September 27, 2017 • 49 mins
Women continue to be drastically underrepresented in tech and are leaving the field at TWICE the rate of their male-identifying coworkers. E&B break down why this relatively young industry has a seriously old-school gender problem.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
This is Emily, and you're listening to stuff Mom never
told you. Today we are tackling a little topic that
has been making a few headlines here and there isn't
(00:26):
that right, bab. It's been a hot button topic in
the news. You might have seen it, and we've decided,
for the first time since taking the reins here at
stuff I've never told you that this is a topic
Silicon Valley sexism, that warrants a double episode, y'all, So
buckle up because there are lots of stories we want
(00:46):
to tell around the evolution of gender bias in computer science,
in technology, in the world's most profitable industry right now
that is resulting in women leaving stem fields and really
tech in particular, at twice the rate than men are.
(01:07):
And we need to uncover why Silicon Valley especially feels
like such a toxic place for professional women to thrive,
and how not only we can make a difference on
that front, but how really courageous efforts are taking place
at tech companies across the country, across the globe, thanks
to a lot of courageous whistleblowers who are demanding those
(01:30):
changes be implemented so that women and men can both
thrive equally. Yeah, I think one of the things that
I like to ground this issue in is the idea
of why this matters. A lot of folks say things like, oh,
so women are leaving this field, who cares a big deal?
But when you think about technology, these are people who
are poised to tackle some of the most critical problems
(01:51):
that are facing our world, huge challenges. And if you
don't have inclusive, diverse teams of people who are tackling
those challenges, we all could for yeah, think about all
of the specific challenges that we've faced. If you don't
have women, people of color, folks, all along different spectrums
tackling those issues, we could all be missing out. Think
of all the tech innovation that women could be bringing
(02:12):
us that they aren't because they're leaving this field exactly.
Tech has been just regularly disruptive to the ways that
we are creating a new kind of normal or creating
a new future for the world. And so the fact
that women are making up just about a quarter of
those in tech, or the fact that the numbers of
(02:33):
women in computer science programs have actually been declining since
the eighties, is a problem, and we want to make
sure that not not only are we filling the pipeline
into stem fields and into tech in particular, but that
we really take a critical look at how tech companies
and how the cultures of inclusion can be developed to
(02:56):
retain that kind of female talent and diverse talent along
different kinds of spectrums. Now, there was a huge article
written the cover story of The Atlantic magazine back in
April that really blew the lid off of this issue
and in so many different ways, thanks in large part
(03:16):
two some very courageous women whose stories were going to
tackle UH in part two here. But first, I think
it's important that we get a lay of the land.
I like to think of it as the terrible, horrible,
no good, very bad land for women, very sexist land
in the world of tech right now. But this article,
what was what was the title of this article? First
(03:37):
of all, the title of this article is why is
Silicon Valley so awful to women? And that really should
give you a sense of what's happening here. It might
sound hyperbolic, it might sound like there's no way it
could really be this bad. Y'all read this article because
it's really that bad. It really is, And just to
give you a quick glimmer into some of the stories
(03:58):
that women professionals in hack shared through that article. The
Atlantic came up with a great short video that we
want to sample from right now. I was about to
make a presentation at a tech conference when a male
attendee gave me this unsolicited piece of advice. Don't be nervous.
You're hot. No one expects you to do well. I'm
a software engineer and I'm regularly asked to take notes
(04:18):
and meetings. None of the men are asked to do that.
After giving a talk, I received abusive emails from men
who sit things like I jerked off to the video
of your talk, so as you can hear through some
intense interviews with senior women in tech, The Atlantic journalist
Lisa Mundy describes a series of workplace environments, not just
(04:41):
at one company, but at a series of companies throughout
Silicon Valley and through the tech industry space that are
only described as hostile towards women. And you might be thinking, yeah,
but aren't so many industries really hostile for women? Isn't
the law, isn't media, isn't h hospitals? Aren't there lots
(05:01):
of different industries that are really hostile to women, and
I would counter by saying yes, and yet there's something
very significant about the ways in which tech seems to
exaggerate sexism and make it almost like a very acceptable,
browy space. Well, that's one of the things I found
(05:22):
so troubling about her her account. It's this idea of
it being just part of the infrastructure of the tech industry.
So in other industries, sure there is sexism and it's awful,
but the ways in which she makes it sounds foundational
to the tech industry, where people don't even think twice
about it. It's not even something that's going on behind
(05:42):
closed doors or an open secret. She's talking about men
putting a hand on her thigh in public. She's talking
about a culture where women know to protect their drinks
because God only knows what someone's gonna do to it.
It's it's this idea of it being out in the
open and having it be an accepted part of culture
that people are no longer even I'm going to call
out and perhaps don't even find troubling or problematic or toxic. Exactly.
(06:05):
In the article, she interviews Susan Woo, an entrepreneur and
investor who after years of just ignoring the bs and
trying to fly above it, right the idea of don't
let the you know bastards get you down right, just
keep focused on your work and really ignoring the kind
of overt and not so overt sexism that she witnessed
in the workplace, things like being asked to fetch coffee
(06:27):
even though you're the senior developmental engineer on this project,
or overhearing that hiring women or people of color entailed
quote lowering the bar, or this idea that women still
felt silenced or attacked when expressing their opinions online, through
tech bass or in the office. She finally says that
(06:48):
something inside of her broke. She goes quote maybe it
was at tech conferences and hearing herself the quote elder
stateswoman warning younger women to cover up their drinks because
such confernces, known for alcohol after parties and hot women
at product booths, had been breeding grounds for unwanted sexual
advances and assaults, and you never knew whether some jerk
(07:11):
might put something in your cocktail. At one party, the
founder of a startup told Woo she needed to spend
intimate time with him to get in on his deal,
and angel investor leading a different deal told her something similar.
She became the master of warm but firm self extrication.
And really, just like you were saying, Bridget, these continuous
(07:34):
unwanted sexual advances put senior women in tech in this
very bizarre position. Well, I also think what's kind of
telling is that she talks about how most women in
tech have learned how to hone this specific skill of
brushing off a man's sexual advances without hurting his ego.
So imagine if that was if you worked in an
industry where that was a skill that women just knew
(07:56):
they had to develop if they wanted to get ahead.
