Brotopia

venture capitalists talk about male and female entrepreneurs differently. In one study of a group of investors (including five men and two women) discussing future funding decisions in Sweden, male founders were more likely to be described as “young and promising,” while young women were described as “inexperienced.” Being cautious was viewed as positive for men and negative for women. Ultimately, women were denied funding more often than men, and when they did receive it, they got 25 percent of the money they requested, whereas men received 52 percent.
The data clearly also shows that when a woman walks into a pitch meeting, she is already at a disadvantage. In one study in which women and men voiced the same slide presentations word for word without ever showing themselves, investors funded male-voiced ventures 60 percent more often than female-voiced ventures. When entrepreneurs presented in person, attractive men were particularly persuasive, whereas good looks didn’t give a woman an extra edge, even if she said the same thing as the man who came before her. Sarah Thébaud, a sociology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has found that both male and female investors tend to have lower expectations of women entrepreneurs and systematically perceive them as less competent and skilled.

Today women earn just 22 percent of computer science degrees, a number that has remained basically flat for a decade. The tech industry—taking root in the heart of the left-leaning West Coast—might have become a beacon of inclusion and diversity. To say that it did not is a grand understatement.
According to recent data, women hold a mere quarter of computing jobs in the United States, down from 36 percent in 1991. The numbers are actually worse at big companies such as Google and Facebook. In 2017, women at Google accounted for 31 percent of jobs overall and only 20 percent of vital technical roles. At Facebook, women make up 35 percent of the total workforce and 19 percent of technical jobs. The statistics are downright depressing for women of color: black women hold 3 percent of computing jobs, and Latina women hold 1 percent. Additionally, this small percentage of women employed in the field don’t necessarily stick with it; women are leaving jobs in technology and engineering more than twice as fast as their male peers.
When it comes to tech start-up entrepreneurs, the minor royalty of Silicon Valley, the disparity is even starker. In the larger American workforce, women make up almost half of all employees and are majority owners of nearly 40 percent of businesses. But women-led companies received only 2 percent of venture funding in 2016. The vast majority of venture capitalists (VCs) are men, and they largely invest their capital in companies run by men. Women accounted for only 7 percent of VC partners at top funds in 2016. Of nearly seven thousand VC-backed companies surveyed in a study at Babson College, just 2.7 percent of them had a female CEO. All this despite research that shows women-led companies outperform their peers.

Investors generally do see women’s businesses differently than their founders do. One VC told me, “I’d love to fund more women, but I just don’t want to fund another e-commerce company!” This comment points to the same issue that some VCs have complained to me about privately: that too many women choose to start companies in sectors where growth is expected to be lower, such as e-commerce and parenting, rather than in areas with huge growth potential, such as artificial intelligence. A lot of low-growth businesses are viable; they just don’t have the kind of enormous upside that excites investors who are successful enough to pick and choose. In 2011, Mashable reporter Jolie O’Dell tweeted, “Women: Stop making startups about fashion, shopping, & babies. . . . You’re embarrassing me.” Her comment triggered the typical social-media uproar, but there is some truth to it.
In a comprehensive survey in 2017, TechCrunch found that 31 percent of start-ups with a female founder focused on e-commerce. Other sectors popular among women were education, health care, and media and entertainment. But the vast majority of venture capital in 2016 went into fintech (meaning financial tech, such as apps that disrupt banking and retirement planning), security, genetics, augmented and virtual reality, and artificial intelligence, in addition to an outsize amount in transportation (dominated by funding of Uber, Lyft, and other ride-hailing services). These numbers indicate a big mismatch between ideas that attract mostly male VCs and ideas that attract female entrepreneurs.

Additional compelling research suggests that high-achieving women suffer from “imposter syndrome,” a term coined in 1978 by two psychologists, Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, to summarize how women often feel undeserving of their success. Despite their concrete achievements, these researchers said, women often believe they are not that smart and will eventually be exposed as frauds. Other researchers have found that women won’t apply for jobs unless they meet 100 percent of the qualifications, while men will apply as long as they have 60 percent of the boxes checked.