Menopause seems to still languish in the outdated 'women’s problems' list of things to brush under the carpet when it comes to employee health - despite the fact that just over half the population will experience it.

Over the last few decades, the world has made huge strides forward in promoting gender equality in the workforce. In fact, last year saw the employment gap between men and women fall to 6.3%, the lowest point since records began in 1971.

Sandy Carter, Vice President of Public Sector Partners and Programs at Amazon Web Services, shared her experience as a pioneering woman in tech. She discussed how embracing diversity drives innovation as well as the importance of empowering the next generation of female leaders.

In the summer of 2020, I made the leap and set up my social listening agency. Realising there weren’t many agencies in this space, let alone agencies headed up by women of colour, I felt there was ample opportunity to bring my unique perspective and experience to the world of data and listening. (Disclaimer: setting up your own business is not for the faint of heart.) 

Here’s an interesting fact, companies founded by women bring higher returns from investment. According to a study by Boston Consulting Group, the return from each dollar invested in a 'woman-led business' is nearly twice as high, and the total revenue over a five-year period exceeds the earnings of male-run businesses by around 10%.

Every brand thinks they can turn on the charm to impress the ladies, but the opposite is often true. While an enormous 89% of women control daily shopping, the overwhelming majority (a whopping 91%) feel advertisers simply don’t understand us. Shocking, I know.

I would be lying if I said that raising capital as a female Founder is an easy process. Even those that make it look easy, have faced invisible barriers that aren’t present with their male counterparts. What I have learnt, however, is that having this knowledge - that I am a woman (and woman of colour) and that I am on the backfoot - simply doesn’t help me at all.

We spoke with Anjali Midha, an entrepreneur with a passion for media and analytics and the Founder and CEO of Diesel Labs. Diesel Labs is a content analytics company that addresses the toughest questions facing media companies today: what to produce and where to distribute and market it.

Playfair Capital, Tech Nation and Google for Startups are joining forces for the sixth edition of their Female Founder Office Hours initiative. This event will be the largest yet, with over 300 female founders and 120 VCs from some of the world’s leading funds, and expected to be as big as success as past years, as data from the previous five events shows that over 27% of companies that have attended have gone on to secure funding from VCs, angel investors or other sources.

European companies with female-only founders receive less than one percent of all VC capital investment despite the number of female-led companies almost doubling over the past decade, research by Yoppie, the pioneers of personalised menstrual wellness and period care has revealed.

It’s decision time for UK employers. As life has started to return to normal, organisations are recognising that the interim flexible working measures they put in place during the pandemic now need consolidating into permanent policies. 

As the #MeToo movement has swept over the globe, sometimes it seems to me that we live in the world of angry women and confused men. Many of us have certainly lost our capacity to be in our masculine and feminine centres - or yin and yang, or, following Jung, animus and anima - which are available to us regardless of gender. More if we can’t access or use one of them, we aren’t complete as human beings, and certainly not as leaders.

I’m a marketing leader in the tech sector and passionate about diversifying our industry. I care about living my values and keeping women paid, well and thriving. Through Possible Ground I work with people looking to enter the tech industry whether that’s through a job or a business they are running.

Women who have an inner circle of close female contacts are more likely to land executive positions with greater authority and higher pay, a 2019 study in the Harvard Business Review found, and we can assume this translates to those of us who are our own bosses; and the benefit a community of professional women surrounding us provides us with. 

The ICT sector has been given a swift push at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, during 2020 the number of ICT specialists employed in the EU has increased by approximately 600,000 as compared to 2019. However, the gender gap prevailing in the ICT workforce in the EU, where only one in five ICT specialists is a woman, has retained its relevance.

Women In Digital Business (WIDB) is an alternative membership site for women who want to launch or grow a digital business. The Founder, Natalia Nicholson is a mother of three young children and wanted to provide a viable way for women with children or other responsibilities, to start and scale a profitable digital business. Members of WIDB have access to resources and the opportunity to join the Mastermind programme. The programme runs for 3 months and members receive assistance with all the technical elements involved with launching a business in the digital space.

