One for the ladies 🌷

Hey folks!   

There’s only 17% of them in tech, and they make up to $45,000 per year less. Can you guess what I’m talking about? 

A female CEO. 

Well, happy International Women's Day y'all. Today's Product Rant will be a tad different - because we really need to talk about it. 

Recently, I did a little experiment. I asked DALLE to ‘Give me an image of a tech CEO’. It gave me two photos of a smartly-dressed young, white man in a corporate office setting.

Then I tried regenerating the image (several times) to see if it would give me a tech CEO of a different gender (or colour).After regenerating the image 18 times -and getting pretty much the same result every time - I gave up...According to AI, the ‘tech CEO’ is young, white, and male.

Why?

Because he is.

US Census data from 2022 revealed that only 17% of tech CEOs are female. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2022 Global Gender Gap report - women represent just 36.9% of leadership roles. Again...Why?

Maybe because it’s harder for them. 78% of women in tech report feeling like they must work harder than male coworkers to prove themselves [Source: Trustradius, 2021].

And yet - even when they work harder - they get paid less.

Sometimes - a lot less:

While in 2023 women in CEO roles earned “only” $14,000 less than men on average, in 2020 the gap was over $45,000 (nearly a third less!).

Why? This could be explained by the fact that it was women, more often than men, who had to step down and work part-time to take care of stay-at-home children during the pandemic.

And only 2% of VC funding today goes to female-founded businesses.

Also - a study by Paychex from December 2018 found that 33% of women in technology have considered changing careers because of male colleagues.

I wanted to learn more about what challenges are deterring women from entering leadership career paths in tech.

So I talked to several female leaders in SaaS - about their experience with breaking into leadership positions in tech startups - what challenges they’ve faced, and how they managed to overcome them.

Keep reading to learn how to succeed in tech from the inspiring stories of:

• Melissa Kwan - CEO and founder of ewebinar
• Alice de Courcy - Group Chief Marketing Officer at Cognism
• Maja Voje - Best-selling Author of GTM Strategist, Go-To-Market Advisor & Mentor to +400 tech startups inc. Fortune 500 companies
• Laura Erdem - Senior Sales Manager at Dreamdata
• Else van der Berg - Interim Product Lead, Advisor and Coach
• Frida Ahrenby - CMO at Rillion, CMO to Watch 2024, Board Member and Tech & Start-up Advisor
• Sima Banijamali - Sr. Product Manager @ Microsoft & Top Product Management Voice
• Olga Mykhoparkina - CEO & Founder of Quoleady

Here are some quotes from the massive interview: 

Watch the video teaser

• "When you’re constantly not being taken seriously, you start to question yourself. You might feel like you need to act differently, or speak differently - because you want people to notice you." - Melissa Kwan
• "I definitely had to change the way I behave and operate to be respected at times. I approached the challenge of proving myself by pretty much consistently working harder and longer through much of my career." - Alice de Courcy  
• "For women, especially if you’re an expat - it can be difficult to gain the trust. And you need to work a bit harder to prove your skill, to showcase that you are capable of what you’re saying you are." - Sima Banijamali   
• "I’m just not getting enough credit for what I do. People just feel they can talk over me…"  - Melissa Kwan  
• “Some women really have it tough. A friend of mine is working in finance as a compliance manager, and every New Year’s party the guys are literally harassing women. And if you have the guts to do it to your compliance manager – imagine that – you really need to be a Neanderthal. But she said: this is my passion, this is my fight.” - Maja Voje   
• "I look really young – so very naturally people are dismissing what I do and assume I don’t have [the experience] – and don’t take me seriously. People think they can just interject and take over my conversation – just not even acknowledging that I’m there." - Melissa Kwan  
• "I was often thinking “why are you doing this to yourself?!” because it was just such a struggle to constantly have to prove yourself – just because you have a slight accent, you’re female and you’re much younger." - Else van der Berg

I breaks my heart to hear this. I grew up in a pretty conservative household thinking feminists are crazy cat ladies with blue hair that have too much time their hands. And then - I entered the job market and experienced pretty much all of the above, and some.  So we need to talk about it - and still celebrate and highlight the successes of women in tech, to show other young ladies that this is possible - which is what I hoped this mega-interview with some of the brightest CEOs and CxOs I know will achieve, at least at this small scale I have the control of, today.

Read the post by Rory here.

Hope you enjoy this special feature and it gives you some food for thought - how you can support other ladies to progress in their careers in tech with less struggle (and more pay).  See you next week!