And she describes this this you know, this land of
Angela investors and people who are who have the possibility
to give you money to fund your great project, and
all of that kind of hinges on your ability to
make him not feel like his ego as a bruise
if you don't want to have sex with him. Yeah,
I mean that is that's not covered in the soft
(08:16):
skills classes that I don't I think it is, And
why the hell should it be. You know, what I'm
saying really shouldn't have to be now, you might be thinking, okay, Emily, okay,
bridgets So what So We've got a handful of women's
stories who are facing unwanted sexual advances and being hit
on by their colleagues. That's pretty standard for the workplace, right. Unfortunately,
(08:41):
there's a lot of data coming out, especially recently from
this new study done called the Elephant in the Valley,
groundbreaking survey that interviewed over two hundred women, each with
a decade of experience in tech. These are basically senior
tech women of whom currently reside in Silicon Valley, and
(09:02):
the findings were dramatic, so pretty much sexism is alive
and well in the valley. Surprising, nobody of women have
been told they're too aggressive, have witnessed sexist behavior at
a company or an industry conference. Eight percent of witness
clients or colleagues ask questions to their male colleagues that
should have been addressed to them eight seven percent I've
(09:24):
received a meeting comments from male colleagues. Sixty of women
in tech have reported unwanted sexual advances. That number, to
me is staggering, more than half. I mean, I always
think about the up and arms rallying cries we're hearing
about sexual assault on college campuses of being epidemic levels.
Then you look at these adult human beings who are
(09:46):
supposed to be mature enough to treat each other fairly. Oh,
by the way, sexual assault is a crime, right, We're
talking about a criminal situation here. Criminal behavior is just
a thing thing that's happening in this industry. Yeah, that
over half of women in tech report happening. Now here's
the scary part. Of those six who reported these unwanted
(10:09):
sexual advances, sixty five percent of them received those advances
from a superior And this is where the power dynamic
in tech is so huge. Tech is disrupting the world
those people have rightfully, so in some ways a god
complex the vcs involved in funding the future of how
(10:32):
the entire world works. You know, this hyperbolic kind of
Steve Jobs esque We're going to change the world. Is
that that's what they eat for breakfast every day. So
these pseudo gods among men come into the office feeling
like I am personally responsible for changing how the entire
world works. I'm personally going to fund this. So of
(10:53):
course I'm entitled to the bodies of the women I
am around. Why that is so messed up to me
is that the the certainly everybody who is in a
lot of these spaces is smart, capable, you know, great thinkers,
all of that. Why is it that men they get
the god complex? Women they're just as I mean, if
you're a woman working at Google, you're smart and capable
(11:14):
and great. Why are we just giving Why are we
just making space for men to have this god complex
when the goddess complex, Yeah, we do. I love it.
It's like instead of the impostor syndrome, a goddess and
goddess syndrome. Much that's much, that's much less troubling. For
that describes my We're going to change the world one
(11:35):
sminty podcast. Yeah, sminty listeners, y'all are all goddesses. Yeah,
I love it. Um. Furthermore, looking even deeper into these
women who have experienced such assault and unwanted advances, fifty
of them reported this kind of thing happening more than once,
so this isn't a complete rarity. Over the course of
their careers, thirty three percent of them have feared for
(12:00):
their personal safety during and or because of a work circumstance.
That's awful. So if we want to unleash the full
potential of our geniuses and tech. But thirty of these
women who are reporting assaults are in fear for their
personal safety. Are those the kind of working conditions that
(12:20):
are going to set our men and women to achieve
their full potential in disrupting the world. Of course not.
And I also think, I mean, nobody deserves to feel
unsafe or scared for their own personal safety while they're
at work, exactly. And here's the deal. It's not just
overt and seemingly frequent sexual assaults and harassment that's happening.
(12:40):
It doesn't have to be that overt for unconscious bias
and sexism that's pervasive in tech to be really problematic.
Just imagine, like many of these senior women in tech
have reported, your credentials being constantly called into question, this
idea of senior engineers being told in interviews, you know,
(13:03):
I'm just not sure you have the technical experience, even
though you're a full stack developer, even though you've been
working in that capacity for a decade. Maybe you should
look at something more in marketing. And I think that's
it's just so disgusting because coupled with all of this
overt gross sexual harassment that is rampant in these places.
On top of that, also having your credentials being called
(13:25):
into question day in and day. It is like a
death of a by a thousand cuts, you know, where
it's so many little things happening all at once, and
after a while it just breaks you, exactly. It starts
to chip away your own sense of self and confidence.
And that's the that's the power of microaggressions. Now, beyond
your credentials being called into question, there's also the element
of your mere presence in the office is kind of
(13:48):
raining on our boys parade. And I remember being the
only woman on a campaign, a congressional campaign, and literally
one of my colleagues saying to me, when you got
to the office, when you joined the team, you really
messed everything up. You messed our whole vibe up. And
I was like, really, shoute, you're going to be that
over he was. He thought he was being friendly, and
he thought he was being kind for telling me that, Well,
(14:09):
this is my thing. I don't trust any industry where
they're not a lot of women in high up rankings,
and you look at them, the military, the NFL. If
you have an organization. There's not a lot of women
around making choices and being decision makers. Men left to
their own devices. I don't trust it. I don't know
how I don't I don't know how many industries you're
gonna trust them because it's not so This amazing excerpt
(14:31):
from Ellen Powe's forthcoming groundbreaking book, and don't you worry.
We're gonna talk more about Ellen pou. She you might
recognize her name as someone who was involved in a
very intense lawsuit on this very issue. But for now,
before we dive into those details, I just want to
sample from one of the chapters that was released through
(14:51):
the cut in New York Magazine, and she described that
feeling of just not the boys not wanting her to
be around. Once she was airborne on a plane with
the CEO of a company and a couple of her
other VC partners and co workers in the firm that
she was working on. Here's here's what went down. Quote.
(15:12):
Once we were airborne, the CEO, who brought along a
few bottles of wine, started bragging about meeting Jenna Jamison,
talking about her career as the world's greatest porn star
and how he had taken a photo with her at
the Playboy Mansion. He asked if I knew who she was,
and then proceeded to describe her pay per view series,
Jenna's American Sex Star, on which women competed for porn
(15:33):
movie contracts by performing sex acts before a live audience. Nope,
I said, not a show I'm familiar with. Then the
CEO switched topics to sex workers. He asked Ted what
kind of girls he liked. Ted said he preferred white girls,
Eastern European to be specific. Eventually we all moved to
(15:54):
the couch for a working session to help the text CEO.
He was trying to recruit a woman to his all
male board. I suggested Marissa Mayor, but the CEO looked
at me dismissively and said, nah, too controversial. Then he
grinned at Ted and added, though I would let her
join the board because she's hot, and then she says Somehow,
I got the distinct vibe that the group couldn't wait
(16:16):
to ditch me, and once we landed at teder Borough,
the guys made plans to go to a club while
I headed into Manhattan alone. Taking your seat at the
table doesn't work so well, I thought, when no one
wants you there, that is so powerful and awful and disgusting.
So that's the kind of vibe that we're picking up
from countless senior women in tech, that this is a
(16:42):
wild wild West mad Men era like vibe that is
overtly hostile to women. And what strikes me about that
story is that these guys seemingly did not think that
was a problematic thing. They didn't think, oh, I probably
shouldn't be saying this. I had a few drinks, it
wasn't They didn't even maybe feel the need you walk
it back or not at all. That's It's just it's
(17:03):
just an open part of this climate. And these people
are extremely powerful, extremely wealthy, extremely well connected, and can
you just imagine having to humor them along and like
try to be pleasant while this is the kind of
status quo conversation to be expected. Now here's the thing.
