Editorial Contact:
Philippe Faes, CEO Sigasi
T: +32 9 265 71 38
philippe.faes@sigasi.com
High-tech startup announces Gender Balance Action Plan
San Jose, CA / Ghent, Belgium - April 1, 2011 Sigasi, a Ghent-based EDA company, announces Affirmative Action for Women in Engineering. Action points include feminisation of the work force, the user base, and --most visibly-- the website home page.
Sigasi, founded in 2008, offers tools for digital chip designers. Inspired by such tools as Eclipse and Visual Studio, the Sigasi HDT tool is focused on three areas: code comprehension, design entry and code reuse. Sigasi is used worldwide in health care, telecom, consumer electronics, industrial automation, automotive, aerospace and defense.
Today, Sigasi announces a more women-friendly policy. “It is a long known problem that few women choose a career in engineering,” says Philippe Faes, CEO and founder, who’s spouse is a femgineer. Recently announcement of legislation for gender-balanced boards of directors triggered Sigasi to take action. The board has approved a Gender Balance Action Plan, focused on public relations, user base and work force.
“The first visible consequence of this feminisation, will be our website,” explains Hendrik Eeckhaut, CTO. “Our front page has long been decorated by a caveman, looking in surprise at his laptop screen. Today, this image will be replaced by a competent cave-woman engineer, who confidently manipulates the keyboard on her computer.”
Most of Sigasi’s paying customers today are male engineers. However, there is a large following of engineering students that are using Sigasi tools free of charge. “We do not ask our users to specify their gender,” says Faes, “but based on the first names, we can make some guesses.” About 0.6% of the total user base is probably female. The countries with the highest percentages of female student users are Russia and Italy, where a lot of girls live by the name of Sasha and Andrea, respectively.
In the longer term, the board of directors of Sigasi will be completely gender balanced. There has not been a concrete strategy for achieving this. Since all of the current directors are confident that they can bring significant added value to the company, the most probable outcome will be to double the size of the board.
To celebrate gender equality, any purchase orders received from women engineers today, will get a 20% discount off the list price.
