Freada Kapor Klein, founder of Level Playing Field Institute, joined Cheddar News to provide some insight into the ongoing inequitable treatment of women in the world of finance.

Freada Kapor Klein, founder of Level Playing Field Institute, joined Cheddar News to provide some insight into the ongoing inequitable treatment of women in the world of finance. Specifically, Klein spoke to biases women founders face when it comes to seeking investment, equal pay disparities and what it will actually take to make the playing field more leveled. "We need to create different pathways into education," she said. "So if we're going to learn much more about computing and technology skills, selective colleges remain one access point. We need to do a lot more at building out alternative pathways."

Freada Kapor Klein on a More Financially Equitable Future for Women

Well, the equity gap is real, especially in the world of startups. Our next guest is a pioneer when it comes to impact investing and is releasing an all new book on closing the equity gap in the biased world of startup investing. Joining us now is Frida Klein, co author of Closing the Equity Gap Creating Wealth and Fostering justice in startup investing. Frida. Thanks so much for joining us. Welcome to chat. It's a pleasure to be here and what fun listening to all the entrepreneurs. Uh It's been an incredible show, Frida and it will continue to be with you here on it. So you conducted research on female founders and found that investors are biased against women and unfortunately, unsurprisingly even more biased against women of color. Can you break down those numbers and the realities that female founders are facing today? Well, unfortunately, all women founders experience some types of biases while they're pitching uh the majority of women more than 3/4 experience, some kind of rudeness, condescending behavior, some kinds of stereotypes. And as you mentioned, women of color black women, Latinas, entrepreneurs who are pitching are far more likely to experience bullying to have their doubted. Our A API sisters are experiencing more kinds of stereotypes about immigration and about their accents. But the most startling finding is that women of color, black and Latina entrepreneurs are almost 10 times more likely to be hit on to get unwanted sexual attention from investors while they're pitching compared to their white and Asian counterparts. Uh Frida, let's talk about pay gap. Women's salaries are closing in on men's, but there are still gender disparities in other aspects. So where are we seeing the biggest disparities in terms of gender today? The biggest disparities in terms of gender, I think are access to the top notch, top paying most powerful occupations. We don't see women pursuing stem degrees as much as they did. 30 years ago, we want women to be driving technology to be inventing the products of the future to be making sure that A I is not biased. We want to see women. I want to see lots more women at the check writing table. I want to talk to other women, venture capitalists and say let's do this deal together. All right. Now, how do we close these gaps? What needs to be done to get that done? Well, I think several things need to be done. We need to create different pathways into education. So if we're going to learn much more about computing and, and technology skills, selective colleges remain one access point, we need to do a lot more at building out alternative pathways. And one of the companies that we profile in closing the equity gap is bit wise co-founded by Irma Ogin Junior, an engineer from Fresno, not a place that you would expect to find a hotbed of, of technology startups. Irma with Jake started bit wise that's now In 10 cities. That is the largest provider of nontraditional pathways into tech jobs. So we need role models, we need different pathways into technology and we need to be measuring talent different ways. Like since travel, unfortunately, we are out of time. So we're gonna have to leave this great conversation there. But that's Frida Klein, founding partner of capital co-chair of the nonprofit center and co-author of closing the equity gap.