It’s becoming increasingly obvious that women are under served by the internet… DailyCandy brought in a nice chunk of change when it sold portion of itself, as a testament to their foresight, and Sugar Publishing is now raking in the dough from investors eager to bring services and content to women.
One reason women seem to be undeserved is that in a world of weekend start-ups, there are too few female programmers and industry insiders.
- Of the 109 speakers at this year’s Web 2.0 Conference, 6 were women.
- One look at the Ruby on Rails core team show nary a female face.
- Take a look at TechCrunch’s MyBlogLog, and you’ll see one distinguishably female avatar (click thumbnail below to enlarge).
- This survey taken of nextNY members showed that only 12.5% of participants were female.
This list could go on, I’m sure. But the real point here is that the tech industry already knows what guys want, and is serving them, because men are the tech industry. The real kicker will be when women, who make 80% of all household financial decisions and comprise over 55% of internet users, are served by web entrepreneurs.
Sugar Publishing gets it. Real Girls Media gets it. DailyCandy gets it.
Who’s next?
You've found Nate Westheimer's blog. Nate wears many hats. He's the VP Product at 
4 responses so far ↓
1 Scott Rafer // Dec 13, 2006 at 6:43 pm
Dogster gets it. 80%+ female usage without being specifically a site for females.
2 Anon // Dec 14, 2006 at 3:36 pm
Isn’t it possible that both the lack of female orientated content (if that is indeed so) and the lack of female insiders/programmers are both results of some other factor and have no direct cause/effect relationship vis-a-vis each other?
3 Sarah // Dec 18, 2006 at 5:19 pm
hey! i just stumbled upon your blog — looks like i got lucky. it is great to see someone writing such insightful posts on women in the internet!
4 nate // Dec 19, 2006 at 12:04 am
Well, Anon, what do you think that other factor is?
From my studies, it seems clear that successful internet companies have often been the product of programmers/web insiders building a project that becomes successful. The chicken egg thing is clear in this instance, to me at least, in that you usually NEED programmers to start a company (less and less with out sourcing options).
What systemic problem do you think would produce fewer techie women?
Thanks,
Nate
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