| Thanks for sharing! Two points I'd underscore: it's important to take risks to reach the inclusivity goals the organization sets, and a few individuals can make a huge difference in that commitment. I was the leader at Gaza Sky Geeks when we decided to bring our women's participation rates to 50%. Part of what we did was require 50% women's participation at our main outreach event (a Startup Weekend at the time). That's the top of the funnel - whatever our women's engagement rate is at that stage, it'll either stay the same or drop after that (if there's bias at each selection stage against women, as founders enter incubation, then acceleration, then follow-on investment) Some of our staff and partners disagreed with this strategy: only 30% of applicants to the outreach event were female, and their applications were indeed often worse than men's applications. Quite honestly, the main reason we stuck to the goal was because I put my foot down and said Gaza Sky Geeks would only run the event if we all committed to 50% women's participation. What happened next? Women outperformed men at the event, winning most of the prizes. That was all organic - and if anything, we had expected the judges to be biased towards men. The following year, we again had the same debate with our partners and our team, and again I stood my ground for this. That's explained in this video: https://youtu.be/vJnRy8jcac8 ("How Gaza's startup community became one of the most female-inclusive in the world") |