How Fairphone's social mission created gender balance... without really trying

Unlike most tech companies, Fairphone has a workforce with an almost equal gender split, and a majority of women in leadership. So is its ethical mission the secret to achieving parity?

Eva Gouwens had heard that the tech industry was male-dominated, but it wasn't until she attended the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona for the first time that the extent of the gender imbalance really hit her.

"I hadn't really noticed it as an issue until I saw the line for the toilets," says Gouwens, chief executive of the ethical phone manufacturer Fairphone, which creates phones with no "conflict minerals" (ie from areas of the world with violence and human rights abuses), manufactured in a factory where workers are fairly paid. "It's the first event I've been to where the queue was longer for the men than for the women."

Her initial lack of awareness has its reasons. For one, Gouwens is relatively new to the sector. A veteran of the food industry, the 44-year-old business development expert only switched to tech two years ago - first as managing director of Amsterdam-based Fairphone and then, since last October, as its chief executive.

Second, she stepped in at the helm of what was already a fairly egalitarian ship. The gender split of Fairphone's 75-person workforce is almost straight down the middle (52% male, 48% female). On the firm's executive management team, meanwhile, six of the eight members are women (including the commercial and operations directors).

Such atypical parity partly owes to the Dutch way of doing things, according to Gouwens. Rules on shared parental leave, childcare and other types of care provision are "quite progressive", she says. That said, the Netherlands only ranks 19th on the Women in Work Index (six places behind the UK). The report also points out that females make up a mere 14% of ICT specialists in the Netherlands.

So, is Fairphone doing something especially different? Not really, Gouwens admits sheepishly. Sure, the firm is gender-blind with respect to pay and promotion, but it doesn't go the extra mile to accommodate childcare needs, say, or to extend maternity pay.

More influential in creating a balanced workforce, she conjectures, is the phone manufacturer's mission and backstory. The firm's origins date back to the hackers' movement and a long-running activist campaign around human rights abuses in the supply chains of large mobile phone manufacturers.

In 2013, the organisation switched focus, she explains: "At the beginning, our focus was on disclosing the influence of mobile phones on society and on your life, but we realised that, while we were raising awareness, we weren't offering solutions, which is why we decided to make our own ethical phone."

It is this singular purpose ("dare to care" is how Gouwens phrases it) that resonates so powerfully with Fairphone's female workforce, she argues: "I think adding this angle to tech might well attract more women to Fairphone than to other tech companies."

The testimonials of Fairphone's website give credence to the claim. Finance manager Mariana da Costa credits her job to her sense that "positive changes are possible", while supply chain expert (and ex-human rights worker) Laura Gerritsen is cited as saying that the firm's ethical ambitions make her "happy to work crazy hours".

Evidence of the positive effects that an overt social mission can have on gender balance extends beyond just Fairphone. According to research by the British Council, women make up 66% of the workforce in UK social enterprises and 65% in US ones, while making only 46% of the working population as a whole in both nations.

When it comes to women and tech, Gouwens' chief challenge focuses less on her workforce and more on consumers. At present, about two-thirds (65%) of Fairphone's retail customers are men - a disparity that bucks the trend for the firm's target market of "conscious consumers", which, according to Gouwens, is "quite balanced".

It's not entirely clear what the sticking point is here. One reason could be price. Women on average spend 10% less on consumer electronics than men and so might feasibly be more averse to paying an ethical "premium" for a Fairphone device (its newest device, the Fairphone 3, costs 420, which is 200 more than a similar, non-ethical, smartphone).