Ensuring your business has a gender pay report in place has “never been more important”, a leading employment solicitor said. Companies with 250 or more members of staff now have just two weeks to report their gender pay gap information

Although the last 20 months have been difficult for everyone, in the business world it’s been particularly tough for women. Sadly, the COVID-19 crisis has set women back decades. As today is National Women in Business Day we wanted to highlight some of the problems, and the solutions that females can look to for help.

The Inspiring Fifty UK awards, hosted by accelerateHER, has announced the 50 trailblazing winners of this year’s contest. With over 500 entries received the calibre of entrants was higher than ever with women from the world’s biggest tech brands featured on the winning list.

In this article, we speak to Natalia-Pawlak, COO of My Wardrobe HQ and Co-founder of My Ventures.

Much of my work is focused around helping women to achieve their highest vision for themselves both personally and professionally. So many women, including those conceiving, founding and running their own businesses, have a strong sense of ambition and a vision but when it comes to actioning change or ‘up levelling’ they become overwhelmed and frozen in knowing where to start.

 The largest global brands in the technology industry today announce their collective commitment to champion racial equity at Black Tech Fest '21, a live festival celebrating Black culture, showcasing innovation, and creating pathways for underrepresented talent. The three-day event will take place online and in person from 19th to 21st October during UK Black History Month. Last year, over 40,000 people streamed Black Tech Fest content across Black History Month and 3,500 attendees from over 20 countries attended the festival, the biggest celebration of its kind in Europe. See here to pre-register.

In 2020, UK venture capital firms invested £12bn into businesses across the nation. By far the largest total value of investment across the whole of Europe, with Germany ranking second, but some way behind at £5.6bn.

LEADING independent property, construction and infrastructure consultancy Pick Everard marked this year’s International Women in Engineering Day (INWED) with the release of a special podcast, interviewing civil engineer Natalie Clemson about her journey from sandwich year placement to national director at the firm.

According to a recent survey, just 29% of the UK’s manufacturing and engineering workforce is made up of women. Now, while this highlights a step in the right direction when compared to figures from previous years, leading multi-disciplinary engineering firm, adi Group, believes more must be done to secure the industry’s workforce for tomorrow.

Innovate UK is releasing new data which reveals the proportion of women setting up businesses has not only remained stagnant at just over a quarter of the total number of new businesses for the last decade, but seen a slight dip since 2010/11 when it was at 28.7%, compared to 27.3% today. Innovate UK’s Women in Innovation Awards looks to help balance the playing field in business by providing more support to female entrepreneurs from across the UK.

Inclusive leadership is climbing the business agenda and is now the most requested management coaching topic, according to the latest feedback figures from Talking Talent, a specialist coaching consultancy. While more than a quarter (27%) of business executives have requested more coaching on being an ‘inclusive leader’ there is still significant strides to be made to tackle diversity, equity, and inclusion issues within business.

Women trying to return to the engineering industry after a career break are more likely to experience recruitment bias than men, according to a survey by STEM Returners.

The Newton Venture Program is unveiling its first diverse cohort of investment trainees set to make the worlds of tech and venture capital more representative and is opening applications for its next program.

Beyond HERizons, a new initiative from London & Partners’ Silicon Valley comes to the UK (SVC2UK) programme designed to specifically tackle the funding gap that exists in the investment landscape, launches its inaugural cohort of female founders today.

Tech Nation launches the Diversity & Inclusion Toolkit; a comprehensive guide to address diversity challenges in tech companies and the UK tech sector, in order to help build a strong, diverse and inclusive tech sector.

There are high barriers to funding for Black founders, especially first-time ones. I know this because I’m a first-time Black founder who has raised (and is still raising) money. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but also a lot of progress. Here’s what I’ve learned along the way.

