Women making waves and riding them
Photo from surfer.com
In one of the recent news emails from ATTA (African Travel and Tourism Association), an article about Madagascar, surfing, and women doing great things caught our eye.
In 2020 a New Zealand national living in Madagascar came across some girls surfing with old dug out canoes on one of the local beaches where he took some family members for an impromptu surf lesson. Long story short: they all became friends and started to share their boards.
On watching these young ladies, he realized there was some serious talent and he started to put together the first Madagascan female surf team. In 2021, the Madagascar Surfing Federation (Federation de Surf Malagasy) organized the first ever Malagasy National Surf Titles, which was won by a member of the newly formed female team. After that, one of the team members was selected to travel to Senegal for a wider competition, giving them an opportunity never available before.
Surfing has given these teenage girls a new potential way of life. Through competitions and teaching they have suddenly got a way to earn money, which in turn has led to all sorts of positive knock on effects.
This got us thinking about Safari Portal which was started in 2021 by a female founder. We don’t know if it’s surprising or not, but less than 30% of all tech startups were founded by women that year, dropping to a shockingly low >2% for business enterprise software putting Safari Portal into that 2%.
A bit of digging around on the internet suggests that the reason that women tech founders are so few and far between is because they are not prioritized (for whatever reason) by VCs and investors.
Though these two situations are completely different, they do both show that given the right tools to succeed women can kick ass. Not saying any human can’t FYI -- we love all humans however they identify, but we’re just suggesting that maybe women should be given a bit more of a chance to do said ‘ass kicking’.
Thank you to surfer.com for telling the story and to ATTA for sharing it with us.