French unicorns: a blatant gender inequality |Arabnews Fr
Paris: Nicolas, Cyril, Alexandre… In the list of founders of French unicorns, the first names of women are missing.Of these 26 companies, only one, collective cloakroom, was founded by a mixed group.
Behind this assessment, hides a strong inequality between men and women entrepreneurs in access to funds to develop their projects.
This absence of women, Agnès Pannier-Runacher finds it bitterly."I regret that to date women are very minority within these new companies, which constitute a structuring economic part for the future," deplores the Minister Delegate in charge of Industry.
To reach the total of the billion dollars in valuation and win the title of unicorn, a step is essential: fundraising.And this is where the rub, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs not being equal in this process.
A barometer published in May 2021 by the collective of entrepreneurs Sista, the National Digital Council and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) draws up a dark picture in the matter.All types of amounts combined, only 3% of funds raised in 2020 were by completely female teams.The higher the amount, the less these teams are present: entrepreneurs represent only 2% of projects between 15 and 50 million euros;Beyond 50 million, they disappear.
Once the 100 million milestone has been crossed, mixed projects are also absent and 100% of funds are recovered by completely male teams.
"Access to financing is however essential when we want to create leaders in our sectors," says Céline Lazorthes, founder of Litchee, co-founder of the resilience start-up and founding member of Sista.
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- "Who will take care of children?"-
Behind these statistics hide often similar situations, with questions about maternity or the role of wife who return almost all the time in a dozen testimonies.
"An investment fund asked me for details on my children, who took care of it, things that we would never have asked a man," regrets Julie Boucon, co -founder of the Holy Owly application."They ended up refusing to invest with us because our husbands had not yet injected funds."
On the investor side, if some admit a "sad situation", they also emphasize that "entrepreneurs tend to bring more companies of companies in B2C" ("Business to Consumer", that is to say turned towardsconsumers).However, according to these investors, such projects generate less growth than “B2B” projects, that is to say between professionals."France does not have a national market large enough to reach companies of extraordinary size" in B2C, tempers Pauline Roux from the investment company Elaia Partners.
To fight against these inequalities, around fifty investors - funds but also Bpifrance, the public investment bank - committed in 2019 to finance 25% of start -ups founded or co -founded by women by 2025.Agreement pushed among other things by the SISTA collective and the National Digital Council.
Another movement committed to remedy this problem, the promotion of female success models."At the time of my post, I was asked a lot if I was chosen because I was a woman," says Clara Chappaz, a big owner of the French Tech mission."We hope to solve self -censorship problems with + role models + like Maya Noël at the head of France Digitale or Roxanne Varza at Station F".
In addition to the "moral imperative" of a more feminine French tech, the Secretary of State for Digital Cédric O calls for a transition for "a question of economic performance": "the more the teams are diverse and plural, the more theyare solid in the long term, "he said.