Black, Asian and mixed background tech entrepreneurs from London and Greater Manchester will join a five-day virtual trade mission starting today (7th to 11th June). The mission will see fifteen companies ‘touch-down’ in North America to meet with corporates and startups to explore new investment and export opportunities and accelerate their expansion plans in the US market.

The Inspiring Fifty UK awards, hosted by accelerateHER, opens nominations to spotlight women excelling in technology careers across the UK and showcase 50 incredible trailblazing leaders.

Ethnicity is a greater challenge than gender when establishing and growing a business according to new research from Santander UK and PRECIOUS, the UK’s longest standing online platform for ambitious women of colour.

For many businesses, the pandemic has been the biggest unwanted spanner in the works that will take some time to come back from. After working from home  for over a year, we can see first-hand the impact that the situation has had, especially for women.

When you are building a plane in the sky - startup speak for tricky innovation in a tough environment - things slip. In the case of fast-growing businesses, important people priorities and processes fall down the agenda. Diversity and inclusion is one of them. It can be deprioritised by default, in a race to stay afloat, pay your teams and spend time on what will get you where you need to go, quickly.

A recent study cited by a leading Fintech publication found that whilst 30% of the fintech workforce is female, only 17% of senior fintech roles are held by women and just over 5% of founders are women. These statistics are pretty shocking as Fintech is such a dynamic world of discovery and innovation.

Working while parenting has always been a balancing act, but the pandemic has led to any existing structures and routines being abandoned.  

Rosa von Krogh is Head of Insights and Innovation at the North Alliance, one of the largest companies in Scandinavia marrying design, media and e-commerce. She is speaking at the global SHE Conference, alongside guests like Hillary Clinton, Norwegian PM, Erna Solberg and Icelandic PM Katrin Jakobsdottir, from 5-19th March 2021.

To mark International Women's Day, University of Bristol-led tech incubator, SETsquared Bristol, are opening applications for Enterprising Women 2.0, a pre-incubation programme for women-led businesses, in partnership with NatWest.

UK businesses are at risk of losing employee trust through choosing to abstain from reporting their gender gap figures, following on from the EHRC’s second deadline extension. Government figures show that nearly half of 10,000 eligible employers chose not to submit their pay gap figures last year - equalling to nearly 5,000 businesses that possibly have something to hide.

Despite the global growth of women-led businesses, funding continues to be a significant challenge. Having gathered multiple data and research, Instant Offices revealed 35% of female business founders still face gender bias when raising their business capital. Female entrepreneurs also receive an average of 5% less funding than their male counterparts.

A few years ago I was sitting in a meeting, working while I waited for it to be my turn to present. The engineer sitting next to me asked me what I was doing - I said that in order to make it home in time before my children’s bath time, I had to work through every single free moment. He replied saying he preferred to not get home until after bath time.

Especially for International Women’s Day on March 8, iStock has unveiled a series of tips to help SMBs meaningfully depict diversity, encouraging them to intentionally and authentically portray women across age, race and cultural lines in their marketing and advertising campaigns for their benefit, and the benefit of women everywhere.   

Nearly half of women working in cybersecurity (49%) say that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their career in a positive way, with just nine percent of female cybersecurity professionals saying that the pandemic negatively impacted their career. This is according to a new global report from human layer security company Tessian, published this International Women’s Day.

To coincide with International Women’s Day, O2 is sharing new research revealing how women have been impacted by challenges raised by Coronavirus. As insights show how employees are feeling a year on from the outbreak of the pandemic, O2 is calling on employers to ramp up their focus on wellbeing and take action to ensure women thrive in the post-pandemic workplace.

Almost one fifth of women (17%) are considering starting their own business, in a sign of a potential fresh wave of female-led startups that could help power the UK’s economic recovery.

This year’s theme for International Women’s Day is #ChoosetoChallenge, so we’ve spoken to a host of female leaders doing just that. CEO of Clearbanc, Michele Romanow is using AI to challenge traditional VC investment. With decisions based on data and not ‘who you know’ Clearbanc has invested in 8x more women than men in the UK. CMO of Fiverr Gali Arnon, believes freelance marketplaces are helping to diminish the gender pay gap for women across the world and Anna Brailsford, CEO of Code First Girls is on a mission to get more women into coding. 

