Female Internet Heroes in Holland
Written on May 11, 2008 – 8:41 am
Simone Brummelhuis, writing about women on the web
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The Netherlands may be known as a liberal country with equal opportunities for men and women, but somehow we managed that in terms of women in the board room, we are doing not so well. While in the United States almost one out of five corporate officers are women, in Europe the female to male ratio on company boards is not even one to twenty. And in Holland it is even less….. However, Norway has set the agenda by imposing a minimum female mandatory quota of 40% in company-boards. And guess what: it works! Heleen Mees of women-on-top and Marieke Bax of Topbrainstorm have urged companies and our government to do the same over here. I support this. It makes sound economic sense. Moreover, studies show that companies with more women in senior management are more profitable than those with few women at the top.
With these developments taking place, let’s see which female internet heroes in The Netherlands can act as such role model and fulfill the quota. Indeed, these women can bring entrepreneurial internet knowledge into the board room.
Female internet heroes are strongly represented in media, such as Marianne Zwagerman, director of Dutch Telegraaf Media Group and Lara Ankersmit, director of telegraaf.nl., the second largest news site in the Netherlands with a strong user generated content component. Dutch Dragon Den’s Annemarie van Gaal, is founder of AM Media but more known as a keen investor in media companies like bright.nl.
In more technological driven companies, serial entrepreneur Christine Karman springs to mind, who is founder of Zaphod and member of the advisory board of Technika10, an organisation who provides science and technology classes to girls. Also, I point out CEO Petra van Schayik of Compumatica, founder and CEO Karen Loeffen of Libersy and Jacqueline Smit, country manager of MSN. Although how come that Microsoft is organizing an event, the Dev Days, with no single female speaker?
Some very popular sites were founded or led by women, such as weekendjeweg by CEO Marianne Baars, which was sold to Holidaybreak, kieskeurig.nl by founder Janet Sellis, which was sold to Sanoma and directwonen.nl by founder and CEO Yvonne Swaans who went to the Alternative Investment Market at the London Stock Exchange.
Good catch are also some international female internet heroes living and working in The Netherlands, such as CEO Nancy McKinstrey of Wolters Kluwer, ranked in the top ten of the most powerful women in Europe by The Financial Times and founder Marina Tognetti of Myngle, com, a startup global marketplace in language education.
So who said that we cannot fulfill the quota?
Women on the Next Web meetup 10+ Female Internet Heroes in the UK! Women speakers at Web 2.0 expo SF? Searching for female web heroes Watch YouTube videos on your iPod, anytime
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3 Responses to “Female Internet Heroes in Holland”
By Wouter on May 11, 2008 | Reply
I don’t believe in mandatory quota, nor in equality. I do believe in equity though; when you have 10 vacancies, and 100 candidates, you pick the 10 persons that are best of the job, without ANY regard to their sex.
In The Netherlands, if you post a vacancy for a board room position, of those 100 candidates, probably only around 20 would be female, and 80 are men. A forced quotum is therefore unfair and unequal.
As a matter of fact, there is nothing to worry about. Anyone person who is well capable and well motivated, will eventually end up in the boardroom. To think that men have a conspiracy against women and are trying to keep them away from the boardroom is again unfair, and untrue.
Finally, it doesn’t make sense to take succesfull female enterpreneurs from their job and put them in a boardroom. Why would anyone want that??
By Simone Brummelhuis on May 11, 2008 | Reply
A lot of executives and entrepreneurs are simultaneously with their own job, (supervisory) board members in other companies, it provides those boards with external, entrepreneurial knowledge and the entrepreneurs with the possibility to advice other companies. There is a huge powerful network of executives/entrepreneurs who meet each other therefore frequently through various companies as board members; with the quota also this old boys network will change.
By Daniëlle Loppé on May 14, 2008 | Reply
Hi Simone,
Unfortunately this year we don’t have a female speaker during DevDays. However, this year (for the first time) we organize a “Women in Technology” event for our DevDays visitors and I would like to invite you to participate in this event :-) I hope you can email me at: dloppe@microsoft.com so I can give you some further background. Thanks!