Fintech Australia announced its upcoming Intersekt Fintech Festival is set to be a world-first gender equality target and is part of an ongoing campaign to drive increased levels of email participation in the country’s startup sector. The festival is set to be held in Melbourne from October 27th to November 3rd and will include a two-day Collab/Collide Summit, a three-day hackathon, two community days and a one-day blockchain event.
FinTech Australia Director of Events and Partnerships, and Program Director for Intersekt, Vanessa Ronan-Pearce, stated:
“FinTech Australia has an extremely strong commitment to gender equality and we are delighted to be able to put this in practice at our first national fintech festival. Our commitment to speaker gender equality at Intersekt festival underlines the importance we place on driving increased levels of female leadership and participation in the Australian fintech industry.”
FinTech Australia CEO Danielle Szetho also commented:
“Australia’s fintech industry – like so many other international fintech and startup industries – could be doing better in this area. Our 2016 EY FinTech Australia census revealed that just 13 per cent of our fintech founders are women. We’ve already changed our constitution to ensure there are a minimum of 30% female board members. Our equality commitment at Intersekt is a natural further step in our campaign to showcase the incredible work being done by women in fintech, and encourage other women to join our exciting and growing industry. We are also very excited that we are leading the world when it comes to a gender equality commitment at a major fintech festival.”
Megan Caywood, Chief Platform Officer at the UK’s Starling Bank, welcomed the gender equality commitment. She then added:
“It’s fantastic to see that Intersekt is supporting female leadership in fintech. Endless data shows that diverse teams make better decisions, and yet we still see that the number of females in leadership positions is far from equal and isn’t representative of the number of women capable of filling those roles. We’ve seen more and more women getting graduate degrees and undergraduate degrees and that are striving to take on increased levels of leadership, and it’s so important to have initiatives like this to drive increased levels of female leadership and support gender equality.”
Women in Fintech panel session, which will explore and debate the key issues with female participation in the fintech industry, will take place on November 2nd as part of the Intersekt’s Collaboration/Collide summit’s first day.