Women are leaving this field at more than twice the
(17:24):
rate of men. That is the glaring statistic to me
that I find especially problematic. And whether this culture of
unconscious gender bias is overt or covert, whether it's involving
malintent or not, the reality is that quote studies show
that women who work in tech are interrupted in meetings
(17:46):
more often than men, they're evaluated on their personality in
a way that men are not. They are less likely
to get funding from venture capitalists, who studies also show
find pitches delivered by men, especially handsome men, more persuasive,
and in a particularly cruel irony. Women's contributions to open
source software are accepted more often than men's are, but
(18:10):
only when their gender is unknown. Wow. This reminds me
so much of that of those two women who recently
revealed that they had come up with a fake male
CEO of their organization to get and it helped them
get funding. I can only imagine what it must be
like to be in a field where you know, the
lay of the land is so crappy for women that
you have to have all of these really clever ways
(18:32):
of navigating the space because it's just so awful. There's
no other way to get ahead, exactly. And some would say,
wait a second, aren't women just leaving tech because they
want to drop out to become parents or they want
to spend more time in their personal lives? And what
would you say to that? I can understand why people
would think that, but the research says otherwise, it's actually
not why women are dropping out. They're actually going to
(18:54):
other fields where they can use their their hard tech
skills in other ways. A report from the Center for
Talent Innovation found that when women drop out of tech,
it's usually not for family reasons, nor do they drop
out because they dislike the work. To the contrary, they
enjoy it and in many cases take jobs and sectors
where they can use their tech skills. Rather, the report
concludes that quote workplace conditions, a lack of access to
(19:15):
key creative roles, and a sense of feel installed in
one's career are the main reasons why women leave. Undermining
behavior for managers is also a major factor. So basically,
these women are not dropping out of the workforce to
be to, you know, start families, become parents. They're staying
in sectors that allow them to use their incredibly specialized skills,
but they just don't want to do it in an
(19:35):
industry that treats them like crap. Right, And that's why
so many tech companies right now are struggling to figure
out how can we adapt, what can we do to
make what is already a very appealing sector in terms
of the kind of salaries that you can get, the
kind of benefits, the kind of workplace flexibility that's offered
at tech companies. All of those benefits are pretty compelling
(19:59):
and pretty attractive. So how can we make sure that
our culture isn't driving women in tech away? So when
we come back, we're going to share the inspiring and
truly courageous actions that are being taken by women in
tech who won't stand idly by and let the status
quo persist. And it's really due to whistleblowers like these
(20:21):
women that companies are starting to not just make promises,
but really put their money where their mouths are on this.
We'll be right back after a quick word from our sponsors,
and we are back, and like you listeners are, blood
(20:43):
is boiling thinking about what it must feel like to
be a woman in STEM who's constantly questioned on your credentials,
on your mere presence in the office being somewhat annoying
to your male colleagues, if not the subject of their
sexual desire. But before where we go any further, we
have to talk about Ellen Pow and the lawsuit that
(21:04):
she filed after working for six years at the Silicon
Valley VC firm Kleiner Perkins, Caufield and Buyers. She had
been a junior partner and chief of staff for managing
partner John Doer and Kleiner. The firm she was working
at was then one of the three most powerful venture
capital firms in the world. So this VC firm was
(21:27):
involved in hugely disruptive tech companies and making those ideas possible.
Pal published a sample chapter from her book in The
Cut dot com describing some of the sexual harassment that
she faced while working there, and her reports are so troubling.
She says, seven months later, I would sue Kleiner Perkins
for sexual harassment and discrimination in a widely publicized case
(21:49):
in which I would often be cast as the villain. Incompetent, greedy, aggressive,
in cold My husband and I were both directed the mud.
Are privacy destroyed. It's really shocking to me how she
described was starting out being so happy about this job.
She talks about the job description sounded like it was
basically her resume, but then she finds all of these
(22:09):
cracks in what seemed to be this great situation. She
says that her boss specifically requested an Asian woman because
he liked the idea of a tiger mom. I can't
imagine hearing that and then still feeling good about a
job that I was supposed to be doing, And it
was like an early warning. She goes on to say,
sometimes the whole world felt like a nerdy frat house.
(22:30):
People in the venture world spoke so fondly about the
early shenanigans at big companies. A friend told me how
I used to sublit an office space for Facebook only
if I'm people having sex there on the floor in
the main public area, and that was looked back on
it with like delightful charm and nostalgia, like, isn't this
a fun workplace environment? Remember wh when I used to
have sex on the floor in public at work, the
(22:50):
good old days before the women came in and ruined
it all. I mean, that's that's really the vibe you get,
is that it is like a frat party, and that's
almost what's appealing about it. There's almost an element of
the mythology of early startup culture like Facebook's rise. Having
worked in Silicon Valley, what I see time and time
(23:10):
again being lifted in her story is that in Silicon Valley,
the early kind of rag tag wild world West. People
don't look back on those times with disgust or horror
or saying, oh, gee, we sure didn't have it figured out.
Then they look back on it with glee and with
with they think it's very charming. And so plenty of
startups start and they have kind of a jankie culture.
They don't have any start department. There are three people
(23:33):
in a in a basement or whatever. But to look
back on all the wild times you had when you
didn't know what you were doing, you should be looking
back on it at least being a little bit embarrassed,
not looking back and saying, gee, those were the good
old days and we could just do whatever and there
were no rules. Yeah, And and the central characters to
a lot of those early stories are all men. That's
the thing. It's like, no one's aware of who's not
(23:54):
at the table. No one's cognizant of what didn't happen,
which is getting the input of a diverse array of
people at the start of our companies, and not every company,
but a lot of companies. Look at the movie about
the invention of Facebook, it's like that is seen as cool,
it's seen as exciting. All of all those shenanigans are
it's seen as a good thing. And here's the thing,
the shenanigans you're talking about, they were alive and while
(24:16):
in her venture capital firm, the third largest in the world,
she went on a business trip when her colleague, a Jeet,
basically starts hitting on her pretty aggressively, tries to get
into her hotel room, is expressing all of this sadness
over his marriage that's not sexually satisfying, and making the
case for why they should have an affair or be together.
(24:38):
She expressed nothing but protestations, tried to get him out
of her room, and years of this, like continuous kinds
of hitting on her unwanted sexual advances came to a
head when he said I left my wife and I
want to be with you, and she started to think, hey,
maybe this, maybe this is a relationship I should concede to,
(24:59):
Maybe this is something I should pursue, only to find
out after they hooked up that he had actually lied.
He was very much still married, he was very much
still his wife. So she cut things off. She was livid,
and basically she did not have the skill set we
described at the start of this podcast, which is how
(25:19):
to sexually reject her mail colleagues without bruising his ego,
because quite literally, the next morning after the first sexual
rejection she had to give to this dude, he was livid.
