How The Middle East Is Solving the Gender Gap That Silicon Valley Is Ignoring

10 years ago | Posted in: women | 951 Views

There might be ongoing discord in the Middle East, but the startup scene in this area of the world is much closer to solving the tech gender gap than the one in Silicon Valley.

Only 10% of all Internet entrepreneurs are women. However, experts estimate that the percentage of women Internet entrepreneurs in the Middle East and North Africa region is at 23% and in the Gulf it’s 35%.

As of 2012, 40 startups have been launched from Business and Technology Incubator, the first incubator in Gaza, a Palestinian city. Surprisingly, more than half of these companies are run by women.

Even Google knows that there’s something special happening in this area of the world. The company’s Forward program is aimed at increasing women representation in high tech by 25% this year and around 25% of the programs chosen are in the Middle East.

When asked what inspired Google to invest in so many companies in the Middle East — six in Israel and four in the Arab world — Bridgette Beam, global entrepreneurship manager at Google, told PolicyMic that programs that were chosen catered specifically to women entrepreneurs. “We selected projects and approaches that we believed could attract and grow female entrepreneurs.”

There’s no cultural bias against women techies.
The cultural bias against women entering technological fields simply doesn’t exist in the Arab world. Despite political instability in Gaza, entrepreneurship is budding and women entrepreneurs will soon outnumber men.

Here, women entrepreneurs are just as popular as men. Wamda, a Forward partner that empowers entrepreneurs in the MENA (Middle East-North Africa) region, recently hosted a startup gathering where 35% of the attendees were women.

After speaking with Nina Curley, Wamda’s editor, the Economist explained the reasons behind the high number: While more than half of university graduates in the Middle East are women, only 21% of the workforce consists of women. However, “the Internet … is a new space that is more meritocratic and not as heavily male. The technology also lets entrepreneurs work from home, making it easier to raise children.”

An entrepreneur at the Wamda startup gathering explained, “Well-educated women in Saudi Arabia want to work, but their family often objects … running an Internet start-up from home is the perfect compromise.” In short, Arab women in traditional societies are utilizing the power and access of the Internet to create their own jobs.

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Women study STEM majors at a higher rate than men.
“Gaza has an incredibly high percentage of women involved in technology at early stages,” said Iliana Montauk, director of Gaza Sky Geeks — a Forward partner and the first accelerator in Gaza. “Women study computer science at higher rates than men and they attend Startup Weekend competitions at nearly the same rate as men.”… see more

source: http://www.policymic.com

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