Today's Geek n Rolla conference in London is making waves around the world (previous link to Washington Post's live video coverage) and has been truly fascinating at times (but who doubted that?). A winning session was the Just a Girl debate about the low numbers of women in tech startups. Here's the full transcript - the crux of the issue is that a) we need to do something more about the numbers of women in tech and b) there are no obvious answers. Wanting to hear the rest of the show precludes us from writing a well-thought out summary just yet, but I will update this post when things die down with a bit more of a Re:medial analysis on this issue. It's a fantastic topic, and hats off to Mike Butcher for including it on the agenda. This debate got firey, so hold onto your seats.
Just a girl - balancing tech culture: getting more women involved in startups
moderator:
cate sevilla, bitchbuzz
this session is about lack of women in tech. there are lots of studies on this problem. gartner did a study on women and men in IT - breaking through sexual stereotypes - number of women in IT declined 10% from 96 to 2004 - the study author said we 'need to change the game.'
some put offs for women in tech:
-men are too macho
-intimidating workplace
-are there simply less women who want to be in tech?
panellists:
leisa reichelt, user experience consultant
sophie cox, founder of worldeka.com
zuzanna pasierbinksa-wilson, huddle.net
nacera benfedda, director of product at viadeo
sophie
look more at education and training issues. making information accessible to more kinds of people.
is women interest the issue?
how conferences are set up and how information is given is part of the problem.
zuzanna
i took a little study to centre this discussion. around 200 quality respondents took the survey - people from within the industry. the stats showed that 50 per cent of women don't get into startups / tech because they don't want to.
less than one third said it's because they don't have enough good role models. there is more to this than women simply not wanting to get into tech.
women constantly make choices and sacrifices in their lives: "do i want to have a career or do i want to have a family." it's a question women always face.
in tech they also face others. when tech companies are hiring, do you want to fight established stereotypes and do you want to even go there?
then you need to think about maternity pay, etc.
it's a case of an old boys hiring network, hiring in their own image - there are already more men than women.
one commentator on my survey said "it's like not being let into golf clubs or smoking rooms."
sophie
that's the data and that's true, but if you look at the data on the tech scene in general we are quite liberal, left-wing and equal opportunity so if you compare to city boy network ingrained sexism in that culture, technology should be more accessible.
family time goes both ways - men need to get home to families too.
it is so ridiculous it is happening in a relatively liberal culture, like tech.
cate sevilla, bitchbuzz
sophie, your first profitable company was started when you were 16 is it the working culture or the risk?
sophie
no, it's personality driven, i know a lot of men that are scared of risk and would hate to work for themselves.
that is part of the reason i don't have kids - it's similar for me.
zuz
no it's slightly different for men.
women are the only ones who can have children and breastfeed so there is always going to be a difference. men can't take that on although we'd like them to.
cate
we should just work on that then - well done.
leisa
i wonder if part of the reason that we don't have enough women in technology is identifying with the industry -- i have friends who work in PR, for instance and only do PR for tech, but always say they are PR, not tech.
maybe we are counting a lot of people out.
zuz
in that case i would expect more PR and marketing people to be here.
sophie
they have done a lot of studies into why girls and universities don't want to get involved in tech companies. they want to get into creative industries like PR and stuff where creativity is more obvious.
we're one of the most exciting industries! the whole creative process of how you create something and push it out there is incredible.
there is something really sexy about developing.
you can go out there and do stuff that's absolutely astonishing.
nacera
one study said that women ? [nb: lost text]
women just don't know what startups are - what is high tech - that is the main problem - the lack of knowledge about our sector - each time i meet a young girl in my family i say to go work for a startup rather than an established company with very masculine codes. in startups it is easier to be a woman, but if women don't know that, it's impossible to attract women - the main thing is to spread the word around you to make them understand it's nice and sexy to work with programmers all around you!
cate
do we have a guy who can come up?
milo from the telegraph
i'm slightly uncomfortable with this discussion - i don't think this is quite the way to approach this problem - having come from an environment like law, finance, i think women have quite a good deal in tech. in asking why women aren't involved in tech at a certain level - we need to be quite careful not to engineer a game where essentially what we are doing is to worsen the issue.
cate
what needs to be done?
milo
what we need is a large, systematic study on the problem like what zuzanna has started. what we need to do is have a serious study looking at the actual truth of why women aren't in tech and we are tiptoeing around each other and i haven't seen facts till today.
cate
so you want numbers?
milo
we need some serious research done.
sophie
what you are describing is how men are different from women. how is research going to change any of that?