Quote he stormed off to the airport by himself. So
she's trying to manage relationships with her colleagues and keep
things professional. He's trying to get in her pants, And like,
(25:44):
can you just imagine on top of the million dollar deals,
you're navigating the potential for total industry disruption that you
have to worry about that you're also trying to figure
out how not to piss off your married co worker
who wants to sleep with you. What resonates with me
from that story is that not only is it dealing
with the super overt you know, when your boss shows
(26:05):
up that your hotel door in a robe in the
middle of the night, it's all and you have to
navigate that in a way that doesn't hurt his feelings,
it's also navigating an entire slew of things that you
really shouldn't be responsible for on top of your your
your job. It's not just the overt gross things, it's
also the less overt navigating all of that just because
you're a woman exactly. And she goes on to describe
(26:27):
how she did elevate this issue to HR. Multiple women
at the firm were being hit on by this colleague.
Multiple people were feeling harassed. They went to HR. The
firm clearly was not willing to make the hard decisions
about actually rectifying the situation so that the women at
the firm felt safe. She goes on to describe how
he became increasingly aggressive about getting between her and her business.
(26:52):
Her deals were being sniped on by her colleague. She
was being called by some of the ceo s for
the ventures that she backed. This was like her venture,
her project, and the CEO would call saying, hey, what
of your colleagues just called me going around you to
talk about being a board member and trying to replace you.
So she's being sniped on at all ends. Life at
(27:14):
Kleiner got progressively worse for her, She says. At one point,
I found out the partners had taken some CEOs and
founders on an all male ski trip. They spent fifty
dollars on the private jet to and from Veil. I
was later told that they didn't invite any women, because
women probably wouldn't want to share a condo with men.
So she ends up making a claim after an independent
(27:36):
investigation into widespread sexual assault and discrimination at Kleiner went
undealt with, completely undealt with by the company itself. And
her claim, which was twelve pages covering everything that had
happened to her over seven years at Kleiner, really specified
gender discrimination in promotion, in pay, retaliation against her after
(27:57):
she reported that harassment, and basically she says, quote I
asked for damages to cover the lost pay and prevent
them from doing it again. Meanwhile, Kleiner had notified me
that its investigation was done. It's internal investigation, the finding
was that there'd been no retaliation or discrimination at all.
Oh isn't that convenient. Basically, here's the sad part of
(28:18):
the story. They crushed her in court. They absolutely decimated Pal.
Their attorneys outsmarted Pal's attorneys at every turn. They turned
her story into a widespread pr campaign against this greedy, selfish,
cold heartless woman, Ellen Pal. And they created even troll
(28:40):
farms to create integrated networks of influence used for quote
reputation management UM. And so basically they said they made
this case in court that it's the kind of sexism
you couldn't quite legally proved, right, And I think what's
really so telling is this bit from her investigation. She says,
(29:02):
at one point, the investigator asked, in a gotcha tone, Well,
if they looked down on women so much, and if
they block you from opportunities, they don't include you at
their events, why do they even keep you around in
the first place. And here's what she says. I replied
slowly as the answer crystallized in my mind. If you
get the opportunity to have workers who were over educated, underpaid,
and highly experienced, whom you could dump all the menial
(29:24):
tax that you didn't want to do on, whom you
could get to clean up all the problems, and whom
you could create a second class out of, wouldn't you
want them to stay? Man? Yeah, that just really nails
the sort of toxic paradox of what was going on there.
And after working there, she went on to be the
CEO of Reddit again sort of came in as this
(29:46):
person who was supposed to clean up what was a
really toxic, gross, messed up culture, and she had already
been set up with this horrible pr campaign about how
awful she was. She was this greedy, cold person who
is being sent in to clean up the boys club
and people even you know everyday rehdators really treated her
like crap. I think because of how she was set
(30:08):
up in that lawsuit. I completely agree, And it's so
depressing to read about this until we realize what the
long term effect is. And this is part of the
idea of our justice system being supremely imperfect and not
always able to deliver equal justice under the law, because
(30:29):
what was a short term loss for Ellen Powe, in
my opinion, had a long term positive effect that some
people even call the Pow effect. She describes it as
saying that reporters came up to me with a name
for the phenomenon of women or minorities in tech suing
or speaking up, because that's what happened after her lawsuit.
(30:50):
Even though as a failed lawsuit, women in tech were
leaving the office to watch the hearing, people were tuning
in bringing their daughters to court to watch the briefings.
This had a huge impact, especially in Silicon Valley, in
terms of seeing, Okay, how accountable are we holding VC
when it comes to harassment and discrimination. Her upcoming book
(31:11):
called Reset by Alan Powe describes her lawsuit in the
context of what is developed since when this first went down,
And I am optimistic in hearing of some of the
incredibly courageous whistleblowing women who have come after her, notably
this year. Yeah, when you look at this Ellen Powe
(31:34):
with that of all these women first of all watching
her lawsuit on fold, with this kind of hope or
it's kind of you know what's going to happen attitude,
and then all of these courageous women who she inspired.
I think it really goes back to this idea that
as a woman, or a personal color or any kind
of marginalized person in this space, when you speak up,
it obviously has consequences and that's a tough choice. But
(31:57):
you never know who you're inspiring to do the same.
You never know what culture shift you are kickstarting. And
I really think that by having this big public lawsuit
that she was kick starting a culture shift that we're
seeing the effects of today. Yeah, And honestly, you have
to read her book or this chapter in the cut
to hear just how much of a toll the lawsuit
(32:17):
took on her I mean she ended up losing a
pregnancy from it. She was physically ill from the stress
and the continuous harassment. Not only are we taking about
professional losses, but her personal life was seriously dragged through
the mud in a way that was devastating. So the
sacrifices she made, we have to make sure that they
pay off. And one of the women whose name comes
(32:39):
to mind this year, who has carried that torch forward
of Susan Fowler. You might have read her viral account
of her workplace experience at uber that went pretty crazy
on the internet not that long ago, maybe a couple
of months ago. It was in February of this year,
and she titled her own blog post reflecting on one
(33:00):
very very strange year at Uber. In it, she really
meticulously documented all the kinds of ways in which her
claims in HR fell on deaf ears, how the systemic
presence of gender based discrimination made her feel hopelessly held back,
to the point where she ended up leaving because no
(33:21):
one was doing anything about the kind of sexual harassment
she'd been experiencing. And that viral blog post finally ended
up triggering an internal investigation that led to the firing
of twenty employees, and shortly thereafter, due to a lot
of public pressure put on Uber and twenty other women
(33:42):
at Uber who basically shared their comparable stories. It led
to Travis Kalani stepping down a CEO. Yeah, I mean
her her story is incredible. If you haven't read it,
you should read the whole thing. This may sound like
a small detail, but something that I that just sticks
with me from her story. It's just something word talking
about this idea of the kind of sexism you couldn't
(34:03):
prove in court. Her story obviously has all kinds of
super over messed up stuff, but one of the small
details that I thought, I remember thinking, God, this this
was really just crap all the way down. The company
bought special jacket for all the for all the dudes
on the team, and she didn't get it. They didn't
get any jackets for the women, and so she was like, Yo,
can we the women get jackets? And they were like, oh, well,
(34:24):
if y'all want jackets, you can just pay for them yourself,
and something about that. Where but in a lawsuit that
probably would be easy to make it seem like it
wasn't a big deal, Like, can you imagine if your
team if if something they got a treat or something
like that, or a perk or a gift and you
just didn't get it. Like it's so it's such a
small thing, but it really highlights how deep and how
(34:48):
pervasive this culture was exactly, and Susan Fowler's experience sort
of built on ellen Pow, the ellen Pow effect in
the verge, there's a really great rundown of this c
on a logical domino effect that happened saying that quote. Meanwhile,
what was happening at Uber was echoing across the industry
and other companies. In late February of female engineer sued
(35:10):
Tesla for sexual harassment and discrimination and was later fired
in what she claims was retaliation. Then multiple women came
forward claiming they had been harassed by venture capitalist Justin
Caldwell of Binary Capital. The accusations snowballed until called back, resigned,
and Binary Capital collapsed when investors pulled their funds. They
(35:31):
go on to say, with the collapse of Binary Capital,
more women came forward to accuse other venture capitalists like
Dave McClure and Chris Socca, and it all culminated in
this big new York Times expose in which senior women
in tech sat down, named names, got clear about their claims.
