The Corliss Group Latest Tech Review: Closing the High-Tech Gender Gap
Closing the High-Tech
Gender Gap
This year’s Lemelson-MIT Prize winner discusses grassroots ways for boosting the number of women in technology and business.
I have a confession to make: I’ve been living under a rock.
I’ve actually been busy under here — running a bioengineering lab at MIT, starting companies, teaching, consulting, being a mom. But I’ve been so focused on keeping all the balls in the air that, until recently, I hadn’t noticed that women typically aren’t the ones starting technology companies.
To be fair, I had recognized that:
• Girls choose engineering less often and drop out of engineering disproportionately (the so-called “leaky pipeline”).
• The percentage of women computer science majors peaked 30 years ago.
• The higher I climb, the fewer other women there are at the table with me.
I’ve also seen progress in gender equity in higher education. I just didn’t realize until recently that the technology industry is light years behind.
In case you’ve also been under a rock, here are some numbers that I found truly astonishing. Women lead only 3 percent of tech startups, account for only 4 percent of the senior venture partners funding such startups and represent only 5 percent of the founders, advisors and directors at MIT technology spinoffs.
Are you as shocked as I was? What if I tell you that more than 50 percent of students in some MIT undergraduate science majors are women — and that’s been the case for almost
20 years? Where do these talented women go, and what are the implications of that drain?
If we believe that entrepreneurship is a fundamental engine of progress, that it is a path to getting ideas into the world, then what does it mean for our society if the ideas that germinate in the minds of all those young women rarely turn into companies with products? (By the way, women-led private tech companies have 12 percent higher revenue and 35 percent higher return on investment than those led by men, according
Gender Gap
This year’s Lemelson-MIT Prize winner discusses grassroots ways for boosting the number of women in technology and business.
I have a confession to make: I’ve been living under a rock.
I’ve actually been busy under here — running a bioengineering lab at MIT, starting companies, teaching, consulting, being a mom. But I’ve been so focused on keeping all the balls in the air that, until recently, I hadn’t noticed that women typically aren’t the ones starting technology companies.
To be fair, I had recognized that:
• Girls choose engineering less often and drop out of engineering disproportionately (the so-called “leaky pipeline”).
• The percentage of women computer science majors peaked 30 years ago.
• The higher I climb, the fewer other women there are at the table with me.
I’ve also seen progress in gender equity in higher education. I just didn’t realize until recently that the technology industry is light years behind.
In case you’ve also been under a rock, here are some numbers that I found truly astonishing. Women lead only 3 percent of tech startups, account for only 4 percent of the senior venture partners funding such startups and represent only 5 percent of the founders, advisors and directors at MIT technology spinoffs.
Are you as shocked as I was? What if I tell you that more than 50 percent of students in some MIT undergraduate science majors are women — and that’s been the case for almost
20 years? Where do these talented women go, and what are the implications of that drain?
If we believe that entrepreneurship is a fundamental engine of progress, that it is a path to getting ideas into the world, then what does it mean for our society if the ideas that germinate in the minds of all those young women rarely turn into companies with products? (By the way, women-led private tech companies have 12 percent higher revenue and 35 percent higher return on investment than those led by men, according