milo
if it's reasonably true that women in technology are facing these issues we need to be careful about apologising for that.
zuz
do you mean research about why women should have voting rights?
audience
he works for the daily telegraph of course he doesn't get it.
audience
i find it really interesting that 3 out of 5 women have said they are looking at reports being done but then only when a man comes up does he ask for research.
setting up a company in technology is just like setting up a company in any sector - leisa made a very important point, if you don't count yourself as technology how are you going to be visible - how to take that forwards - another thing is that a lot of people who start up companies in tech don't have a background in it - they just have insight and intelligence and have skills to lead something.
leisa
this discards a lot of the other factors involved - i have a 15 month old son and i run my own business but there is no way i could engage in a lifestyle where i don't have time to sleep, which is what i hear from a lot of tech startups.
milo
that is based on an assumption that men don't make sacrifices when they work a 22 hour day.
audience
you have lost the plot
milo
i don't think it's fair to suggest that men haven't made sacrifices.
leisa
if you are creating an environment where you need to work 22 hour days then that discludes a lot of people including men, yes.
simone from The Next Women
the statistics aren't totally right; the growth of women starting companies is much bigger than it has been before.
hurdles are that they are not getting investment. another hurdle is that women aren't exactly wanting high growth business. that has nothing to do with whether women have children or not.
women leading high growth businesses are no different from men leading high growth businesses - one of the biggest issues is the lack of funding to get there.
audience
two big points. first you started off saying that women experience a lot of isolation but a lot of men do too - that is probably why men go into the industry! the more serious point is, so long as at least 50% of the market for tech products is female than women will have a more crucial role for parlaying the technology for that market. if you are saying women can't get into the industry surely it must come from there.
audience
we did some research saying more women are on social networks. and companies that code for what women want, do better.
audience
another point is that solutions are developed by men and not women.
cate
so a solution is to have more women involved in coding and development?
sophie
milo came into this panel with the concept of positive discrimination burning in his ears.
we all think this is a business for women - we are here - there is a reason for it - there are a hell of a lot of jobs here - maybe its about getting the message out.
if you are working in tech marketing particularly in social media, you're in tech.
mike butcher
women in PR in tech are sometimes not considered in tech which is really weird because they are in tech!
audience
i started a company in 99 (a woman) and one of the reasons i'm in this industry is because it's so liberal and i have 2 kids. a lot of it is about perception of women of whether or not this is of interest to them.
it's more about what we perceive. maybe we are stopping ourselves!
sophie
it's women begin seen to do it as well.
audience
i'd like to ask advice - i have 2 girls at 9 years old. it is already obvious that the environment around our daughter isn't really well suited for girls to get into maths - already, in primary school, girls are being put in an environment where they aren't being asked to succeed in this way
nacera
did you raise her differently?
audience
we were very conscious not to just give her dolls and give her cars, toys for boys etc
leisa
i think there is this appearance thing - girls are primed to look good at such a young age, when i was young i was wearing track suits and covered in mud but today girls wear bras at 5
media - getting positive role models out there - this is part of it.
hermoine way, techfluff TV
technology is still seen as uncool for girls - we need to be showing them what can be achieved through studying tech
cate
yes, and save the sexy stuff for later.
audience
i don't think we need to beat ourselves as to why the genre in our industry is unbalanced. haute couture is only women and gay men. if you want to get your boyfriend into Vogue you are done. many sectors have these unbalances. when i started a company in tech everyone thought, 'who is this bitch?'
audience
we wouldn't be having this discussion in India today - women are in technology there.
cate
what do you think you are doing in india that we are not doing?
audience
education and perceptions of what is good for women.
audience
we are seeing a lot of women recruited into startups in round two. we are seeing at an early stage it is a more testosterone-driven team and then females get involved later.
bindi from microsoft
listening to this discussion, it's really about us as females in tech and what we do. i can think about an initiative we host where we bring girls, 250 per quarter into these sessions called girls in tech. i really think it's up to us as females to get involved in mentoring younger generations.
audience
we are startups! we don't listen to rules, we write the rules! why don't we just get on with it?
sophie
that is a great thing about technology. it's new, it's fresh.
zuzanna
and yet 40% of people who responded to my survey said that they would not employ a woman because they would be concerned about her going off on maternity leave. maybe these people don't attend conferences.
james garner CW.com
we have done loads of research - there are less women in tech!
cate
we didn't come up with any solutions but it was silly of me to think we could agree a solution when we can't agree there is a problem! thanks everyone.
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