How Hong Kong women are levelling the pitch in the male-heavy tech industry

A cursory look around the recent Rise conference in Hong Kong may have convinced participants that the city’s technology industry is a female-friendly environment. The region’s biggest jamboree for start-ups featured round tables and ticket discounts for women. The female attendance was a respectable 40 per cent of the total 14,000, and an anti-harassment policy banned offensive comments and behaviour based on sex and race.

“Female entrepreneurs are better placed here than in the US, and you can tell by even the smallest of things. At a Las Vegas tech show I went to, the men had to queue for the washrooms, but the women’s were so empty you could dance in them,” says Serena Pau, chief executive and co-founder of Groking Lab, a Hong Kong company that makes an app-enabled water bottle called Ozmo that helps fitness enthusiasts stay hydrated.

In the US, only 17 per cent of start-ups have at least one female founder, according to research company CrunchBase. In recent weeks, more than a dozen women in Silicon Valley have spoken up about being sexually harassed by male colleagues and fund managers. Growing evidence of how women have suffered under a degrading, “frat boy” culture has led to the resignation of a number of CEOs at some of the biggest names in tech since June, such as Uber’s Travis Kalanick and Dave McClure of start-up accelerator 500 Startups.

Nevertheless, just because there were plenty of women at last month’s Rise conference doesn’t mean gender equality is a fait accompli in Asia – where women are still widely expected to conform to stereotypes and deep-seated chauvinistic values prevail. Some of the events highlighted how far the industry has to go. Sixty-three companies from across Asia competed in the Rise “pitch” challenge – short, sharp presentations in front of a large audience, followed by a question-and-answer session with judges. Only 10 were represented by women, and none of those made it into the final 14.

Some reasons for men’s domination of the tech industry are well-documented. It starts at school, where girls are less likely to study so-called Stem subjects – science, technology, engineering and maths. In Hong Kong, a study commissioned by The Women’s Foundation this year found that nearly three times as many boys are studying information and communication technology than girls at the Diploma of Secondary Education level. The rarity of women on the “buy side” is also an important factor. Crunchbase found that only 7 per cent of senior investing partners at the top 100 US venture capital firms are women, which reinforces the “boys’ club” environment of the tech sector and helps to account for why just 9 per cent of global venture capital deals went to companies with a female CEO (according to Pitchbook, an investment data provider).