Two weeks ago, Elena Brandt boarded a plane from Florida to San Francisco with her six-month-old son, looking forward to what she called a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Brandt, the founder of a behavioral science startup called Besample, will be attending a women’s startup conference, she wrote in a LinkedIn post, including a happy photo of the two of them on their way to the event.

But a day later, Brandt’s reports from the conference changed tone. In a subsequent LinkedIn post, she described an incident in which a conference organizer had asked Brandt to leave the room during a keynote speech with her “peacefully” cooing baby, Brandt said.

“Unbelievable, but in modern California, a woman does not feel comfortable coming to a startup event with a breastfed baby,” she wrote, reflecting on the interaction and her conversations with other attendees, some of whom had left their newborns at home to come to the conference.

Hundreds supported Brandt, sharing their stories of delivering babies in a professional setting and offering creative solutions. A week later, Surbhi Sarna, a partner at the well-known startup accelerator Y Combinator, which hosted the event, emailed Brandt an apology and shared her account of the events in a LinkedIn post.

“It was a small venue and during our solo keynote talk, a baby started making noise and it was obvious that people across the room could hear the noise,” she wrote in a post. She tried to help and avoid disruptions at the conference, she wrote. “I will continue to support female founders and mothers at every opportunity and that will not change,” she concluded.

Brandt, on the other hand, found the interaction jarring and unfair. But it also highlighted the larger challenges that mothers face in their working lives, including the lack of affordable childcare and access to opportunities in the male-dominated technology industry.

The incident raises questions that no one seems to agree on: Should young children be taken into adult spaces like professional conferences? And what does our society’s discomfort with children in public, including babbling babies, say about our willingness to support mothers, both in and outside of the workplace?

Bridging the gender gap

In the tech industry, women face significant obstacles in bridging the gender gap. In 2023, women accounted for 13.2% of all startup founders, the lowest percentage since at least 2018, according to Carta. Women-founded companies receive just 2% of venture capital funding. At Y Combinator, which hosted the conference Brandt attended, as many as 15% of startups have at least one female founder.

“It’s still a huge struggle to make a difference at a systemic level across the industry,” says Mikel Blake, co-founder of Tech-Moms, a Utah-based nonprofit that helps women and mothers transition into tech jobs and provides training in tech skills.

Lack of child care is one of the biggest barriers preventing women from participating in the program, so Tech Moms offers on-site child care during the full-day Saturday programs. In some cases, participants receive stipends.

Although companies tout their commitment to gender equality and maternal inclusion, implementing change in practice is harder, Blake said. The increase in flexible and hybrid workplaces is progress, but companies need to create more part-time roles that are better suited to mothers, she said, and be more proactive in hiring women.

Blake describes Tech Moms’ approach as “high-touch” in its efforts to bring more women into the program. That means reaching out and following up multiple times, even after women have been placed in a class. “Women need more than just a pat on the back,” she says.

After completing the course, a placement team helps the women find jobs and, if necessary, provide further training. This proactive approach, translated into recruitment tactics, could help companies attract and retain more women. “Sometimes companies prefer to do what they’ve always done,” she said. “But if we do the same thing, we get the same result.”

“No consensus on whether it is normal”

Brandt, who has four children, has always been determined to combine her career ambitions with her desire to have children. When her baby, Darwin, was just two weeks old, she drove five hours from Atlanta to attend a work event. “A lot of people thought I was crazy, but I thought, I’m not going to miss this event because I need money for my business,” Brandt told me.

But that kind of decision is not the norm and is often frowned upon, she said. “People are sensitive to societal disapproval – it doesn’t feel good,” she told me. “It can be very upsetting in the moment.”

Just the contrasts in the stories Brandt heard in response to her experience at the founders’ conference were eye-opening. Some spoke of positive experiences with on-site child care, while others reported embarrassment. “It was clear that there is no consensus on whether it is normal to bring your baby to business events,” Brandt said.

However, for female entrepreneurs with limited resources for childcare, this is an important question. This ambiguity prevents women from attending important events or meetings if they cannot find someone to look after their children.

How do you greet mothers?

Jennifer Stojkovic is a venture capitalist in Los Angeles who is organizing a conference on the future of food for more than 1,000 people, most of them women. She told me she wanted to make the event accessible to women of all career levels and ages, including mothers with children, including toddlers. There is a question on the event’s website: “Can you bring children to the event?” The answer is that the conference’s “focus is on inspiring future changemakers” and that attendees under 16 are invited to attend with an adult.

Stojkovic also made sure that all events during the conference were alcohol-free, including the VIP reception. “This makes mothers feel safer bringing their children, even teenagers, to the event,” Stojkovic said, adding that the change has also made the environment safer for female entrepreneurs. There are also lounges and areas where mothers can breastfeed while simultaneously watching the event on stage.

“Women don’t have access to capital, that’s very clear,” she said. “And for many women, the reason they don’t have access to these opportunities is child care.”

It’s hard to leave the kids alone and fly to San Francisco for a weekend, she explained. “So the first thing you can do is make your events kid-friendly.”

Brandt also suggests that conference organizers be more welcoming to mothers and babies—they could make an announcement from the stage, offer on-site childcare, and even host a “junior conference” for the founders’ children.

Making room for mothers

In addition to cultural changes, modernizing facilities to accommodate mothers is a concrete way for companies to show their support.

Abbey Donnell has seen companies put shower curtains on the glass doors of conference rooms to provide privacy for breastfeeding mothers and convert toilets into toilets for mothers and fathers.

“Companies can be supportive throughout the day and offer policies or virtual solutions,” Donnell, the founder of Mother and Work, a company that sets up breastfeeding spaces in corporate offices, told me. “But unless you address the physical needs, whether it’s childcare or breastfeeding spaces — if the built environment itself isn’t inclusive, your policies can only help so much.”

Stojkovic told me she waited to have children because she feared the challenges of balancing children and a career. “I don’t want people like me to feel like they have to wait to have children because of this,” she said.

According to Blake from Tech Moms, this issue is about more than just women in tech.

“Another hurdle that mothers and women face is a lack of tolerance and integration of children into society,” Blake said. “Of course children make noise, but people make noise too.”

Coming to terms with the fact that babies accompanying their mothers – and fathers – will occasionally cry is a small step toward a big change, Brandt told me. “I understand that this feels less professional to people in Silicon Valley,” she said. “But if you want to have female founders, that means accepting them.”