Topic of my panel today is why is it crucial to bring more women into technology and how it works in Central Asia? Obviously, the first part of this you've been hearing for all the conference for almost two days now.But I just have to reiterate on this again a little bit from more from the VC perspective, but also just because sisterhood because I'm a woman, your woman and we have to talk about this to make it happen.

So, um while I was preparing the slice, I decided to

actually first explain why am I speaking about this at all and why do I think that I do have an authority to actually be able to speak about

that? So,

hi, my name is Sasha. I have graduated from, I'm from Moscow, graduated from University of Westminster London in International Relations and development.

Um precisely

in, well, I was first uh working on man region which is Middle East, North Africa, but then decided to shift towards Central Asia and specifically digital development. Um Now I'm expanding my interest to Pan Asian region. But the interest in development from the VC perspective from international development actually still stays with me. So I've worked in Central Asian region, more specifically in Uzbekistan where I was working in it Park Uzbekistan, which is governmental organizations, organization with a mandate to develop it and everything it related in the country. Um I was also working on development, major infrastructure a little bit.

I was participating in development funding. I actually wrote with my team, of course, we wrote a presidential decree on crowdfunding, which is hopefully hopefully soon to be signed. Um I left Uzbekistan in December due to some similar situation um then moved to Moscow back to

Moscow while I was in Uzbekistan,

I founded Tamari Tag, which was the first ever project dedicated to developing female tech entrepreneurship in the

country.

Um It's been done on the IT Park Uzbekistan's mandate. But when I came back to Moscow, I understood that I can't just, I just can't believe this topic. It's so dear to me. It's my baby. So I also found that Perch, which is my own project, which is

has pretty much the same idea of

promoting and supporting female technical internship, but now in Central Asia. So we kind of scaled

up. So currently I'm working for dear

as uh as it consultant from the products here, but I'm also consulting a number of international organizations. Uh I was working with U NDP Uzbekistan. I was working with Coica among others and so on. So I do believe that I do have some knowledge that

may be valuable

and it might be interesting interested for you to hear and it might be interesting for me to share. I'm very much open to questions. Uh I'm very much open to connecting. So please, if you have any ideas, anything, please let me know, especially if you maybe would like to help us with be because obviously gender is still a big thing and gender equality is unfortunately a very big thing.

So why do we need more

women attack? Well, because we obviously need more movement tech. Um This is not a very specific answer, but I actually do have some stats to prove what I mean because there is so much that has to be done in order to ensure that everyone has an opportunity and opportunities are available and it's all about equality really. It's all about. Yeah, it's,

it's all about the whole idea that your gender should not be a reason for

you to step down or not do something.

It's

about the fact

that if you're born as a

girl or if you became a girl, a woman, it doesn't matter, you can still do all the same things that men

do. So, statistics um from the BC perspective, but also, as you can see, according to European Investment

Bank report, women

l companies are more likely to demonstrate fit and more

percent better business

performance, which is interesting because women tend to get less funding and less attention and unfortunately,

naturally, it's been perceived that women are not supposed to be in business or even more women are not supposed to be in

it business. Because as we all know, it is

pretty much dominated by men, mostly white guys, mostly in their thirties and forties, which is how should I put this

to not be censored? Unfair, not

right and just really

wrong. So says that now, yes, based start ups funded exclusively by women received roughly 2% of overall major investment built by them, which means that men received, let's say

990 98

uh because of the rollers and moves if you, I mean, this is of

course, even less than 2% but you got the picture.

Um in the U station, it was slightly

better in Israel's situation is way better, but in other countries, the station

even worse. Um We'll speak about why that could be a little bit later.

But generally there's the whole thing that women are just not supposed to be in business

or that women can't break in business or the fact that women are just genuinely not being invited to events or they can't really go to bars sometimes with those guys, especially from the sea

world because guys in the sea world are mostly white dudes and their form is up. Um And for female founders, especially young female founders might often feel uncomfortable going somewhere with that.

