Leading digital entrepreneur and crossbench peer Baroness
(Martha) Lane has issued a stark warning about
entrenched sexism in the global tech sector, recounting how a CEO
of a large company told her directly: “We're done with
women.”
The incident occurred earlier this year at a prominent US
business event. , the only woman on a
panel, expressed dismay at the lack of representation, only to be
met with the response from a male executive.
“He looked at me and he said, ‘We're done with women.'”
“It definitely sparked an anger in me that I try not to normally
feel,” she told the Lord Speaker, of Alcluith, on the latest
episode of his podcast, Lord Speaker's Corner (link to YouTube here).
, a long-time advocate for
women in technology, said she had “seen no change in the
relationship between the sector and women, or in numbers of
women” in over 30 years.
“Only two per cent of businesses are founded by women, a bit more
co-founded, like 20 per cent, but that's partly because only nine
per cent of venture capital partners are women. And it's just
dumb because I believe there are so many more people we could be
backing and so many problems we could be solving if we were more
wide-ranging in how we thought about including people at that
kind of entrepreneurial level.”
While AI and digital technologies reshape the global economy, she
warned that the “power and the money is still being held in
‘people that don't look like me's' hands. And I'm one of the
lucky ones.”
Reflecting on the broader culture, she said the comment from the
US CEO echoed a growing sentiment in parts of corporate
America.
“It reflected a mood in the US … that Trump's administration has
given permission to lots of male CEOs who thought, ‘we're doing
too much on this diversity and inclusion bit.'
“I feel as though a particular part of US corporate culture has
thought, ‘finally I don't have to worry about this stuff.'”
On the podcast, – who suffered a stroke
and was left fighting for her life in 2004 after a car accident
in Morocco broke 28 of her bones and has required frequent
hospital trips ever since - also talks about:
Smartphones and young people: “When they (my
nine-year-old twins) say, ‘Can we have a phone?' I'm like, ‘Yes,
when you're 18.' I'm sure that they'll have one before then, but
I will try and resist it.”
On her recovery from the near fatal accident and her
advice to young people: “If you can't fly, run. If you
can't run, walk. If you can't walk, crawl. But whatever you do,
keep moving forward. I had to learn to do that after my accident.
Even if it feels like you can't create big change … you can
always just crawl to progress. (After recently dislocating my
hip) I had to wait five hours on the floor with my two
nine-year-olds for an ambulance to take me back to hospital. And
it completely knocked my confidence. But there's no secret magic
to those things. You just have to focus on the short chunk of
time in front of you.”
Her go-to karaoke song, I'm Still
Standing: “It has particular resonance for me that
I'm just about still standing.”
On UK vs US investment mindsets: “We have a
default in this country … (of) seeing the barriers to things as
opposed to the opportunities. Immediately all the US investors
are like, ‘Oh, well, that's an interesting idea. This might work
… you should meet this person.' The UK guy was like, ‘Well, I
don't think so. I think that's been tried'. It's just a complete
mindset of just difference. I see it again and again.”
On how rejection from the Home Office led her to become
an entrepreneur: “I got a 2:2, so I couldn't get into
the Civil Service fast track. I got rejected by the Home Office.
So I was like, okay, you have to think in a very different
direction. And that was when I got into the commercial world
instead.”
On scaling UK businesses: “We have the top three
universities out of the top 10 in the world. We have amazing
scientists, we have incredible inventors. But what we have is a
stunning scaling gap, and experience gap … Only 10% of UK
businesses even trade internationally. We are not very good at
becoming big global businesses. So we need to keep having a push
at the risk culture.”
Notes to editors
of Soho is Chancellor of
The Open University, and President of the British Chambers of
Commerce. In 1998 she co-founded Europe's largest travel and
leisure website, lastminute.com. From 2009-2013, she helped
create the Government Digital Service. In 2013, she entered the
House of Lords as a crossbencher.
Lord Speaker's Corner podcast: This
episode is the latest in a series of Lord Speaker's Corner
podcasts which has previously included , , and among others. A full transcript
is available. All episodes are available here: https://www.parliament.uk/business/lords/house-of-lords-podcast/