Research by the Belvoir Group has found that although three quarters of women working in the property industry are keen to run their own business, lack of confidence and concerns about juggling family and work life are major preventative factors.

Gender roles have been set back significantly since the COVID crisis began stated 57% of respondents to a new survey of the UK tech industry released ahead for International Women's Day 2021.

Working at Startups Magazine, we come across some extremely inspiring, empowering and all-round incredible women, but it would be impossible to name them all. As we celebrate International Women's Day 2021, we wanted to highlight our 20 most influential women of 2020 from our last Women in Tech edition.

International women’s day is a double-edged tampon, on the one hand it’s a day of celebration, reflection and unity, on the other, it’s a day to bring about awareness and focus on the inequalities that still pelage our society. How’s that gender pay gap looking? Where are we with female representation in the tech industry now? Was your new smartphone designed with a women’s hand size in mind?

Three inspirational female founders discuss how they made their start in business, how they have continued to grow throughout the pandemic, and their advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.  

March 8th 2021 marks International Women’s Day, and a Yoopies survey on equality has revealed that 70% our survey respondents believe there is gender inequality in the workplace in various ways. Pay gaps, missing out on promotions and lack of access to positions of responsibility were cited amongst the most pressing issues of professional gender inequality and furthermore, we revealed that women are far more likely to have trouble balancing their home or personal life with their professional one than men.

Women throughout history continue to make their mark creating innovations and discoveries that impact our lives today. To celebrate International Women’s Day 2021, Miranda Kent, Managing Associate at intellectual property firm, Mathys & Squire, reflects on inspiring female inventors in each decade since 1910 - when the firm was first founded - to demonstrate the significant value that realising new ideas and inventions can bring.

Most women are suffering with general self-esteem issues with 79% admitting to struggling in this area, according to new research released by think tank The WealthiHer Network, which was published for International Women’s Day, taking place on 8th March 2021.

The Digital Women’s Day, JFD in French, was started up by Delphine Remy-Boutang back in 2013, (back then just an annual meeting), but has since evolved into so much more. It is now a platform for the promotion of digital entrepreneurship for women, and JFD has brought together and celebrated a large number of women who all share the same goal - to revolutionise the world digitally both in Europe and Africa.

A recent survey by Arctic Shores, which investigated the talent acquisition landscape for the year ahead, revealed that three in four companies plan to review their diversity hiring practices for 2021. These findings are surprising, considering 81% of companies already run unconscious bias training. This would suggest diminishing confidence amongst talent leaders that unconscious bias training alone is enough to ensure fair, consistent and effective processes.

This Mum Runs is the largest mobile, on and offline running community for Mums in the world, aiming to empower millions of women to feel great about themselves just through moving more and doing it using the power of community. Here we chat to Mel Bound, Founder and CEO of This Mum Runs, as part of our International Women's Day celebrations.

Recently I’ve been wishing for more meetings with men. I spend a lot of time in meetings with women. And while I know my 20-something self would be puzzled by this statement (and would be delighted to chat regularly to women, albeit in a work capacity) let me explain…

Bumble’s CEO, Whitney Wolfe Herd, became the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire last week– a huge milestone for women in business everywhere. But how many female decision-makers are there in the boardrooms of some of the biggest companies in technology, entertainment and e-commerce?

The Data & Marketing Association (DMA) has published new guidance, ‘DMA Talent: ADHD Employer Guide’, created using insights from neurodiversity consultants, brands/employers, and employees with ADHD working across the creative, data and marketing industries.

There’s one tool that’s underused to address the gender diversity gap in startups - education.

London will host a group of North American LGBTQIA+ founders and entrepreneurs today for the start of a two-day virtual trade mission to explore London’s business ecosystem. The mission will see fourteen of North America’s fastest-growing LGBTQIA+ led tech companies ‘touch-down’ in London to meet with corporates and startups to discuss potential business opportunities in the UK capital.