And this kind of whistleblowing didn't happen in a court
(35:52):
of law. It happened in the public domain. And going
public with these stories seems to be the only thing
that's had real impact in rammifications, and it has caused
some of these guys at least temporary career. What's so
important about what you just said is that they were
willing to say who it is. I think the woman
in fields that have been pretty much male dominated, so
(36:12):
much of when we share information with each other is
sort of kind of becomes kind of whisper campaigns. I
have long said there was power in gossip. Gossip is like,
don't discount gossip as you know whatever. Frivolous gossip is
all people who don't have power get the word out.
And so for a long time in my own industry,
there have been whisper campaigns about noted sexual harassers. And
it wasn't until someone vocally said this is who it is,
(36:36):
this is what happened. Other people say, yeah, it happened
to me, Yet it happened to me. You don't have
to have it be you know, whisper campaigns. Watch out
for this guy, watch out for that guy. When you
go on the record. It's hard when you name names,
it's tough. There are consequences, But that is the thing
that's going to be that first domino that can really
create lasting culture change. Exactly. I think that this culture
(37:00):
of sexism thrives in the dark, definitely, and that shedding
any kind of light on it is the first step
to reconciling what the heck we're going to do about this.
So when we come back, we're going to talk about
why an industry like tech that for all of its newness,
doesn't really have the same historical baggage with gender discrimination.
(37:23):
So why why does this industry that's still relatively young
in terms of its historical existence have such a backwards
Mad Men era like culture of overt hostility towards women,
and of course, what we can do about it. We'll
be right back after this quick break, and we're back
(37:52):
and we're talking about why tech is so overtly hostile
to women in particular. We heard a little bit about
the whistle lowers, the brave change makers, Ellen Powe, who
really paved the way for other women to come out
and share their stories of hostile work environments and sexism
in tech. But first, before we go any further in
(38:15):
this conversation, can we just take a temperature check Bridget
and say, why is tex so sexist? To begin with?
It's not like medicine. It's not like the law, whereby
they have a long history of gentlemen only ladies forbidden
women not even being able to study these things exactly
on the books. Historically, this is supposedly data driven industry, right,
(38:38):
that's so obsessed with optimizing our world and disrupting the
old way of thinking. Why on earth can't this basically
pubescent industry get woke when it comes to women. I mean,
what are some of the reasons why tech seems to
really struggle with this in particular. Well, there's a few
(38:58):
theories behind it. One of it's just idea of the
genius fallacy. Basically, in tech, we have this idea that
people who become these big tech people are innate geniuses,
and think about other fields like surgery or astronomy or law.
Maybe you think of some people as having more aptitude
than others, but you don't think of them as being
(39:18):
innately born with some sort of magical quality that makes
them better or the best, But tech isn't really like that.
A twenty fifteen study published in Science confirmed that computer
science and certain other fields including physics, math, and philosophy
fetishize brilliant, cultivating the idea that potential is inborn. The
report concluded that these fields tend to be problematic for women,
(39:39):
owing to a stubborn assumption that genius is a male trade.
So basically, if we're all thinking that men just have
the ability to be born geniuses and women aren't really
like that, it cultivates this really toxic idea that the
men are the rulers of this industry and women are
just sort of second class citizens. I'm almost thinking of
Russell kras character in A Beautiful Mind. Oh yeah, I
(40:00):
mean think about it. Even in pop culture, we do
not see the not maybe we do it. If you
think of you know, shows that do this, let me know,
but thank you. But the first movie I've seen, yes,
but it hidden figures. They're not treated as now as special,
They're treated as they work super hard and blah blah blah.
I'm talking about where it's you know, the Steve jobs
(40:21):
origin story where he was just born and was always
different and blah blah blah. Women are not afforded that
same kind of glowing illustration of why they're good at
what they do. That same science study found that the
more a field valued giftedness, the fewer female PhDs they
would be, and at pointed out the same pattern being
true for people of color. And again, if you think
of genius as being innately white and male, and then
(40:44):
you don't even unpack what that means for your industry,
I think it's really problematic and probably one of the
reasons why tech is scene is so terrible for people
who aren't white men exactly, especially when venture capital. The
whole model of VC funding relies on making these sort
of gut decisions around whose companies you believe in enough
to throw your dollars behind. And so when there's those
(41:05):
kinds of genius fallacies impeding our ability to see women
or people of color as having that special something, it's
going to have this chain impact of not giving them
the funding to even have the shot to take their
company to the next level. And we know that people
give funding to people who remind them of themselves, so
(41:27):
that in the unconscious bias there too. It just it
sort of compounds time and time and time again. Another
theory behind why tech is especially struggling with sexism has
something to do with the meritocracy paradox. Here back in
the Atlantic magazine piece, they write, quote, we don't have
(41:47):
the same history as of exclusion, says Joel Emerson, the
founder and CEO of Paradigm, a firm in San Francisco
that advises companies undiversity and inclusion. But being new comes
with its own problems. Because Silicon Valley is a place
where a newcomer can unseat the most established player, many
people there believe, despite evidence everywhere to the contrary, that
(42:10):
tech is a meritocracy. People truly believe that those who
work hard and perform well will get ahead. And I know, listening,
you might think, Yeah, if I work hard and I
perform well, I'm gonna get ahead. That's our That's the
promise that's been made to me. And that's the promise
that's been perpetuated in the American lore, in the American
(42:31):
dream from I don't know, the Industrial Revolution on up. However,
this very belief in a meritocracy can perpetuate inequality twenty
study called the Paradox of Meritocracy and Organizations found that
in cultures that espouse this meritocracy idea, managers may, in fact, quote,
(42:53):
show greater bias in favor of men over equally performing women.
