Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has a program called #40 Forward, which is part of its entrepreneurship arm. The aim is to give 40 companies a total of $1M to increase female participation in their programs by 25% over the next year. There is a salary gap between men and women. For example, women earned 80.9% of what men earned in 2012. In addition, there is a wide gender gap between men and women in the tech sector. Not to mention, only 3% of tech startups are run by female entrepreneurs.
Google has begun their push just as this topic started garnering more widespread attention. Notably, it has been shown that female entrepreneurs can bring in revenue as evidenced by tech leaders Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer. As a result, Google wants to get to the heart of the issue as to why women are not participating in startups as much as men.
Also, Google isn’t only funding U.S. based companies, they are giving aid to businesses located as far out as Senegal. Bridgette Beam, the manager for global entrepreneurship at Google for Entrepreneurs posed this question, “We should stop asking just ‘Why are women not showing up, but rather why programs are not reaching 50 percent of the population?” Beam also noted that StartupWeekend should be a good place for looking into the reasons for consistently low female participation.
StartupWeekend hosts events throughout the world; the goal is to launch a business in 54 hours. So, Google will begin helping StartupWeekend to increase its StartupWeekend Woman programs while searching for more options towards making the programs more attractive to women. Some analysts noted that the startup venture, as it stands, does not really appeal to women. Giving everything up and living in a dorm to start a business, is something many women would rather not do. However, according to the Kauffman Foundation, Female-led tech companies have a 35 percent higher ROI.
