Women entrepreneurs, executives, investors and researchers in the ecosystem have spoken out: ‘We need more role models and opportunities.’

This was precisely the focus of Tech Spirit Barcelona – TechBcn4Women Edition, which we held yesterday at Pier07: to give visibility to women who are leading landmark projects in Catalonia and to offer a day of technological content with a programme entirely created by them. All with the aim of reducing the gender gap in a sector where women represent only 32% of all professionals.

Sandra Ruiz, directora general d’Economia i Societat Digitals, welcomed everyone by explaining the projects being developed in this area by the Government of Catalonia and invited the entire ecosystem to join these initiatives.

Women and the deep tech sector

Mireia Colina, Senior Business Development Manager at Indra, and Àngels Chacón, Senior Director of Corporate Strategy at LLYC, opened the stage by focusing on one of the hottest topics in the sector: the development of dual technologies. Colina stressed that newspace and quantum technology will shape the future and that, for this reason, Europe will have to align itself and plan ahead in order to act jointly and not be left behind.

For their part, Mònica de Mier, CEO of Nextmol; Eva Martín, Head of Innovation at Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech; and Anna Escoda, Technology Transfer Manager at BSC, agreed on the need to create new female and technological role models, also in the environment of research centres and spin-offs, to generate an impact among future talent. Only then, they stressed, will girls begin to see studying engineering as natural.

Along the same lines, Dr Iolanda Domingo presented the initial findings of the report ‘No és feina de dones?’ by i2CAT and Telecos.cat, emphasising that there is still a long way to go and that now is the time to gain momentum.

Our grain of sand

The effort to transform the system and get more women working in the technology sector and occupying positions of responsibility must be a joint effort. That is why we invited Carla Zaldúa, Adriana Herrera and Elisabet Bayó to present Motional Hub, Reveal Genomics and Holomit, three leading technology projects.

We also had Susanna Kamph from Xplore Studio; Berta Sanmartí, Director of Transformation at Tous; Gabriela Dávila, HR Manager at Nestlé’s IT Hub; and Joana Barbany, President of the Digital Cluster and Technology Business Development Director at Michael Page, who explained how their companies are reinventing themselves and the role Barcelona plays as a driver of innovation: ‘There is a lot of talent in Barcelona and the local ecosystem is constantly growing, so we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to open a hub in the city,’ said Susanna Kamph.

Catalonia currently has more than 160 hubs, with new ones arriving every week. In a conversation with Laia Arnal, Director of Institutional Relations at the Vall de Hebrón Research Institute, Marta Tolós, Group Head of AI Services and Platforms at AstraZeneca, explained how the hub is working with AI based on data: ‘You have to start from the ground up, making sure that the data is correct, adequate and that there is consent for its use.’

‘Only 12% of venture capital funding goes to startups led by women.’

The morning ended with an investment round table that left us with a striking statistic: ‘Only 12% of venture capital funding goes to startups led by women.’ Elena Rico, Managing Partner at Impact Partners; Maite Malet, Principal at Asabys Partner; Peña Solano, Business Angel at WA4Steam; and Rocío Flor, Head of Innovation Financing at ACCIÓ, explained some of the difficulties women face in accessing this investment. Above all, however, they focused on the solutions and initiatives that should be promoted to increase this figure: creating specific programmes or funding aimed at women, creating role models and networking extensively.

At Tech Spirit, we demonstrated that it is possible to create a programme made up entirely of women and raising the technological bar with female founders, investors, executives and researchers. But it doesn’t end here; now is the time to continue driving change.