It’s a man’s world in European tech, too
At Dell conference for women, focus shifts from inequality to impact
When Verena Pausder started her e-commerce company here three years ago, the climate for women in tech was daunting.
“You were odd-man out,” Pausder, 36, co-founder of Fox & Sheep, said, turning a phrase while recoiling at the thought. “Funding was scarce, as were resources.”
Things have changed, albeit glacially. Pausder got money from family friends and eventually sold her company to German giant HABA Toys & Games in December 2014.
On her slow road to success, the German native didn’t forget those who helped her. More than two years ago, Pausder started a weekly “ladies dinner” to network with fellow female entrepreneurs. Today, 100 women participate.
Some of them gathered in this fledgling tech hub last week for Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network (DWEN), a two-day, invitation-only gathering in its sixth year. A major theme at the conference, which drew 200 businesswomen from 13 countries, was shifting attention from inequality to impact.
“There are women here from all walks of business, and from different stages in their lives,” said Luba Tolkachyov, co-founder of advertising agency Gravity Media. “It’s important to meet, and network with, people of all kinds.”
Dell, which spent more than $4 billion the past year working with women in business and their suppliers, hosted the summit here amid a national narrative on the lack of diversity in high-tech.
The chasm was underscored by results of the Dell-sponsored Global Women Entrepreneur Leaders Scorecard that, not surprisingly, show gender-based differences stifle growth of female-owned businesses across 31 countries measured.
The U.S. ranked No. 1 on the scorecard because of its relatively favorable business climate and women’s job mobility in the private sector. Yet if American women started growth-oriented businesses at the same rate as men, the nation would gain about 15 million jobs in two years.
“Much more needs to be done,” said Ruta Aidis, CEO of ACG, which conducted the study.
Like its U.S. counterpart, the tech landscape in Europe is distinguished by boundless growth, the emergence of unicorns — start-ups Skrill, Markit and Farfetch.com are each worth more $1 billion — and a predominately white, male culture.
Ireland’s gender pay gap is worsening, according to the Women’s Executive Network. WXN founder Pamela Jeffrey, citing EU statistics, says the gap stands at 14.4% and is widening.
In Germany, women “have a long way to go, but it is getting there,” said expat Jewell Sparks, CEO of Strategic Diversity Group, a tech start-up that moved to Berlin from San Francisco in 2013. She said the German government, laggard in ensuring women have leadership roles at tech start-ups, has only recently started paying attention to female entrepreneurship and its economic impact.
In the U.S., the male-dominated tech industry permeates executive offices, board of directors, the rank-and-file workforce and venture capital firms. There are a dearth of women on the executive teams of tech start-ups in the U.S. — a paltry 13%.
Women accounted for only 26% of computing professionals in 2013, substantially less than 30 years earlier and about the same percentage as in 1960, according to a recent report from the Association of University Women (AAUW). Females made up 12% of working engineers in 2013.
The numbers for women of color are downright desultory. AAUW said African American, Hispanic, American Indian and Alaskan Native held a paltry 6% of computing and 3% of engineering bachelor’s degrees in 2013 despite representing 18% of the population for ages 20 to 24 that year.
Against this backdrop of foreboding numbers, DWEN offered a narrative of hope. It is one of a growing number of conferences devoted to leveling a decidedlytilted playing field.
Ingrid Vanderveldt, Dell’s former entrepreneur-in-residence, launched a movement called “Empowering a Billion Women by 2020” in partnership with companies including Dell Financial Services.
Its goal: To get $1 billion of credit into the hands of women by 2020, enabling them to gain access to up to $10 billion worth of support and infrastructure to build their ventures, according to Vanderveldt.
With a freer flow of venture funding, a more sympathetic German government and a percolating economy, Pausder hopes up-and-coming women techies don’t face the hurdles she did just a few years ago. “Things are much better,” she said. “But, like everything else, change takes time.”
“Things are much better. But, like everything else, change takes time.”
Verena Pausder