![]() Since the 2017 launch of kweliTV, a platform that focuses on sharing Black stories globally through curated independent films, documentaries, web series and events, Spencer says she's raised just $100,000 in investment funding. To this day, Spencer says she refuses to share her age publicly. "One investor told me that I looked so young and that I was at the right age because it's hard to invest in women after they turn 28," she says, while explaining that the investor said after a certain age "all women are going to want to do is have children and they're not going to be thinking that much about the business." Spencer says those sentiments were echoed by another investor who told her that as a woman she should never tell her age in the business because if she's over 30 she would have a hard time getting investments. Of those who said they have been harassed, 43% say the harassment occurred within the last 12 months, and 40% said the harassment came specifically from an investor, with many women founders saying they were explicitly propositioned for sex in exchange for investment funding and introductions.Īside from ongoing harassment, nearly 50% of women founders say they were told they would raise more money if they were a man, and 55% say they feel like they received "differential treatment while raising funding, specifically because of their gender."ĭeShuna Spencer, CEO and founder of the streaming service kweliTV, says that while she hasn't experienced sexual harassment from an investor, she has received many sexist remarks that have impacted her journey to raising money. Roughly 44% of women founders today say they've been harassed in the tech industry, according to Women Who Tech's survey. In addition to HR departments holding company leaders accountable, Kapin says the tech industry also needs to do a better job at holding investors accountable for sexual discrimination and sexual misconduct against female founders. "The problem," she says, "is creating a culture and a set of values where you do not tolerate a toxic culture of harassment and that people who are employees in the company have a place they can go to safely report harassment incidents, where they will not fear a culture of retaliation and that actual people who are committing harassment will be held accountable." To change this dynamic, Kapin says human resource departments need to go beyond anti-harassment workshops because that alone won't solve the problem. It hasn't been set up to protect employees." "HR has traditionally been set up to protect the company from liability. "That is so significant, and I think the problem is that people who work for companies don't feel that they have HR departments that are truly looking out for them," she says. This ongoing silence, Kapin says, is due to women not having faith in their employer's response method, with 67% of women saying they do not have a lot of trust in how their company will handle harassment allegations. Roughly 45% of female tech employees who have experienced harassment say they reported the incident to senior leadership, a decrease from the 55% who reported these incidents in Women Who Tech's 2017 survey. In fact, Kapin says that while the movement has given some women in tech the courage to speak out and take action against their harassers, the lack of accountability in the industry has also led other women to remain silent. ![]() If anything, there are pockets of harassment that have actually gone up." "But," she explains, "on a mass scale, harassment has not gone down. Shareholders' response to Rubin's situation, Kapin says, was a direct result of the #MeToo movement's impact. ![]() Earlier this year, Alphabet settled that lawsuit by agreeing that executives will no longer receive severance or be able to amend their stock sale plans while under investigation for sexual misconduct. In 2019, shareholders filed a lawsuit against Google's parent company, Alphabet, for allegedly covering up and mishandling sexual misconduct cases including the allegations against Rubin. The company gave Andy Rubin, the creator of Android, a $90 million exit package when he left the company in 2014 following accusations of sexual misconduct (Rubin has denied any wrongdoing). As a result of the #MeToo movement, Kapin says we've seen more cases of sexual harassment come to the forefront, forcing companies to take accountability for the issues they have long swept under the rug. ![]()
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