Feminine gamification viewpoint: #ChoosePossibility
Earlier this week a letter was published on the blog to give the positive story of female entrepreneurs and CEO’s who have gone on to build successful technology businesses. The action was taken to counter act all the negative press that has been given to women in technology. In fact whilst a lot of press was generated around the lack of women as well as stories of lack of respect amongst other not so lovely experiences, without looking into the other side of the balance, where women have persisted and gone on to build success stories.
The demographic statistic drawn up from the survey that went along with drafting up a list of top female entrepreneurs has some of the following interesting facts:
- 84% of female entrepreneurs came from a non-STEM undergraduate degree, the most common degree was an MBA
- 54% of entrepreneurs came from a family of entrepreneurs
- Mentors were in 47% of the cases quoted being of both genders, 37% male and 16% female
- 86% of female entrepreneur confirmed they were being judged differently to men and the most often quoted difference being ‘aggressive’ instead of the expected ‘likeable’ amongst other unconscious societal biases
- 67% could remember an incident regarding perceived bias in the workplace and 65% in the business fundraising process
- 35% of women can recall a incident of sexual harassment in their career
- Resilience/tenacity, passion/drive and work ethic were quoted as the top 3 traits for entrepreneurs to be successful both male and female
I have to say when I came across the letter and article, I felt it being totally aligned with what I have been writing about in this blog theme. If we have more role models, more ladies will enter this field and make it a more diverse playground.
I continuously receive messages from girls looking to get into gamification and I have received an overwhelming amount of support form students on the iVersity gamification course, which also gives me a bit of duty of making sure what I do works and can be seen as a success for those tracking my progress. There is a good bit of space for more ladies to join us.
the other point raised by the article is that not only have ladies been successful in STEM, they also had to face similar issues and obstacles as many male entrepreneurs have. Gender is not a defining factor for success, but how you handle it it. I personally believe there is benefit in the balance and working together of both genders.
What do you think?
