Well, the equity gap is real, especially in
the world of startups. Our next guest is a
pioneer when it comes to impact investing and is releasing
an all new book on closing the equity gap in
the biased world of startup investing. Joining us now
is Frida Klein, co author of Closing the Equity
Gap Creating Wealth and Fostering justice in startup investing.
Frida. Thanks so much for joining us. Welcome
to chat. It's a pleasure to be here and
what fun listening to all the entrepreneurs. Uh It's
been an incredible show, Frida and it will continue
to be with you here on it. So you
conducted research on female founders and found that investors are
biased against women and unfortunately, unsurprisingly even more biased
against women of color. Can you break down those
numbers and the realities that female founders are facing today
? Well, unfortunately, all women founders experience some
types of biases while they're pitching uh the majority of
women more than 3/4 experience, some kind of rudeness
, condescending behavior, some kinds of stereotypes. And
as you mentioned, women of color black women,
Latinas, entrepreneurs who are pitching are far more likely
to experience bullying to have their doubted. Our A
API sisters are experiencing more kinds of stereotypes about immigration
and about their accents. But the most startling finding
is that women of color, black and Latina entrepreneurs
are almost 10 times more likely to be hit on
to get unwanted sexual attention from investors while they're pitching
compared to their white and Asian counterparts. Uh Frida
, let's talk about pay gap. Women's salaries are
closing in on men's, but there are still gender
disparities in other aspects. So where are we seeing
the biggest disparities in terms of gender today? The
biggest disparities in terms of gender, I think are
access to the top notch, top paying most powerful
occupations. We don't see women pursuing stem degrees as
much as they did. 30 years ago, we
want women to be driving technology to be inventing the
products of the future to be making sure that A
I is not biased. We want to see women
. I want to see lots more women at the
check writing table. I want to talk to other
women, venture capitalists and say let's do this deal
together. All right. Now, how do we
close these gaps? What needs to be done to
get that done? Well, I think several things
need to be done. We need to create different
pathways into education. So if we're going to learn
much more about computing and, and technology skills,
selective colleges remain one access point, we need to
do a lot more at building out alternative pathways.
And one of the companies that we profile in closing
the equity gap is bit wise, co-founded by Irma
Ogin Junior, an engineer from Fresno, not a
place that you would expect to find a hotbed of
, of technology startups. Irma with Jake started bit
wise that's now in 10 cities. That is the
largest provider of nontraditional pathways into tech jobs. So
we need role models, we need different pathways into
technology and we need to be measuring talent different ways
like travel. Unfortunately, we are out of time
. So we're gonna have to leave this great conversation
there. But that's Frida Ka K, founding partner
of Capital co-chair of the nonprofit Center and co-author of
closing the equity gap.