The Obstacles of Female Entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley
AbstractWomen make up half of our society, yet they remain underrepresented in many fields, especially that of the tech world of Silicon Valley. This work explores the reasons behind this gender imbalance, drawing from history, personal accounts, and statistics to determine the lack of female tech workers and, more specifically, the lack of female tech entrepreneurs. From the very beginning of the Valley, women have been at a disadvantage due to its work-obsessed and male-dominant culture, a pattern that has only continued over the years to subtly discriminate against women. The following paper finds that because of their stereotype, women have negative workplace experiences, which discourage them from pursuing a tech career. It is possible that women are deterred from tech entrepreneurship because they are not interested in it, but perhaps they are not interested in it because they are already set in their ideas of what girls should be doing. Although there has been some progress made since the beginnings of the Valley, we are still nowhere near close to equal representation of men and women in tech. However, women can significantly impact tech businesses. Thus, this research has implications for our economy through possible growth, for technology through advancement, and for society through gender equality.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).