En politics, the year 2022 was marked by the arrival of women in the most important positions in our Republic: we now have a Prime Minister and a President of the National Assembly.
For 2023, it is to be hoped that this momentum will grow and spread to all sectors of society, and in particular in the digital sector.
For 2023, everyone of course hopes that “French Tech” will continue to grow, raise funds, create jobs and innovate, despite the headwinds. But we would be making a mistake if we focused only on purely economic issues while ignoring structural issues. Yes, 2023 must be a year to finally make progress on the issues of feminization and diversity.
Innovate better than all the others
Recent reports are alarming. Committed to the feminization of the digital economy, the Sista collective [de femmes entrepreneuses et investisseuses qui promeut plus de diversité] recently pointed out that only seven start-ups are led by a woman in the “French Tech 120” and worse, none in the “Next 40”, respectively the rankings of the 120 and the top 40 French start-ups: it’s worse than the CAC 40! The roots are deep: digital represents 800,000 jobs in France, but only 22% of women.
Diversidays, another association whose action for diversity must be commended, gives us another figure: 39% of start-up employees say they have already been victims of discrimination when trying to integrate a young shoot. We could line up the statistics one after the other, they all point in the same direction: an unimaginable observation in our time and completely unacceptable. The colossal public resources put at the service of the development of French Tech can only benefit a minority of us.
There is of course a social issue. You cannot build an entire sector of the economy with so few women and so little diversity. There is of course an economic issue. If there were as many women as men who launched a start-up and were properly funded for it, it’s simple, we would have almost twice as many start-ups in our country and therefore twice as many jobs created.
But there is also a stake of life or death for our ecosystem. For our start-ups to succeed in global competition, we must not simply innovate, we must innovate better than everyone else. Yet innovation and diversity are intimately linked. Diversity encourages discussion and sharing, from which the best ideas emerge. In a sector where we must constantly innovate to succeed, the difference is an invaluable asset.
You have 45.94% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.