It’s no secret that women face discrimination in male-dominated workplaces. That’s why they should start their own businesses, says entrepreneur Randi Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg, who is Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg’s sister, formerly worked marketing executive and spokesperson at Facebook. She currently hosts a weekly tech business show on SiriusXM and serves as CEO of Zuckerberg Media, a company that advises startups. In addition, she runs Hug, a Web3 company for artists and online creators.
During a recent appearance on Yahoo Finance, Zuckerberg encouraged women to become tech founders.
“You can either spend your time playing catchup in an already male-dominated part of the industry or you can get in on the ground floor of some of the emerging things that are happening,” Zuckerberg said. “And there are so many exciting things with cybersecurity, space travel, blockchain, artificial intelligence. These are all opportunities for women to get in on the ground floor.”
Zuckerberg asserted that inequality persists in the tech field despite some progress.
“We're seeing more and more women that are founding kind of unicorn-level billion-dollar-plus startups, more women on the investing side,” Zuckerberg told Yahoo Finance. “That being said, though, the numbers are still pretty bleak.”
Women make up only 28 percent of the tech sector, despite constituting nearly half of the broader workforce, according to Zippia. Last year, women founded American startups raised merely 2.1% of the total capital invested in venture-backed startups in the US, according to Pitchbook.
Zuckerberg also noted that women are bearing a larger workload post-pandemic.
“Unfortunately, what we saw during the pandemic is that a lot of women stepped out of the workforce because we kind of went back to traditional roles in households, where, with schools shutting down, a lot of women were doing double duty and leaving the workforce.” Zuckerberg said. “So, we're still playing a bit of catchup from that.”
During the pandemic, when remote work became more prevalent, women struggled to balance their careers with their family lives. Mothers were 1.5 times more likely than fathers to spend an extra three or more hours daily on housework and childcare, according to a 2022 report by McKinsey.
Zuckerberg shared several insights on how women can make advances in the tech sector.
Zuckerberg encouraged women to continue founding tech companies, arguing that such companies could bring more female workers into the tech industry. According to a report by Kauffman Fellows, an organization that hosts an education program for venture capitalists, startups with at least one female founder hire 2.5 times more women.
“So if 98% of funding into the tech sector is going to men, then that's going to perpetuate who continues to work for the tech sector. So I think it's really important that more women found companies and that they get the funding that they need for those companies to be successful,” Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg also spotlighted DeVry University’s Women in Tech Scholars program, which she said connects women with mentors and allows them them to either begin or further develop their tech careers.
“I think programs like this are absolutely essential to moving the needle and getting more women into the tech industry,” Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg also suggested that women monitor emerging technology businesses for opportunities. In particular, she recommended that women keep an eye on cryptocurrency and Web 3.0, a third iteration of the internet partially based on blockchain technology.
Amid the current crypto winter and recent fall of FTX, many experts see cryptocurrency as a precarious venture. Crypto stocks also recently declined after Silvergate Capital announced its plan to shutter operations.
Consequently, investors are approaching Web 3.0 with increasing caution. In recent months, some venture capital firms have slowed investments in Web 3.0 companies, according to recent reporting by the Forkast, a publication that covers blockchain.
Still, Zuckerberg insisted that women should keep an eye on these fields.
“We desperately need more of us at the table, especially a lot of these new technologies that are coming out have real societal and ethical questions that they're raising, and questions around how our children, how we'll all be interacting with technology,” Zuckerberg said. “And if women don't have a seat at the table right now, we don't get to have a voice in what happens with those.”
Dylan Croll is a reporter and researcher at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @CrollonPatrol.
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