Surprise of Prize Want Want WA's depressing. In fact, they
did free experiments in which researchers presented participants with profiles
of similarly performing people of both genders and asked them
to award bonuses based on their performance. The researchers found
(43:17):
that telling participants that their company valued merit based decisions
only increased the likelihood of their giving higher bonuses to
the men. So basically, when you say I'm rewarding people
based on merit and you prime the participants in that study,
they're more likely to associate male achievement as merit based. Yeah,
(43:38):
that doesn't surprise me at all. And I think going
back to this idea of you know, the tech industry
loves talking about how it's data driven, it's really efficient
like blah blah blah blah blah. But belief in a
meritocracy is not data driven. There's so much data saying no,
the tech industry is not a meritoc RECEIP doesn't work
that way. Yet this industry continues to cling to this
(43:59):
idea despite all data proving otherwise, and while also claiming
to be very data driven and efficient. It makes no sense.
It doesn't it's it's the biggest hypocrisy of tech in
my opinion. And really this reminded me of a paragraph
in the very beginning of Lean In by Cheryl Sandberg
that stuck out to me. And I've seen almost nobody
(44:20):
talk about it, but to a fault, because I think
this is really important. The whole concept of leaning in,
of working hard, of saying yes, of having your seat
at the table basically assumes that there's a meritocracy, that
the harder you work, the more you know in your face,
or the more assertive you are as a woman in tech,
(44:42):
you'll have better outcomes. And yet in the start of
her book, here's what Cheryl Sandberg says, quote one stumbling
block is that many people believe that the workplace is
largely a meritocracy, which means we look at individuals, not groups,
and determine that differences and outcomes must be based on
merit not gender. Men at the top are often unaware
(45:05):
of the benefits they enjoy simply because they're men, and
this can make them blind to the disadvantages associated with
being a woman. By the way, like double this, like
ditto that for people of color. Yeah, I would say,
as you're reading, that's just like something else I know,
right exactly. She goes on to right. Women lower down
(45:26):
also believe that men at the top are entitled to
be there, so they try to play by the rules
and work harder to advance, rather than raise questions or
voice concerns about the possibility of bias. As a result,
everyone becomes complicit in perpetuating an unjust system. And it
really shows how we all women, men, wherever you are
(45:49):
on the spectrum, we're all cogs in this one messed
up system exactly. And that messed up system is not
something we're growing out of, No, we're leaning into it,
right exactly. It does something that's just going to go
away with time. I think a lot of baby boomers
and women and my grandmother's generation like to think, oh,
women are advancing, things are getting better. You don't know
(46:12):
what it was like to really experience sexism. But we
have to remind ourselves this is not something that we
are inevitably getting over as a society, which means we
need proactive, assertive solutions on the part of companies. And frankly,
the good news here is that we are talking about
it because this stuff is everywhere. I could in researching
(46:34):
for this episode, I couldn't go a day without something else,
something brand new popping up on my social media feeds,
or someone tweeting at me a brand new article that
needed to be internalized. And that is why we have
so much more to share that we need to really
uh queue up our next episode on this right. This
is a burly topic. It's a topic that's ever evolving,
(46:57):
ever changing, but it's not all doom and gloom is
good news on the horizon, I think for this issue.
I think it's an issue that if we talk about
we really can't get somewhere with exactly. Back in Google
was amongst the first to release data on the number
of women and minorities that it employed, thanks to organizations
like Color of Change, who actually had to push tech
(47:17):
organizations to disclose these numbers a lot of them. Some
of them did it right away, but a lot of
them didn't do it exactly. And once Google did it,
there was a lot more pressure, and so kudos to
Color of Change and advocates who were involved in making
that happen. Once they did release the numbers, everyone looked
at them and was like, Oh, that's not good. That
is no good for a data driven decision making company
(47:39):
who's uh phrases don't be evil. Right, And while we're
talking about Google, I would like to just make clear
that I have done work and been paid for that
work to help Google with its gender equity efforts in
the past. But I like the way that Google really
stepped up to kind of was a leader in this
in this practice, it's by saying, you know, we're going
(48:01):
to release it. It might not be pretty, but we're
gonna take a step to sort of kick start the
conversation exactly. And what came of that was that the
company's pledged to spend hundreds of millions of dollars changing
their work climates, altering the composition of their leadership, and
refining their hiring practices. So really there's a lot of
hope in that millions have been spent and more have
(48:24):
been pledged to solve this problem. And on our next episode,
on Part two of Silicon Valley sexism. We're going to
explore how well or sometimes not so well those efforts
are progressing. We'll talk through some of the latest proposed solutions,
the resulting pushback that we're hearing from men, especially a
(48:44):
certain man, a certain manifesto writing man at Google, and
some of the pushbacks that were overcoming as people who
are advocating for gender equality. We also want to make
sure in the next episode to cover how you, yes you,
every single one of us can make a difference and
have an impact to further ensure that tech is a
(49:06):
safe and welcoming space for women's talents and careers to
fully reach their potential. We know this is a barely
one Please stick with us to at the next episode
and we'll we'll learn and grow together tech industry, and
we want to hear what you have to say about this.
If you're a woman in tech like I was for
a while, what's your experienced, But like, if you're dude
in tech, what have you seen? Please get in touch
(49:28):
with us, you really want to hear your stories. You
can find us on Instagram at stuff Mom Never Told You,
on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcasts, and via email at
mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com,
This is Emily, and you're listening to stuff Mom never
told you. Today we are tackling a little topic that
has been making a few headlines here and there isn't
(00:26):
that right, bab. It's been a hot button topic in
the news. You might have seen it, and we've decided,
for the first time since taking the reins here at
stuff I've never told you that this is a topic
Silicon Valley sexism, that warrants a double episode, y'all, So
buckle up because there are lots of stories we want
(00:46):
to tell around the evolution of gender bias in computer science,
in technology, in the world's most profitable industry right now
that is resulting in women leaving stem fields and really
tech in particular, at twice the rate than men are.
(01:07):
And we need to uncover why Silicon Valley especially feels
like such a toxic place for professional women to thrive,
and how not only we can make a difference on
that front, but how really courageous efforts are taking place
at tech companies across the country, across the globe, thanks
to a lot of courageous whistleblowers who are demanding those
(01:30):
changes be implemented so that women and men can both
thrive equally. Yeah, I think one of the things that
I like to ground this issue in is the idea
of why this matters. A lot of folks say things like, oh,
so women are leaving this field, who cares a big deal?
But when you think about technology, these are people who
are poised to tackle some of the most critical problems
(01:51):
that are facing our world, huge challenges. And if you
don't have inclusive, diverse teams of people who are tackling
those challenges, we all could for yeah, think about all
of the specific challenges that we've faced. If you don't
have women, people of color, folks, all along different spectrums
tackling those issues, we could all be missing out. Think
of all the tech innovation that women could be bringing
(02:12):
us that they aren't because they're leaving this field exactly.
