Indiegogo launches push to support female entrepreneurs
To coincide with International Women's Day, the site will offer mentoring for novice women looking to crowdfund a gadget.
Indiegogo wants to do more to help women become entrepreneurs in the technology industry across the next year. To coincide with International Women's Day,* the crowdfunding site is launching a program to push women-run campaigns between now and March 2017. The site has partnered with organizations like Girls in Tech and Blooming Founders to help novice creators get their projects onto the site. If they sign up with the program, they'll also receive "additional campaign mentoring" from Indiegogo staffers. Indiegogo also wants to remind people that it's already hosted some blockbuster female-fronted campaigns, such as the Jibo social robot and Axent Wear's cat-ear headphones.
Diversity and inclusivity within the tech industry has been a problem for the last few decades but finally steps are being taken to remedy the issue. Companies like Intel, Apple, Google and others are hoping to balance out workforces that are overwhelmingly male and predominantly white. In addition, female executives have highlighted the indignities that they've had to suffer inside Silicon Valley's toxic bro culture. On the upside, initiatives like this are helping to redress the balance, and there are some positive signs. After all, late last year Stanford University revealed that computer science is now the most popular major for women to study.
* Before you ask, International Men's day is November 19th.
