Tech Roundup: Gender gap in Brazil’s startup ecosystem

You’re reading The Brazilian Report’s weekly tech roundup, a digest of the most important news on technology and innovation in Brazil. This week’s topics: how gender inequality persists in the startup world; a new fintech behemoth coming; and the criminalization of stalking.

The concerning gender gap in Brazil’s startup ecosystem

In the wake of International Women’s Day, think-tank Distrito published a report on the steep gender gap in Brazil’s startup ecosystem. Only 9.8 percent of innovation-based companies were at least partly founded by women, and just 4.7 percent had women as their sole founders. 

Gender diversity is good business. The study also shows that having a woman founder leads to more gender diversity among the company’s partners. In startups with at least one woman founder, almost 55 percent of partners were also women. This share drops to 29.5 percent in the overall ecosystem. 

Where are women in charge? Fashion startups (the so-called “fashiontechs”) are the only segment of Brazil’s ecosystem where women co-founders and partners are in the majority. But these firms make up only 3.5 percent of all startups in the country. On the opposite end of the gender-equality scale are fintechs specializing in foreign exchange, which have not a single woman co-founder.  

The typical woman startup exec. Women entrepreneurs in Brazil’s startup ecosystem largely fit the same demographic profile. Three-quarters are white, 87 percent are heterosexual, and over 70 percent hold at least one university degree. 

Gender roadblock. Startups founded exclusively by women received a mere 0.04 percent of venture capital funds invested in Brazil last year. The lack of access to much-needed resources can be explained by the lack of female representation in the venture capital industry itself. Three-quarters of fund managers are men. 

• In the report, female founders also mentioned potential investors often ask questions about whether they are mothers, whether they have small children, or if their companies have men on their administrative boards.

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