{"id":444822,"date":"2023-04-28T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-28T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/innovationorigins.com\/?p=444822"},"modified":"2023-04-28T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-04-28T07:00:00","slug":"also-in-belgium-the-number-of-women-in-start-ups-remains-limited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/en\/also-in-belgium-the-number-of-women-in-start-ups-remains-limited\/","title":{"rendered":"Also in Belgium, the number of women in start-ups remains limited"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An analysis by openthebox<\/a> and Agoria<\/a> of 300 Belgian start-ups shows that female founders and directors are still rare in the sector, despite all efforts. Only 10% of founders and a meager 13% of directors are women. However, the number of female employees at the start-ups and scale-ups surveyed did increase slightly over the past 10 years, from 33% to 36%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trend in Belgium does not differ from that in the Netherlands; there, too, women are still far outnumbered, especially in high-tech start-ups. Technology federation Agoria is working to break the status quo by paying more attention to the composition of start-up teams and by actively encouraging investors to delegate female representatives to the boards of directors of their portfolio companies.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/a>
<\/div><\/div>
Fe+Male Tech Heroes inspire people to shape their future<\/div>
Once upon not long ago, there was a teenage child\u2026 This is how the third edition of the Fe+Male Tech Heroes conference began, with a … Continued<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n

On the occasion of International Girls in ICT Day<\/a>, openthebox, a website that uses AI technology to collect company data and expose entrepreneurial networks, and the sector federation Agoria delved into the company data of some 300 Belgian technology start-ups and scale-ups. These were companies participating in acceleration programs such as imec.istart<\/a>, Start It KBC, and Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 program. The male-female ratios of founders, directors, and employees were examined, focusing on companies founded between 2011 and 2022. The data shows that the proportion of female founders at startups founded between 2017 and 2022 increased slightly from 8 to 10 percent of the total number of founders compared to startups founded between 2011 and 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Steve Deplacie<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

“Despite industry efforts over the past two decades, there are still few female founders at start-ups,” said Steve Deplacie, Managing Director of openthebox. “The same goes for female directors, where the percentage has even dropped from 15% to 13%. The number of female employees remains almost stable, at about one in three. So on all fronts, there is still solid room for improvement regarding female representation.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of all the companies surveyed, 79% have only male founders, while only 3% have only female founders. When it comes to directors, there is also a lot of margins to become more diverse: 71% of companies have only male directors, while 26% of companies have at least one female director in addition to a male director.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Additional research on about 70 start-ups with a female founder shows that 85% of these companies also have at least one male co-founder. These companies total 83 female founders and 129 male founders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Laurence Jacobs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

“Female founders do not necessarily recruit more female employees,” adds Laurence Jacobs, Women in Tech Ambassador at Agoria. “Women remain significantly underrepresented with a share of about 30%. Boards from this group of companies contain about 32% female board members.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agoria’s sustainability strategy, “Technology for a better world”, therefore sets clear goals regarding gender ratios within technology companies, such as striving to improve the male\/female ratio annually, achieving gender parity in hiring and promotions, and having at least 25% women in leadership positions by 2030.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Breaking the status quo<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Agoria also sees a positive role for accelerators and investment funds to break the status quo. On the one hand, they can take gender diversity into account when guiding startups looking for co-founders for their projects. “Several international studies show that companies with female founders and executives perform better in terms of efficiency, return on investment, and operating profits,” said Agoria’s Laurence Jacobs. “They achieve better ESG scores and invest more in employee training and development. It should just be common sense to focus on gender diversity.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, both public and private investment funds can pay more attention to the composition of their boards when they appoint representatives. Studies show that teams composed of people of different genders, multicultural backgrounds, and ages make better decisions. While complementarity of profiles is often paramount in the composition of advisory boards, this seems to be much less the case with boards of directors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, several testimonies indicate that the trajectory of women entrepreneurs is considerably more difficult, and they often face stereotypes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Difficult journey<\/summary>

“Our first capital round in 2020 was a success but a long and difficult journey. As a startup with three female founders, two of them recent graduates, we had to convince a male bastion of funding and investors. After talking to other startups that were also raising capital, it was clear that our trajectory required significantly more effort and perseverance. Something that is still evident today in the commercial expansion of our company. Potential customers sometimes question the credibility of our platform because they associate it directly with our team of young female founders. It is high time to change the mindset within the business world and transcend the concept of gender – both within companies and in the sectors that finance and support them. Because in the economy of tomorrow, gender should play no role.” representation.”
Sophie Vanderputten<\/a>, co-founder and CEO HireRing<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/details>\n\n\n\n

Recently, Bien Vanderstappen<\/a>, co-founder and CEO TEO<\/a>, was one of the finalists in a competition for women entrepreneurs. “I was told that it was exceptional that I had ambitiously built a growth company with a male associate who was not my life partner. In addition, it was noted that as a woman active in a technical field with mainly industry clients, I was not an ideal role model and that women would find it difficult to identify with me. Such things are a bit of a shock, especially anno 2023, where gender and background should really no longer play a role in valuing one’s work.”<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/a>
<\/div><\/div>
Women entrepreneurs get kickstarted with brand new program Momentum<\/div>
Gender equality is increasingly an important issue in the workplace. Yet things could be a lot better when it comes to the representation of women … Continued<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An analysis by openthebox and Agoria of 300 Belgian start-ups shows that female founders and directors are still rare in the sector, despite all efforts. Only 10% of founders and a meager 13% of directors are women. However, the number of female employees at the start-ups and scale-ups surveyed did increase slightly over the past […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1568,"featured_media":494130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3009,42],"tags":[5393,36106,47499,27008],"location":[40240],"article_type":[36684],"serie":[],"archives":[],"internal_archives":[],"reboot-archive":[],"class_list":["post-444822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-startup","category-sustainability-nl","tag-start-ups-nl","tag-women","tag-women-entrepreneurs","tag-women-in-tech-en","location-belgium","article_type-news"],"blocksy_meta":[],"acf":{"subtitle":"An analysis by openthebox and Agoria of 300 Belgian start-ups shows that female founders and directors are still rare in the sector.","text_display_homepage":false},"author_meta":{"display_name":"Bart Brouwers","author_link":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/author\/brewbart\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/woman-startup-vrouwen-.png","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["Start-ups<\/a>","Sustainability<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Start-ups<\/span>","Sustainability<\/span>"]},"tags":{"linked":["start-ups<\/a>","Women<\/a>","women entrepreneurs<\/a>","Women in Tech<\/a>"],"unlinked":["start-ups<\/span>","Women<\/span>","women entrepreneurs<\/span>","Women in Tech<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 3 years ago","modified":"Updated 3 years ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on April 28, 2023","modified":"Updated on April 28, 2023"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on April 28, 2023 9:00 am","modified":"Updated on April 28, 2023 9:00 am"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444822"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=444822"},{"taxonomy":"article_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_type?post=444822"},{"taxonomy":"serie","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/serie?post=444822"},{"taxonomy":"archives","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/archives?post=444822"},{"taxonomy":"internal_archives","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/internal_archives?post=444822"},{"taxonomy":"reboot-archive","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/reboot-archive?post=444822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}