💾 Archived View for gmi.noulin.net › mobileNews › 5502.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 17:47:16. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
2015-08-04 13:26:26
By Tiffanie Wen
Start-up culture has a bad reputation when it comes to women and for good
reason.
Root of the Problem
Experts say the disproportionately low number of women studying engineering and
computer science in university initially fostered a 'boys' club' in the tech
and start-ups. Outdated views of women have made the situation worse.
A recent two-year study conducted at the University of Edinburgh, found that
the proportion of women enrolling in these degrees was static or in decline in
most European countries. In the US, the proportion of women studying computer
science has dropped significantly since the 1980s.
What s more, in a series of experiments published in 2004, researchers found
that all things equal, women in male-dominated industries were considered less
competent than men. When women proved their competence through excellent
performance, they were described as more hostile and rated as less likeable as
equally-performing men.
In the United States, only 6.2% of board seats at unicorn companies (private
firms with $1bn or more in funding) are filled by women, according to an
analysis conducted by Fortune magazine. At US venture capital firms, only 6% of
partners were women in 2014, (down from 10% in 1999) a Babson College study
showed. And, in the thriving tech start-up scene in Silicon Valley, women
account for just 11% of executive positions, according to a report conducted by
law firm Fenwick and West LLP.
The issue isn t limited to the United States. In a 2012 study of more than
1,000 tech start-ups in Australia by Deloitte Private, only 4.3% of the
founders were women. In Israel, another vibrant start-up locale, fewer than 10%
of tech company founders are women, according to the nation s Central Bureau of
Statistics. (In the UK, though, women account for 30.3% of tech founders in
London, according to a survey conducted by Wayra Accelerators.)
Women in tech have been steadily pushing back and demanding entry into
companies, venture funding pools and more.
But one increasingly popular way for women in start-up land to break through is
to eschew the boys club altogether. Instead, they re rallying around one
another, launching women-focussed shared workspaces, providing training via
female-focussed accelerators and connecting promising female entrepreneurs to
the right (often female) backers.
Welcome to the girl s club. They re not anti-men, but they hope that bolstering
women-led start-ups from the bottom up will change the numbers and ultimately
the culture of start-ups and who gets to be in the club.
The current model of success not only in the start-up ecosystem right now,
but in business more generally is working more hours, drinking and
socialising to build the network, and having a conversation built on trust
established at the golf course, said Ari Horie, founder of the Women s Startup
Lab in Silicon Valley. Women tend to lose out because it s harder for them to
connect in that way. We wanted to provide another path, another option, to
success.
One of the earliest female-focussed accelerator networks is the non-profit
platform Springboard Enterprises, which has run programmes since the early
2000s in cities throughout the US. More than 500 female entrepreneurs have
participated in its programmes and have gone on to raise $6.6bn in funding. The
organisation has since launched in Australia.
The Women s Startup Lab also works exclusively with ventures led by women. One
if it s primary goals: to change the tech start-up ecosystem by getting more
women in the pipeline to begin with, Horie said, rather than funding female
entrepreneurs who are already at the top something already being done in many
cases. The programme focuses on company and entrepreneur growth and on helping
participants connect to the right people through pitch meetings with business
mentors and potential investors.
A room of one's own
In work environments, women tend to value relationships, respect, equity and
collaboration, while men are more likely to put more stock in pay, money,
benefits and power, according to a study published in Gender Medicine in 2004.
That makes the relationship-building and mutual respect and collaboration of
this new breed of start-up girls clubs even more of a boon for women.
That s likely why shared workspaces targeting women both within and outside of
technology fields are increasingly cropping up in cities around the world.
In Singapore, an all-women co-working space called Woolf Works is inspired by
Virginia Woolf s A Room of One s Own and opened in 2014. The She Will Shine HQ
hub, located just outside of Melbourne, Australia, also opened in 2014 and
offers workshops and events for its all-women community of business owners.
Felena Hanson, founder of Hera Hub in the US. (Credit: Natalia Robert/Full
Circle Images)
Felena Hanson, founder of Hera Hub, which has opened shared work spaces in the
US, with plans to expand to the Middle East. (Credit: Natalia Robert/Full
Circle Images)
Founded in 2009, Hera Hub (named after the mythical Greek goddess of women)
offers shared workspaces with a spa-like environment in cities in the US from
San Diego to Washington, DC. Although men are not banned from the space,
founder Felena Hanson said women are the primary customers.
Hanson believes that a work environment that doesn t require you to kick
someone else down the ladder to get ahead , women will support one another. Her
workspaces quickly become networking and collaboration opportunities through
their membership events and training programmes, Hansen said.
Hera Hub plans to expand to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and beyond. Potential
partners in Saudi Arabia have told Hanson that social segregation between men
and women there means a female-only shared workspace is the only way some
entrepreneurial women can work.
In Tel Aviv, Israel, WMN, a shared work hub for women-led tech companies opened
in March 2015. Serial entrepreneur Oren Merav, who founded WMN, said her hub
doesn t differ that much from other shared workspaces, except for one thing.
We are finding, and actively reaching out to female entrepreneurs, she said.
At other places, this is not their focus. But for me, I want to have more
women led ventures; I want to see the numbers change. Our workspace is about 50
/50 between men and women, and that s because we are actively reaching out to
women.
Us vs them
Falon Fatemi, who was the youngest female employee at Google when she was hired
at age 19, has since founded Node, a stealth start-up that will connect people
with the people they need to be connected to , funded by New Enterprise
Associates and Mark Cuban, one of the investors on ABC s reality show Shark
Tank, the American version of Dragons Den.
Falon Fatemi, CEO of Node in the US. (Credit: Michael O'Donnell)
Falon Fatemi, CEO of Node, has faced challenges because she s a woman, but
warns of creating an us-versus-them mentality. (Credit: Michael O'Donnell)
But Fatemi said she has faced challenges because she is a woman. My male
counterparts have even noticed there is an initial scepticism I am initially
met with in meetings that if I were male would not exist, she said.
Though Fatemi said initiatives targeting women, awareness about gender issues,
and funds targeting women entrepreneurs are great developments, she is
concerned about an over-focus on the issue as well as the danger of creating an
us-versus-them mentality.
I was in an investment meeting and the investor was trying to make a point and
he said 'you guys,' and then he paused to explain that he didn't mean you guys,
in terms of guys and gals, or whatever, she said, And it became a distraction
to me being able to close funding because he was so aware of the fact that I'm
a woman."
Ultimately though, cash is what counts in the start-up world. And even if
investors have little interest in lengthy discussions on gender equality, the
untapped value of women is increasingly being acknowledged as more female angel
investors and female partners at VC firms fund female-led ventures, and as
companies like Intel, AOL and Comcast create funds targeting women and/or
minority led ventures.
There s no way a business will invest in women only because of social impact
issues, Fatemi points out. The fact that they are putting millions toward it
means they have run the numbers and expect an ROI it's smart business.