Tech Roundup: Brazilian women in tech

Every Friday, we bring you the most important news around tech and innovation in Brazil. This week: An overview of the role of Brazilian women in tech. Brazil has Latin America’s most ‘sophisticated’ crypto market. With startups booming, Brazilian retailers launch into corporate venture capital.

Women in Brazil’s tech sector

Over the last five years, female participation in Brazil’s technology market has grown by 60 percent: from 27,900 women in 2015 to 44,500 in 2020, according to data from the General Registry of Employed and Unemployed People (Caged).

• Moreover, between January and May last year, the National Employment Data Bank (BNE) identified 12,716 female candidates for technology jobs, around 2,300 more than in the same period last year.
• These figures indicate that the country’s tech market is becoming more accessible to women. However, other studies point out that the road to equality in the sector is still long.

Inequality. Per the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), women make up about 52 percent of the country’s population. Nevertheless, in the tech sector, they account for just 30 percent of the workforce, according to a joint survey by PretaLab and ThoughtWorks.

• In 64.9 percent of cases, women make up, at most, 20 percent of the sector’s work teams. Over 60 percent of teams have no mothers on their staff.
• According to another survey carried out by consultancy firm Mercer, the tech market is the most unequal between genders in terms of wages. The company analyzed 30,000 businesses worldwide, including 759 in Brazil, and showed that at the level of executives in high-tech companies, the salary gap reaches 36 percent.
• When looking at startups, the sector is also unequal. Per innovation think tank Distrito, only 4.7 percent of new tech companies in Brazil last year were founded by women.
• The think tank also showed that even though 2021 was a record year for investment in the segment, only 0.04 percent of the money pumped into startups went to companies founded by women.

Initiatives. To try to accelerate a change...