Becoming an entrepreneur: A study of factors with women from the tech sector

Context: The gender imbalance in technology, sciences, and engineering is a global problem and according to the statistics, this really has not changed much in the last thirty years. Moreover, there is also a lack of women in tech entrepreneurship; most success stories are about male entrepreneurs, and in Silicon Valley the term describing the start-up culture is called "tech bros" for a reason.Objective: This paper identifies different factors affecting the women's decision to select a tech sector and become an entrepreneur in the tech sector. In this paper we also aim to identify different pitfalls and problems, which could influence the attractiveness of the tech sector, and specifically technology entrepreneurship, towards the women interested in the science, technology, and engineering domains.Method: To study the factors affecting women's interest towards entrepreneurship in the technology sector, we conducted a series of surveys and interviews to understand the underlying phenomena. Overall, this study interviewed ten female company founders, and conducted two surveys with women working, interested, or studying towards the tech sector, allowing us to combine and compare the qualitative data from the women who had become entrepreneurs against the quantitative trends and ideas collected from the general audiences.Results: The most common factors limiting the individuals' interest towards entrepreneurship such as financial risks or high responsibilities might not be gender-related, but there are also aspects as social acceptance, discrimination, and lack of role models, which affect especially the women interested in the possibilities of becoming an entrepreneur in tech.Conclusions: In general, the current younger generations are aware of the option of becoming entrepreneurs, and what becoming one requires. Initiatives, such as adding positive examples of females' success, or supporting entry-level opportunities towards full-time entrepreneurship, could have a meaningful impact of reducing the gender imbalance in the STEM fields, and in technology entrepreneurship in general.