The gender gap in startups
founderresearch.blogspot.com
founderresearch.blogspot.com
He talks about the proportions of women in tech startups there. Funnily, the 12.7% women-in-IT percentage is more or less equivalent to the proportion of women on my undergrad and graduate computer science courses, and also nowhere near the percentage of female tech entrepreneurs I meet. (I've met two others, I think.)
However, I'm just doing what I want to do because it's cool and fun. Not because I want to fly a flag or be a statistic. I almost get annoyed when people draw attention to the gender gap, as it makes me even more of a three-headed monkey, and heaven knows I get enough strange looks as it is.
When I was wee (oh god, I'm getting old?! but I'm only 20!) I was put off by how many men there were and how weird it was to be the only girl in my entire CS classes, and now I think I'm over most of it (except for the really hurtful/disgusting discrimination, not limited to tech or gender). However, I occasionally meet another woman or some girl barely a few years younger who was put off by gender discrimination in tech (in general, not just startups) permanently or was on the verge of doing so, and I try to get them interested again in one way or another by mentoring in a way. I think in that aspect it's worthwhile to attempt that at least. All the women I talk to about this have found it helpful to know that there are other women in the industry that have been successful and that not everyone is so rude.