Women-Led Start Ups Have Fewer Failures, What Does that Actually Mean?

Local developer and entrepreneur Alicia Liu recently reflected on recent research that said women-run startups are generally more successful:

So these women, on top of an already gruelling process of pitching and due diligence, had to overcome additional obstacles, including investor bias. So wouldn’t it make sense that this additional selection, though unfair, means that only the very best women are able to get funding and grow their businesses to successful exits? Viewed like this, the study results are not surprising.

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To me, the additional selection imposed on women through overt and subtle stereotypes, biases, and differential treatment contributes to fewer women in male-dominated fields, like running a tech start up, but it also results in higher quality. This is analogous to survival of the fittest.

What do you think? Do the women running these startups just happen to be better than average because they were the ones tough enough (or smart enough, or whatever quality you want to insert here) to make it? Is the same true of women in highly male-dominated fields like computer science and engineering in general?

Kudos to past WISE exec and officer for defending their PhD theses!

I just wanted to recognize the awesomeness of one of the original four founding members of CU-WISE and past Executive Natalia Villanueva-Rosales, and past CU-WISE Officer Terri Oda, both of whom successfully passed their PhD thesis defences in the last few weeks.  Both of their committees were rather impressed with them.  Congrats ladies!!

I don't think we celebrate our own accomplishments enough, so I'm always trying to encourage others to do so here on the blog.  If you're a member of the CU-WISE community and have something to share about yourself or another awesome woman in science or engineering here at Carleton, you can always contact CU-WISE (wise@carleton.ca) and have us post it!

Ada Lovelace Day: Natalia

In celebration of Ada Lovelace Day, I wrote about one of my fellow CU-WISE founders:

I participate in Ada Lovelace Day every year by blogging about my tech heroines.  This year, I had a really hard time deciding who to honour because there are so many worthy candidates! After some thought about what stage of life I'm at and what's happening today for her, I finally settled on Natalia Villanueva-Rosales.

You can read the whole post on my blog.  I hope you'll consider blogging about your tech heroine today, too!