin equivalent to the American idea of male chauvinism. Its origins can be tied to concepts that knights were meant to possess as the feudal system was giving way to the Renaissance. Though the concept of machismo did not start as a negative feature for a man to possess, it has attained an almost purely negative connotation in modern Latin American culture. As such, machismo represents “all that is wrong in a man,” according to some contemporary studies, including violence, recklessness and misogyny.

What does a financially-empowered woman in Latin America look like?

Because we’re talking about money and not just Bitcoin, the ideal scenario for a woman in Latin America would look like a woman who is really well educated about her personal finances. She is not only academically educated, but also starts investing at an early age. We grow up with parents telling us “you should save,” but they don’t teach us how or in what financial vehicles. We’re not getting that type of education in elementary school where it should start.

For a society to empower women, there needs to be an educational reform in regards to finances where everybody learns about saving and investing in the real world. Schools prepare people to either fail in society or just to be employees as opposed to teaching how to be entrepreneurs. As opposed to teaching us how to have a nine-to-five job, they should teach students how to run a business. That’s what, for me, an empowered woman in Latin America would look like. More entrepreneurs, women who are more daring about starting a business, who have the ability to access capital and the tools to create wealth.