A Battle Against the Odds
The New Economy looks like the old one to women climbing the corporate ladder
By JENNIFER L. SCHENKER
Robert Wallis for TIME
Informal groups like London-based Capital Women can foster the networking process
Executives from 23 Internet start-ups attended boot camp in Barcelona in March to learn how to get financing. Number of women in the class? Zero. In Berlin the following month, executives from 56 European tech ventures presented their companies to venture capitalists at an investment forum. Number of women entrepreneurs? One. In Helsinki in May, the ceos of Finland's 30 hottest Internet start-ups presented their companies to venture capitalists on a European tech tour. Number of women entrepreneurs? Zero. Glass ceilings exist in old economy companies but the new economy was supposed to be different, opening up a new world of opportunities for women.
Think again. There are exceptions to the rule, but there are fewer women in the business fields like engineering and computer sciences that produce high-tech entrepreneurs. And women tend to "self-select themselves out of the process by not applying to the best business schools," says Sonia Lo, ceo of London-based eZoka.com and a graduate of Harvard Business School. "Once they finish M.B.A.s they go into p.r., marketing and human resources — female ghettos which are not threatening to men. The number of women on the path to senior management therefore diminishes at every step."
Two women venture capitalists — themselves a rarity in Europe — Maisy Ng, a partner in London-based Add Partners and Trudi Schifter, a partner in Munich-based iGlobe — say they have not invested in any European companies headed by women because they run across so few.
It's not just a matter of choice. Men still control the capital, and discrimination is a factor. Ingo Krocke, a partner in the Munich office of venture capital firm Wellington Partners, says men have had an easier time getting funded, but he thinks the balance is shifting. "Men tend to promise more than they have, while women tend to understate," he says. "In the early days of the Internet the louder you shouted the more attention you got, but that is changing now. I think women will have a great future in this industry." Perhaps, but the European women leading the way are finding it to be an uphill battle.
Martha Lane Fox, co-founder of lastminute.com, says that when she went to visit her first venture capitalist he said, "Great business plan. Great presentation. What if you get pregnant?" The situation is no better for women who already have children. French entrepreneur Anne-Julia Audray says many of the men she asked for legal and financial help have been patronizing and prejudiced. "I can't tell you how many have said, 'Don't worry, we'll help you arrange things in such a way that you can sell your company within a year so you can go back to taking proper care of your children," says the 36-year-old CEO, the mother of boys aged five and 14.
Audray has no intention of doing anything of the kind, and her family is behind her. Good thing, because her company, Vocebella, which specializes in voice analysis over the Internet, is headquartered in their Paris apartment. The family now eats on trays in the living room because the kitchen table is covered with computer equipment. One son's bedroom has been converted into office space for more than a half a dozen staffers. The boys are now bunking together. For lack of space the younger one's old bed has been moved into the living room, looking out of place among the Louis XVI chairs and a baby grand piano.
Audray, an opera singer by training, has made a career of helping people with public speaking, but she had to learn the language of finance to make it in the Internet world, paying her lawyer to teach her not only the vocabulary but the gestures that men use to get their points across. What needs to be done, says Lo, is to teach women about investing from the time they are little girls and to give them the self-confidence to present themselves in the best light. Lo is behind a loosely knit, London-based group called Capital Women which gives women working in the Internet a place to network and get constructive criticism of their business plans.
Networking groups help, but women also need to embrace technology — the core of the Internet business, says Finnish expatriate Jaana Porra, a female computer scientist who teaches business at the University of Houston. "When men see a problem they try to understand the technology and delve right in," says Porra. "My women students spend a lot of energy trying to get a guy to do it for them or avoiding learning it."
That inclination might be changing. Wallington High School for Girls, a state school in a town of the same name in Surrey, is the first girls-only school in the U.K. to sign up for the Cisco Networking Academy Program (CNAP), a course that teaches students how to be Internet plumbers — to build and maintain networks. The course is oversubscribed, despite the fact that students do it in their own time.
Girls in the class cite Microsoft's Bill Gates as their inspiration. None had heard of Martha Lane Fox, one of Britain's most visible e-entrepreneurs. European women, it seems, still have a lot to learn about both kinds of networking.
With reporting by Christine Whitehouse/London
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