Tech has been just regularly disruptive to the ways that
we are creating a new kind of normal or creating
a new future for the world. And so the fact
that women are making up just about a quarter of
those in tech, or the fact that the numbers of
(02:33):
women in computer science programs have actually been declining since
the eighties, is a problem, and we want to make
sure that not not only are we filling the pipeline
into stem fields and into tech in particular, but that
we really take a critical look at how tech companies
and how the cultures of inclusion can be developed to
(02:56):
retain that kind of female talent and diverse talent along
different kinds of spectrums. Now, there was a huge article
written the cover story of The Atlantic magazine back in
April that really blew the lid off of this issue
and in so many different ways, thanks in large part
(03:16):
two some very courageous women whose stories were going to
tackle UH in part two here. But first, I think
it's important that we get a lay of the land.
I like to think of it as the terrible, horrible,
no good, very bad land for women, very sexist land
in the world of tech right now. But this article,
what was what was the title of this article? First
(03:37):
of all, the title of this article is why is
Silicon Valley so awful to women? And that really should
give you a sense of what's happening here. It might
sound hyperbolic, it might sound like there's no way it
could really be this bad. Y'all read this article because
it's really that bad. It really is, And just to
give you a quick glimmer into some of the stories
(03:58):
that women professionals in hack shared through that article. The
Atlantic came up with a great short video that we
want to sample from right now. I was about to
make a presentation at a tech conference when a male
attendee gave me this unsolicited piece of advice. Don't be nervous.
You're hot. No one expects you to do well. I'm
a software engineer and I'm regularly asked to take notes
(04:18):
and meetings. None of the men are asked to do that.
After giving a talk, I received abusive emails from men
who sit things like I jerked off to the video
of your talk, so as you can hear through some
intense interviews with senior women in tech, The Atlantic journalist
Lisa Mundy describes a series of workplace environments, not just
(04:41):
at one company, but at a series of companies throughout
Silicon Valley and through the tech industry space that are
only described as hostile towards women. And you might be thinking, yeah,
but aren't so many industries really hostile for women? Isn't
the law, isn't media, isn't h hospitals? Aren't there lots
(05:01):
of different industries that are really hostile to women, and
I would counter by saying yes, and yet there's something
very significant about the ways in which tech seems to
exaggerate sexism and make it almost like a very acceptable,
browy space. Well, that's one of the things I found
(05:22):
so troubling about her her account. It's this idea of
it being just part of the infrastructure of the tech industry.
So in other industries, sure there is sexism and it's awful,
but the ways in which she makes it sounds foundational
to the tech industry, where people don't even think twice
about it. It's not even something that's going on behind
(05:42):
closed doors or an open secret. She's talking about men
putting a hand on her thigh in public. She's talking
about a culture where women know to protect their drinks
because God only knows what someone's gonna do to it.
It's it's this idea of it being out in the
open and having it be an accepted part of culture
that people are no longer even I'm going to call
out and perhaps don't even find troubling or problematic or toxic. Exactly.
(06:05):
In the article, she interviews Susan Woo, an entrepreneur and
investor who after years of just ignoring the bs and
trying to fly above it, right the idea of don't
let the you know bastards get you down right, just
keep focused on your work and really ignoring the kind
of overt and not so overt sexism that she witnessed
in the workplace, things like being asked to fetch coffee
(06:27):
even though you're the senior developmental engineer on this project,
or overhearing that hiring women or people of color entailed
quote lowering the bar, or this idea that women still
felt silenced or attacked when expressing their opinions online, through
tech bass or in the office. She finally says that
(06:48):
something inside of her broke. She goes quote maybe it
was at tech conferences and hearing herself the quote elder
stateswoman warning younger women to cover up their drinks because
such confernces, known for alcohol after parties and hot women
at product booths, had been breeding grounds for unwanted sexual
advances and assaults, and you never knew whether some jerk
(07:11):
might put something in your cocktail. At one party, the
founder of a startup told Woo she needed to spend
intimate time with him to get in on his deal,
and angel investor leading a different deal told her something similar.
She became the master of warm but firm self extrication.
And really, just like you were saying, Bridget, these continuous
(07:34):
unwanted sexual advances put senior women in tech in this
very bizarre position. Well, I also think what's kind of
telling is that she talks about how most women in
tech have learned how to hone this specific skill of
brushing off a man's sexual advances without hurting his ego.
So imagine if that was if you worked in an
industry where that was a skill that women just knew
(07:56):
they had to develop if they wanted to get ahead.
And she describes this this you know, this land of
Angela investors and people who are who have the possibility
to give you money to fund your great project, and
all of that kind of hinges on your ability to
make him not feel like his ego as a bruise
if you don't want to have sex with him. Yeah,
I mean that is that's not covered in the soft
(08:16):
skills classes that I don't I think it is, And
why the hell should it be. You know, what I'm
saying really shouldn't have to be now, you might be thinking, okay, Emily, okay,
bridgets So what So We've got a handful of women's
stories who are facing unwanted sexual advances and being hit
on by their colleagues. That's pretty standard for the workplace, right. Unfortunately,
(08:41):
there's a lot of data coming out, especially recently from
this new study done called the Elephant in the Valley,
groundbreaking survey that interviewed over two hundred women, each with
a decade of experience in tech. These are basically senior
tech women of whom currently reside in Silicon Valley, and
(09:02):
the findings were dramatic, so pretty much sexism is alive
and well in the valley. Surprising, nobody of women have
been told they're too aggressive, have witnessed sexist behavior at
a company or an industry conference. Eight percent of witness
clients or colleagues ask questions to their male colleagues that
should have been addressed to them eight seven percent I've
(09:24):
received a meeting comments from male colleagues. Sixty of women
in tech have reported unwanted sexual advances. That number, to
me is staggering, more than half. I mean, I always
think about the up and arms rallying cries we're hearing
about sexual assault on college campuses of being epidemic levels.
Then you look at these adult human beings who are
(09:46):
supposed to be mature enough to treat each other fairly. Oh,
by the way, sexual assault is a crime, right, We're
talking about a criminal situation here. Criminal behavior is just
a thing thing that's happening in this industry. Yeah, that
over half of women in tech report happening. Now here's
the scary part. Of those six who reported these unwanted
(10:09):
sexual advances, sixty five percent of them received those advances
from a superior And this is where the power dynamic
in tech is so huge. Tech is disrupting the world
those people have rightfully, so in some ways a god
complex the vcs involved in funding the future of how
(10:32):
the entire world works. You know, this hyperbolic kind of
Steve Jobs esque We're going to change the world. Is
that that's what they eat for breakfast every day. So
these pseudo gods among men come into the office feeling
like I am personally responsible for changing how the entire
world works. I'm personally going to fund this. So of
(10:53):
course I'm entitled to the bodies of the women I
am around. Why that is so messed up to me
is that the the certainly everybody who is in a
lot of these spaces is smart, capable, you know, great thinkers,
all of that. Why is it that men they get
the god complex? Women they're just as I mean, if
you're a woman working at Google, you're smart and capable
(11:14):
and great. Why are we just giving Why are we
just making space for men to have this god complex
when the goddess complex, Yeah, we do. I love it.