And this is something that we're starting to change. And the whole idea of

woman attack, network and woman attack um companies. And especially with this conference actually promotes the idea that it doesn't matter. And if this club we're excluded from that, well, let's create our own club.

Um even more statistics, but this is from French base. And according to the data that I found in CRT based

reports from,

from 2020 actually, we now have only 20% of start

ups that are being funded by women. Why so well

access to finance gender disbalance in the task

fear in general. The whole

idea of

once again, girls are not doing an attack. The whole idea of the fact that people are might not like

you if you're being too

smart or that you're supposed to be very polite and you're not supposed to go further, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And this is a big

problem because, you know, technically there are 50% of men and 50% of women in the world, but only 20% of start ups are being funded by women. And of course, there are more start ups that are

being found that have been founded by a diverse team birthday. This is just mcbride

um female founders specifically. So as you can see, according to the same report from Crunch base in 2019 26.6 billion

was invested in companies with at least one female COFA notice at least one female performer.

There is still a problem that people might

want to do this because they want

to be trendy because they want to

support, support diversity. But the real life station is

worse because the next sentence as we can see, just under 6 billion

and female ponder only. So why, once again, male clubs

where we are most excluded

from? Nice.

Um And the next two bullet points kind of the saddest to me, even if you can break in the club and you can get funding,

you'll still get less than a guy would

get. So the median

seed for female and the founders

reached $460,000 in 2019. That's 600

dollars, $600,000. Of course, for men. Why? Once

again, because there is a vicious cycle because if a VC venture partner would like to invest in

women, they also can be afraid that she will not raise

another round. So they would rather not invest. And then we're, we're in the, in the vicious circle that you're not investing because you're afraid you will not raise another round. So you're not investing. So you are de designed for an

opportunity to actually go and raise another aunt.

Of course, the station

is changing. There are many funds which are way more open minded, there are many funds are supporting female funders exclusively, but the station is still very sad. Um

And hopefully it's something that will be changed quite soon and hopefully something

that we will be able to change quite soon.

Yes. Exactly what used to find by woman, aggressive, pushy, emotional

bossy. Um,

sometimes it's even unpredictable

which,

hey, what, I'm sorry, I'm more rational than most of the men

and you're more rational

than most of the men just because we were brought up with and that we have to be better than men in order to succeed, which sometimes people are afraid of. So in order to overcome this, we just need to take a stage by quality and quantity. We actually need to be able

to be like, hey,

I'm a female founder and I support other female founders and I will be

bringing another generation of female founders beside

me just so you can notice us and yes, we'll be doing it better than men just so you can notice us and not objective w because luckily that didn't happen to me, but I

know a friend of mine who

was basically asked

to go meet a VC um during the dinner and he made some explicit

sexual comments to her. And he was like, oh, you're so pretty. Why do you need the money? Well, you can just marry a rich man. She's a father of a

start up which is supporting the victims of sexual

harassment. So you see the problem here, right? You are actually telling someone who is a survivor herself, but she that she could just get a rich man. That's not how it's supposed to be done. Um I will finish the part about,

well, I will not finish the part about about what the hell is going

on because this is just my life and I'm trying to be like, hey, notice this problem, but I'll talk a

little bit about my experiences in Malaysia because I do think that it's quite valuable in terms of just seeing how it's been perceived that sometimes it's extreme.

So central Asia Kazakhstan,

Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan,

obviously predominantly Muslim region, post Soviet Union,

developing countries

many, many problems. So why is there a problem? So first of all, Stuart Epson family, um if you're a girl, you're less likely to receive higher education because, hey, you will get married and we'll go to another family. Why should we invest in your education at all? Especially if you have, if the family also has a son because education is very expensive in comparison with the average salary. So people would come to educate their sons because they're going to stay with them but not their daughters. Um Obviously serves as everywhere else.

