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Jon on CNBC Talking about Women in Technology

2010-10-16
only 15 of the fortune 500 company isn't only 28 of the fortune 1000 are run by women and women start only three percent of businesses in America so why joining us vivek wadhwa visiting scholar UC Berkeley as well as a tech columnist for Business Week and TechCrunch and jon rettinger blogger with TechnoBuffalo vivec you brought this to my attention this is amazing one percent of high-tech firms founded by women three percent of a firm this is this is shocking it is a big problem in America and I've been researching it systematically and my conclusion is that the deck is stacked against women and they're being discouraged from entering entrepreneurship or rising in the tech world tell me they almost no sitio is chief technology officer for women yet women are as smart as men are I would argue the more creative and they're more sensible in the way that grow their businesses John do you think we have a real problem here I'm clearly the numbers speak for themselves but I think there's a big difference in saying women have not and women cannot have not imply something that's happened in the past cannot is sort of forward thinking there are a lot of percentage of women now that have female role models that are really high level positions I'm from California and I can't go a few minutes without seeing Meg Whitman on television former CEO of ebay we have Carly Fiorina the former CEO of HP there are no role models for women to have to make themselves more established in the technology field where's that didn't exist years ago so you have ways you can model yourself for success alright Vivec let's throw this out there what some people you know may not feel comfortable saying but they may think and they may think that women are not entrepreneurs because women are more risk averse and men stereotypically some people think this Oro women in the ears when you'd be an entrepreneur they're going to go have children and therefore they're not going to have the time to be an entrepreneur what do you say to people who may think that even though they may not be willing to verbalize it yeah parent is that if you look at the data then the prosperous proportion of women founded companies getting venture capitalist declined dramatically over the last decade the number of women entering computer science in the schools has gone down from thirty-seven percent to about eighteen or nineteen percent you know decreases look at all the data maybe you have a couple of successes but they are far far fewer than they should be we should have fifty percent of our tech entrepreneurs being women it that's just the way it should be not to one percent there's a big discrepancy here so what why is that why the drop the vaca mean is there something true to the questions that I raised is that is there a truth to it I mean you know I I heard one very high-profile woman in the tech industry and I'm not going to say who she was but she said you know a lot of women they sort of assumed their careers gonna go a certain way and before they even get married and have children they sort of take themselves out of the running for some of these things yeah everything starts it with mum and dad that they discourage that their daughters from becoming scientists and engineers because of the male things and then when they enter the workforce when they reach a certain level they start feeling discrimination that they don't readily enter the executive ranks they get discouraged and leave the workforce and then when they do enter the tech was there alone I mean I was at the Anita Borg Institute conference in Atlanta a couple of weeks ago they were two thousand young women there and they were so energized interacting with each other and seeing that hey they are more like us so a lot of systemic problems and when they raise venture capital I've heard many women tell me that the lease is awesome what's going to happen if they have kids how does the husband feel about them being here and so a lot of problems here if I can step in for just a minute and with all due respect I take a bit of umbrage was saying that parents aren't letting their kids that they can be entrepreneurs so that they can go into business society is changing very quickly and that sort of same argument has been made in different forms the crowds you know that american history in all history with different subjects as the as recipient of those parents are giving their kids at least in my opinion as good a shot as anywhere else personally I'm finishing up my MBA thirty-one percent of my classmates our are women and those are women that want to be head to company some of them are already had two companies so whether or not that was true in the past I don't think that it's true now and society as a whole is changing and becoming much more proactive in nurturing the women's both made them or reactive the back I have to say though I was in the Middle East recently and and and thirty-one percent would be abysmal in terms of the percent appointment in any sort math science MBA program it's it's 60-plus percent right women also performing better than men are or equal to men in math and science they entering the schools they over-represented in in biology and many other fields however when it comes to entrepreneurship which we will be talking about in the tech world they know where they found the numbers speak for themselves i mean 1% may come on what's wrong over here so that's what the problem is that the systematic bias against women and the deck is stacked against them we have to start by recognizing that the problem is then we fix it as long as we could keep denying it windows we're gonna have you both back this is a fascinating topic we all all three of us and I know a lot of viewers watching care a lot about and have a lot to say about it so please let us know what you think viewers street signs at CNBC com and John and vivec thanks we'll see you soon next
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