Google-Backed Incubator Looks to Increase Women in Tech by 25 Percent
A
high-profile launch pad for startups is teaming up with big business to
increase the paltry numbers of women working in the technology industry. With a
big assist from Google, tech incubator 1871, is launching a new initiative,
1871FEMtech, to foster female-led startups, John Pletz writes at Crain’s Chicago
Business.
Based in Chicago's Merchandise Mart — the biggest building in
the world when it opened in 1930 — FEMtech, which starts in the fall, will
help 10 to 15 women-owned tech start-ups a year and will launch with $500,000
to $1 million in support. Google's involvement in the project is part of a
#40Forward, a $1 million effort to boost the number of women in tech by 25
percent and launch 40 incubators.
About 28 percent of the teams or companies at 1871 have a woman
among their founders, and Howard Tullman, CEO of 1871, says the success rate of
tech startups with women is about 30 percent higher than startups
overall.
There is continuing debate over how to include more women in
tech, an industry which suffers from a severe gender gap at the highest levels.
Getting more women to enroll in STEM (science, technology, engineering and
math) degrees is a start; only 15 percent of freshman women at American
colleges plan to declare a STEM major,
compared to 29 percent of men, according to the Association of American
Universities and Colleges. Women hold less than 25 percent of
STEM jobs, which the U.S. Department of Commerce attributes to a lack of female
role models and gender stereotyping.
While there are reasons to celebrate female success in tech
— Christian Science Monitor’s Karis Hustad lists companies
like Goldieblox and Marissa Mayer’s leadership at Yahoo as recent examples —
there is still a long way for women to go.
"We know the percentage of women in tech hasn't improved,
that it's hovered around 7 to 8 percent," Tullman said. "There are a
massive number of companies who want to make this sort of commitment, but we
didn't have the mechanism to do anything."
Sharon Schneider, a CEO of Moxie Jean, a Chicago-area e-commerce
startup, told Crain’s that Chicago’s startup scene doesn’t have such an
“bro-gramming” culture as San Francisco, which some say is one of the "worst places" in
America for the healthy development of companies and people.
Motorola Mobility Foundation and the Lefkofsky Family
Foundation, the charitable group set-up by Groupon co-founder Eric Lefkofsky
and his wife, Liz, are also underwriting FEMtech.