Be like,

hey, uh you're a girl, you do not belong in it or hey, you're gonna get married. Why do you even try to or hey, um you're not as smart as your male counterparts. And basically, one of my

interns came to me crying when I was back in Uzbekistan when

asked her what's happened? She was told me, she told me that her lecturer actually gave her male friend a higher grade than her despite the fact that the guy actually copied her work. And when she asked why she was told that, hey, uh you're a girl, you don't need education anyway, you're gonna get married. Another example of

another intern of mine, a very

bright girl, incredibly smart. I love her a lot. We were working together for a month and when and at the end of the month, she was like, hey, Sasha, sorry, I can't work with you anymore. I'm getting married.

I was shocked because we spoke, we spoke yesterday and

there was nothing but marriage. She was full

of ambition. She was full of dreams. She wanted to continue working. We enjoyed working together and

everything was good. Then when I ask her what is happening? Um She told me that once again she's getting married and her husband is not allowing her to work. He wants her to pursue education and work with her and no one cared about the fact what she wanted.

And that's partly why I started tomorrow.

And then perch because that's just some

BS like hell. No. There

are so many smart women, there are so many smart girls don't

deny them the opportunity to do stuff. Don't you dare to do that?

It's important for them to be, to be able to achieve their dreams. Yes. They might not follow your path of being a mother

or

to be a stay at home mom. But that doesn't mean anything. They can still be great. They can still do a lot of incredible stuff. And if you are not supporting them, how do you want to develop? Education goes in the same direction? Education is expensive. There are no gender quotas as of right now.

So you have to have

money in order to get to university, you have to get

money in order to pay

for university. You have to to

have the support of your parents in order to get to the university. So they could hire you

some tutors and you have to have the support of your lecturers who are not trying to tell you you are a girl, you don't need to do this. Your lecturer is supposed to

be the person who supports you not discourage you.

Obviously, there's also lack of information,

the whole idea of us not knowing what is going on.

Um I personally

personally worked on report for U NDP on what is happening.

And it's just sad. There's no gender statistics. There is no formation of what's happening. No one is trying to get this data. Everyone be like, yeah,

OK. This is just their life. No, it's not supposed to be their ultimate life. It's supposed to be something that we need to change.

Um access to finance. Well, you saw the whole thing about the VC funding as well. It's harder for women to get, to get

approved for a loan, especially as a business loan in a bank. Because once again,

you must probably have Children, especially if you are

in the region where you're supposed to be a mother. But like 23 you, you're supposed to have

a house which you're probably paying mortgage for, et cetera, et cetera. Societal expectations

are actually transferring taxes to finance,

which sucks big gap. Um It, it pretty much exists especially in the region in Uzbekistan.

According to the State Committee on statistics of Republic

of Uzbekistan, it's 36% which I find ridiculous because you actually

go on 74 cents per dollar of what a man to put on and

working harder because you need to prove yourself because you're a girl pro, you're not working longer hours because everyone would be like, hey, you have family, you should go home, but

you're working harder and you're being more productive, you're being more concentrated, you're probably not smoking. So you're not taking smoke breaks, et cetera

and still you earn less. Um sister, you should, why you should care because sisterhood of women support women. It's an emerging region.

So it would make sense to pay attention to what is happening in Uzbekistan, in Central Asia, in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan.

Um it has varying

population, the average age I think is below 30. So it means that it is expanded market. So if you're a start founder, pay attention to that,

it's the pollution of the region is around 100 million people. But that, that also means

that you probably want to go there.

They do have strong technological education mostly because its

Soviet countries and Soviet Union was quite good in this

and it's very close to important players like China or Russia. So it's an

important thing for you to think about.

Um That's it for me because we only have one minute

left. Well, two minutes left here are the contacts. If you will scan the QR code, you will get this presentation with all the links everywhere. Um My name is Sasha. You can find me everywhere. Sasha Alexander Star

and it was my absolute pleasure. If there are any questions, I'm happy to answer them, please

continue to be awesome. Please continue to empower women and please remember around the sisterhood because if not us, then who?