JERUSALEM: Women cradle newborn babies in their arms and dangle soft toys in front of older infants on colorful mattresses, all in a room in a Tel Aviv high-rise strewn with strollers and oversized bean bags. It's not a play facility. It's the location of Google's first baby-friendly school for startups.
Called Campus for Moms, the programme involves a series of nine weekly classes designed to give women on maternity leave a boost toward opening their own ventures in a country whose economy is dependent on innovation. "The course helped me realise that this is who I am," said Nira Sheleg, a 37-year-old mother of two who founded Wizer.me, a teacher-resource company, during the program. "I am an entrepreneur, not just a mom with an idea. Now I have a support group, and the mothers around me are amazing."
Since graduation last July, she's recruited a chief executive officer and several advisers and plans to start sales soon. Her targeted market : the US. The classes - two series have run so far - are designed to address a dearth of women entrepreneurs in Israel, where technology makes up almost half of industrial exports. That contributes about one-third of economic growth, making staffing such companies a priority for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Yet only 9% of technology startups around Tel Aviv are headed by women - about the same as in Silicon Valley. "The biggest miss we have on talent in the technology industry is the lack of women entrepreneurs and engineers," said Google Israel's head of research and development, Yossi Matias, the senior company executive working with the Campus for Moms project. Google is following up with similar programs in London and in Krakow, Poland, he said.
Employees of technology companies in Israel make up less than 10% of the total workforce, according to figures from 2011 posted on the Central Bureau of Statistics website. About 7% of all working women are employed in technology, compared with 12% for men.
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