7 Smart Strategies to Help You

When it comes to gender equality in the tech industry, the numbers probably won’t surprise you. Only 17% of venture-backed companies are founded by women, and women make up just 7% of partners at 100 of the top venture capitalist firms.

Although many attempts are being made to encourage women into tech, we are still far from gender parity in the industry. What would the world look like if there were equal numbers of men and women in the sector? We asked three women in tech, from CEOs to developers, for their thoughts.

More female-led tech companies would change the way women are treated in society

I’m a strong believer in a connection between a company’s internal values and the final product or service. There are many examples of tech companies where their internal attitudes towards women are reflected in their products.

For example, there have been multiple stories about alleged sexual harassment relating to Uber, as well as the [leaked] “Miami letter” [CEO Travis Kalanick sent staff guidelines about when it was appropriate to have sex with other employees at a company event in Miami]. It became clear why Uber had been never considered the safest service for women – because its workplace wasn’t either.

If there were more tech companies led by women, I truly believe it would change the way women are treated in society – in part as a result of the values shown in their company’s services or products.

Valerie Stark, co-founder and CEO of friendship and dating app Huggle

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A glimpse into the future of computing

Now that touchscreens have moved the human-computer interaction beyond the monopoly of the mouse-keyboard union for the first time in 30 years, are we now at a point where we can put some distance between us and our computers? Can we instruct them without direct contact but now move to the new union of voice-gesture?

Leap Motion is the first serious mainstream contender for a high fidelity gesture peripheral. It tracks the movement of hands in two square feet of space above it with unbelievable speed and accuracy.

The first question everybody asks is, ‘So what can it do?’. The short answer is, today, very little. Tomorrow? Well, I for one am a believer. What we have here is a limitation of imagination, not of technology. That is usually a catalyst for innovation.

Device itself

Receiving my Developer Kit a few weeks ago was a cause for a large crowd to gather in the development team at the Guardian. Only a handful of new gadgets really generate this level of excitement and people wanted to see for themselves whether it lived up to the hype.

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