What are our girls made of? Investments in the imagiLabs startup versus the IT gender gap

The IT labor market is not gender balanced neither in Europe nor in the United States. The statistics are revealing and rather depressing: at the time of 2014, only 25% of women were represented in the American technology sector, and only 12% of computer science departments graduated (up from 37% in 1984!). But very little has changed in 7 years: world statistics show that 91.5% of software developers are men. Even the most advanced companies in theory suffer from a gender gap among employees: 37% of women worked on Facebook last year, while in 2019 their number was less than 0.1%.

At the same time, the founder of Craigslist shares the following data: technology companies headed by women show a return on equity that is 35% higher than companies run entirely by men. That is, we face a strong dissonance: gender diversity is poorly represented in the field of technological professions, computer science is still traditionally male territory. But those women who nevertheless make their way through all the stigmatization and difficulties of obtaining a specialized education, and then finding a job, show high results of their work.

The solution is to normalize the representation of women in computer science — and you can start at an early age. This logic is echoed by today's news: Stockholm EduTech startup imagiLabs raised € 250.000 at the Pre-Seed round. The project aims to popularize coding among girls and includes an application for iOS and Android. In it you can first learn and then write the code yourself and thus program the design of a special accessory, imagiCharm. The product was launched just 8 months ago, but in the last two quarters of 2020, it has shown a 300% increase in sales.

The money of several business angels (including CMO Discord) will be used to create and support the community and international expansion.

“Only by supporting young girls in schools we can achieve gender equality in technology for future generations,” says CEO and co-founder of the project, Dora Palfi.