Although this may sound like one of the easier questions you have read this week, this question is so much more than these seven words primarily show.

In June of 2020, the US Supreme Court handed down a ruling that barred employers from discriminating against queer and transgender employees. This was the latest of many fights happening worldwide to introduce or strengthen legislation to protect the LGBTQ+ community in the workplace.

'Why men shouldn’t be the only architects of our digital future'. In the tech world we're always talking about solutions. You hear it all the time, in every pitch deck, on every panel, how if you want to build a successful startup you need to find a problem for consumers or businesses and solve it.

University of Bristol multi-award-winning tech incubator, SETsquared Bristol, has seen its 80 startup and scaleup companies establish record leadership diversity.

As the pandemic continues to impact businesses - both small and large - across the globe, I meet with four diverse founders based in the UK, who are taking part in WeWork's Diverse Founders Programme in partnership with UK social enterprise, Foundervine.

With men being twice as likely to become entrepreneurs than women, the business world has a long way to go to address the barriers which stop women from starting companies, and help to create a more equal society.

Included VC, the first-of-its-kind global initiative building diversity within venture capital, has in a collaborative partnership with 11 funds from around the world, kicked off its Fellowship II. It is the only offering on the market that offers a nine-month, fully funded Fellowship to diverse individuals globally who are looking to enter the VC ecosystem.

You can’t be what you can’t see. This is a phrase that crops up time and time again. We often see organisations pledge to take action to boost the number of opportunities for LGBT+ professionals to take up leadership positions; however there is still a lack of visible LGBT+ role models across business.

The Data & Marketing Association (DMA) has announced a new partnership with not-for-profit organisation, Race Equality Matters, which will seek to achieve racial equality in the workplace.

Over the past few years, we have seen considerable progress on gender equality within the workplace, with logistics providers outlining their commitments to building a more diverse pipeline of talent across all levels.

As someone who once worked for big tech in corporate America, I can attest to the difficulties corporate environments impose on people as individuals, especially caregivers. I don’t limit my identities to only being a mother or only being a professional — I am, like so many things in 2020, complicated and I contain multitudes (thanks for that one, Walt Whitman).

British Polar explorer, Antarctic scientist and author, Felicity Aston is an established expedition leader who has successfully organised and led numerous global missions. As an ambassador for the First Women project, Felicity has led international teams of women to some of the most remote places around the world. Her expeditions have included the first British Women’s crossing of Greenland, The Women’s Euro-Arabian North Pole Expedition and The Pole of Cold Expedition.

To date, the artificial intelligence (AI) industry has had quite a difficult history with diversity standards. Despite studies probing inclusivity and bias, statistics for gender and racial diversity in the sector are alarmingly low. And given that we are living in an age of strong activism in these spaces, it is high time that the tech industry follows suit with some practical steps.

In the first part of this series I looked specifically at why women aren’t investing. This time, I’m exploring what’s stopping everyone else.

PitchBook, the data provider for the private and public equity markets, has released All In: Women in the VC Ecosystem, its second annual report examining global Venture Capital (VC) investment in female-founded startups. The report, published with support from Microsoft for Startups and Beyond the Billion, shows the coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately impacted female founders and CEOs negatively, despite undeniable, long term gains in VC investment over the past decade.

A staggering £4bn of investment went to UK tech companies in the first half of 2020. The British Business Bank’s recent Government report, together with recent surveys by leading investment platforms like Stakeholderz, show that despite the challenges posed this year, investors are continuing to back the UK’s high growth tech companies, with many indicating they will invest the same or more over the next year. Tech has long proved to be a lucrative and attractive sector for investors and entrepreneurs.

Startups Magazine and Fiverr have come together to bring Female Founders a Micro-Grant, to win £5,000 Fiverr credit. This competition has now closed for new entries.

This has been quite a year and if 2020’s taught us anything it’s that we need to take very good care of ourselves, as our business’s biggest asset. Your wellbeing is the source of energy and creativity that your business needs.

