Women tech activists launch Project Include
SAN FRANCISCO — A group of women tech activists has launched a new project to increase diversity and inclusion in the industry.
Project Include was dreamed up by Slack's Erica Joy Baker and Pinterest's Tracy Chou, among others.
“Project Include started as dinner brainstorming sessions on how to make tech meaningfully more diverse,” said Ellen Pao, who sued her former venture capital firm for sexual discrimination.
The goal of the website, ProjectInclude.org, is to give chief executives recommendations and tools to change the white male-dominated tech culture in Silicon Valley and create more inclusive work environments.
The group also has recommendations for venture capital firms to pass on to their portfolio companies.
Freada Kapor Klein, partner at Kapor Capital and founder of the Level Playing Field Institute, says the project combines the "lived experience — especially from women of color in engineering — with the latest bias research."
Diversity advocates have called on venture capital firms to make significant changes in the wake of a closely watched gender discrimination lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins, one of Silicon Valley's most famous firms. Pao lost her case but international news coverage of the trial trained the spotlight on the stark lack of women and underrepresented minorities in the clubby profession.
In major Silicon Valley tech companies, men greatly outnumber women, accounting for as much 70% of the work force. A fraction of the work force is African American or Latino and, despite a recent outpouring of rhetoric and resources, progress has been halting in boosting the ranks of women and underrepresented minorities.
A 2011 survey by the National Venture Capital Asssociation and Dow Jones VentureSource found 89% of investors were male and 11% female, while 87% were white.
The lack of women and minorities affects who gets funding. Pepperdine University found in a survey last year that female and minority entrepreneurs were significantly less likely to raise venture capital than their white, male counterparts.