Women in tech report continuing discrimination and harassment
Women of color face more harassment.
Kim Davis on September 15, 2020 at 3:05 pm | Reading time: 1 minute
A new report from the non-profit Women Who Tech says that over 40% of women founders and women in tech continue to be harassed, despite the #MeToo movement, and initiatives within companies to educate on diversity issues.
The report is based on a survey of over 1,000 tech employees, founders and investors conducted for Women Who Tech by Lincoln Park Strategies. Among the other findings focused on founders:
- High rates of harassment for women founders, women founders of color, and (65%) LGBTQ founders;
- Of the 41% of women founders who experienced sexual harassment, over 60% reported that they were propositioned for sex (up 9% on last year’s findings);
- 38% of white women founders and 44% of women of color founders were harassed by potential investors; and
- Almost half were told they would raise more money if they were a man.
Slightly more than half the investors interviewed thought that good products would be funded regardless of who the founders are, while 70% attributed under-funding of launches by under-represented groups to pipeline rather than demographics of founders.
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Kim Davis is currently editor at large at MarTech. Born in London, but a New Yorker for almost three decades, Kim started covering enterprise software ten years ago. His experience encompasses SaaS for the enterprise, digital- ad data-driven urban planning, and applications of SaaS, digital technology, and data in the marketing space. He first wrote about marketing technology as editor of Haymarket’s The Hub, a dedicated marketing tech website, which subsequently became a channel on the established direct marketing brand DMN. Kim joined DMN proper in 2016, as a senior editor, becoming Executive Editor, then Editor-in-Chief a position he held until January 2020. Shortly thereafter he joined Third Door Media as Editorial Director at MarTech.
Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.
Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.