“I’m starting to think my profile could be an asset for the business,” a brilliant female founder confided over a virtual Zoom coffee a couple of weeks back (I miss real life, barista made flat whites and hugging clients hello but that’s a sidebar). “I always want to make it about the business but I think I could be a bit of an asset.”

We at The WealthiHer Network have delved into the challenges facing female entrepreneurs in today’s society, the potential they create economically and socially, and the turnaround traits needed to drive recovery for all.  Our fear is that without positive action, the path to recovery for female entrepreneurs is under threat… especially in a post COVID-19 society.

Following our recent Women in Tech event to celebrate Female Founders, Startups Magazine decided to support the Young Women's Trust with all the amazing work they have been doing, with all the profits from the event. 

B2B tech Unicorns with more female leaders are more likely to have female staff in the rest of the organisation, according to findings from 'Part One: Female Inclusion' of leading European B2B SaaS Venture Capital firm Notion Capital’s report, Which Diversity Measures Work? 

In our recent Women in Tech issue, we asked one of our partners Fiverr to chose 'Fiverr's Top 5 Female Founders'. Of course, a very hard job knowing how much talent there is out there, but nonetheless her are the wonderful Founders, in no particular order that made that five! 

Founded in 2014, Hatch has been on a mission to increase diversity in entrepreneurship and has been shining the spotlight on diverse women-led businesses ever since.

The year 2020 is a year like no other. While data shows the pandemic hasn’t affected the overall amount VC dollars invested in tech companies (on par with previous years; US), it has already had a disproportionate effect on the funds allocated to women-led businesses. Venture checks for female founders are at their lowest since 2017. The broader picture is even grimmer, with a real threat to roll back the last 30 years of economic progress for women (according to the International Monetary Fund).

A certain male news anchor once said: "What the hell is diversity?" Little did he know that the woman who entered the room in the next six seconds would be the best news anchor he ever met. A lot has happened since the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties and Nineties and we as a society are better for it.

It is no secret by now that we are huge supporters of encouraging more females into the tech industry, and closing the gender equality gap. We have recently released out latest issue all about Women in Tech, where we spoke to some amazing females and heard some empowering stories from both males and females in the industry. However, to hear from some more inspiring females and males about the tech industry, and particularly the role women have within it, then head along to the 4th annual conference from Women in Electronics.

Resilience and Recovery, a new report from the Female Founders Forum - a project by think tank The Entrepreneurs Network, in partnership with Barclays - has revealed that female-founded, equity-backed businesses have been worse affected by the COVID-19 pandemic than their male counterparts.

Startups Magazine and Fiverr have come together to bring Female Founders a Micro-Grant, to win £5,000 Fiverr credit. This competition has now closed for new entries.

A woman’s work is never done. This phrase is now more poignant than ever as we grapple with the new realities posed by the current pandemic. It is, however, especially true for successful female entrepreneurs who are left dealing with the struggles of everyday life whilst trying to run a thriving business.

Hopefully, it goes without saying that women are vital members of any team in business. The best ideas are conceptualised and executed by groups with a variety of backgrounds, skills and opinions - homogenised teams will lead to unexciting products.

In my previous blog, I considered the steps necessary for business leaders to close the gap between rhetoric and reality on racial equity at work. This time, I wanted insight on what is actually happening on the frontline. I sat down with award-winning business strategist and founder of The Black British Business Awards, Melanie Eusebe. She has risen to the upper- echelons of the corporate world, and in our broad conversation offered her perspectives on corporate responsibility, solidarity, and how we sustain the current momentum.

Some people are doing very well out of the pandemic - the fraudsters. That’s because the chaos COVID-19 has caused makes it far easier for them to operate. Have you increasingly been asked to provide personal data to strangers since March? Have you changed any of your habits? Gordon Ramsey himself couldn’t have created a more perfect recipe for rising fraud. How can you make yourself as safe as possible and if you have been a victim, what should you do next?