Glimpsing into the Gender Gap: : Perceptions of gender inequality among women in the tech startup industry

Sammanfattning: There is a massive gender gap in the tech startup industry. 1% of the CTOs at venture-backed companies in Europe are women and only 1% of the venture capital in Sweden is given to all-female founding teams. The author believes that gender equality should improve because of the fundamental right to have equal opportunities, but also because it could benefit the industry. Research indicates that gender equality, for example, can lead to increased profitability. This thesis is a qualitative study aiming to understand the effects of the industry gender gap by investigating how women in the industry perceive gender inequality. The study will answer to what extent gender equality is seen as a problem, what barriers female tech entrepreneurs face and present some explanations for the gender gap. The foundation for the results and discussion sections is a literature review on entrepreneurship and gender and semi-structured qualitative interviews. The interviews were carried out with women who had worked in the tech startup industry in Stockholm. A total of 12 respondents with various professions and degrees of technical skills were interviewed. They worked or had worked as founders, investors or at incubators. Throughout the analysis, two distinct views on the extent of the problem were identified. Some women perceived the gender gap as mainly unproblematic and their gender as beneficial yet insignificant. These respondents have been labeled the Positive Gender Neutral (PGN) group. They stated that their gender was more advantageous than impeding. Being a minority makes one stand out, which can be beneficial. The other group of respondents raised that this visibility can be both advantageous and tiring. This group has been labeled the Structure Acknowledging (SA) group. They expressed that there are layers of gender inequality in addition to the gender discrepancy. They stated that there are significant barriers to female entrepreneurs and wished to decrease gender inequality. Both groups expressed that there are certain barriers to women, although the PGN group tended to view the barriers as relating to individual women and the SA group to structures in the industry and society. Some expressed that women have internal barriers such as a lack of confidence and unwillingness to take risk. Some structural barriers expressed were the male entrepreneurial norm and male domination of the industry, including a ”bro culture” and homosociality. The two distinct views on gender inequality can be seen as coping strategies for succeeding in a male-dominated environment. That could be an indication that there is a strong male norm in the industry. Many raised rhetoric such as master suppression techniques or excluding entrepreneurial language as barriers. The respondents furthermore also often explained the gender gap with women being attracted to other industries or lacked tech entrepreneur role models. Finally, comparing the results to previous research, all respondents have a high gender awareness level, in particular, the respondents in the SA group. Gender awareness can lead to change. Thus, hopefully, there is a positive trend of gender awareness in the industry, which this thesis hopes to contribute to.