It's like instead of the impostor syndrome, a goddess and
goddess syndrome. Much that's much, that's much less troubling. For
that describes my We're going to change the world one
(11:35):
sminty podcast. Yeah, sminty listeners, y'all are all goddesses. Yeah,
I love it. Um. Furthermore, looking even deeper into these
women who have experienced such assault and unwanted advances, fifty
of them reported this kind of thing happening more than once,
so this isn't a complete rarity. Over the course of
their careers, thirty three percent of them have feared for
(12:00):
their personal safety during and or because of a work circumstance.
That's awful. So if we want to unleash the full
potential of our geniuses and tech. But thirty of these
women who are reporting assaults are in fear for their
personal safety. Are those the kind of working conditions that
(12:20):
are going to set our men and women to achieve
their full potential in disrupting the world. Of course not.
And I also think, I mean, nobody deserves to feel
unsafe or scared for their own personal safety while they're
at work, exactly. And here's the deal. It's not just
overt and seemingly frequent sexual assaults and harassment that's happening.
(12:40):
It doesn't have to be that overt for unconscious bias
and sexism that's pervasive in tech to be really problematic.
Just imagine, like many of these senior women in tech
have reported, your credentials being constantly called into question, this
idea of senior engineers being told in interviews, you know,
(13:03):
I'm just not sure you have the technical experience, even
though you're a full stack developer, even though you've been
working in that capacity for a decade. Maybe you should
look at something more in marketing. And I think that's
it's just so disgusting because coupled with all of this
overt gross sexual harassment that is rampant in these places.
On top of that, also having your credentials being called
(13:25):
into question day in and day. It is like a
death of a by a thousand cuts, you know, where
it's so many little things happening all at once, and
after a while it just breaks you, exactly. It starts
to chip away your own sense of self and confidence.
And that's the that's the power of microaggressions. Now, beyond
your credentials being called into question, there's also the element
of your mere presence in the office is kind of
(13:48):
raining on our boys parade. And I remember being the
only woman on a campaign, a congressional campaign, and literally
one of my colleagues saying to me, when you got
to the office, when you joined the team, you really
messed everything up. You messed our whole vibe up. And
I was like, really, shoute, you're going to be that
over he was. He thought he was being friendly, and
he thought he was being kind for telling me that, Well,
(14:09):
this is my thing. I don't trust any industry where
they're not a lot of women in high up rankings,
and you look at them, the military, the NFL. If
you have an organization. There's not a lot of women
around making choices and being decision makers. Men left to
their own devices. I don't trust it. I don't know
how I don't I don't know how many industries you're
gonna trust them because it's not so This amazing excerpt
(14:31):
from Ellen Powe's forthcoming groundbreaking book, and don't you worry.
We're gonna talk more about Ellen pou. She you might
recognize her name as someone who was involved in a
very intense lawsuit on this very issue. But for now,
before we dive into those details, I just want to
sample from one of the chapters that was released through
(14:51):
the cut in New York Magazine, and she described that
feeling of just not the boys not wanting her to
be around. Once she was airborne on a plane with
the CEO of a company and a couple of her
other VC partners and co workers in the firm that
she was working on. Here's here's what went down. Quote.
(15:12):
Once we were airborne, the CEO, who brought along a
few bottles of wine, started bragging about meeting Jenna Jamison,
talking about her career as the world's greatest porn star
and how he had taken a photo with her at
the Playboy Mansion. He asked if I knew who she was,
and then proceeded to describe her pay per view series,
Jenna's American Sex Star, on which women competed for porn
(15:33):
movie contracts by performing sex acts before a live audience. Nope,
I said, not a show I'm familiar with. Then the
CEO switched topics to sex workers. He asked Ted what
kind of girls he liked. Ted said he preferred white girls,
Eastern European to be specific. Eventually we all moved to
(15:54):
the couch for a working session to help the text CEO.
He was trying to recruit a woman to his all
male board. I suggested Marissa Mayor, but the CEO looked
at me dismissively and said, nah, too controversial. Then he
grinned at Ted and added, though I would let her
join the board because she's hot, and then she says Somehow,
I got the distinct vibe that the group couldn't wait
(16:16):
to ditch me, and once we landed at teder Borough,
the guys made plans to go to a club while
I headed into Manhattan alone. Taking your seat at the
table doesn't work so well, I thought, when no one
wants you there, that is so powerful and awful and disgusting.
So that's the kind of vibe that we're picking up
from countless senior women in tech, that this is a
(16:42):
wild wild West mad Men era like vibe that is
overtly hostile to women. And what strikes me about that
story is that these guys seemingly did not think that
was a problematic thing. They didn't think, oh, I probably
shouldn't be saying this. I had a few drinks, it
wasn't They didn't even maybe feel the need you walk
it back or not at all. That's It's just it's
(17:03):
just an open part of this climate. And these people
are extremely powerful, extremely wealthy, extremely well connected, and can
you just imagine having to humor them along and like
try to be pleasant while this is the kind of
status quo conversation to be expected. Now here's the thing.
Women are leaving this field at more than twice the
(17:24):
rate of men. That is the glaring statistic to me
that I find especially problematic. And whether this culture of
unconscious gender bias is overt or covert, whether it's involving
malintent or not, the reality is that quote studies show
that women who work in tech are interrupted in meetings
(17:46):
more often than men, they're evaluated on their personality in
a way that men are not. They are less likely
to get funding from venture capitalists, who studies also show
find pitches delivered by men, especially handsome men, more persuasive,
and in a particularly cruel irony. Women's contributions to open
source software are accepted more often than men's are, but
(18:10):
only when their gender is unknown. Wow. This reminds me
so much of that of those two women who recently
revealed that they had come up with a fake male
CEO of their organization to get and it helped them
get funding. I can only imagine what it must be
like to be in a field where you know, the
lay of the land is so crappy for women that
you have to have all of these really clever ways
(18:32):
of navigating the space because it's just so awful. There's
no other way to get ahead, exactly. And some would say,
wait a second, aren't women just leaving tech because they
want to drop out to become parents or they want
to spend more time in their personal lives? And what
would you say to that? I can understand why people
would think that, but the research says otherwise, it's actually
not why women are dropping out. They're actually going to
(18:54):
other fields where they can use their their hard tech
skills in other ways. A report from the Center for
Talent Innovation found that when women drop out of tech,
it's usually not for family reasons, nor do they drop
out because they dislike the work. To the contrary, they
enjoy it and in many cases take jobs and sectors
where they can use their tech skills. Rather, the report
concludes that quote workplace conditions, a lack of access to
(19:15):
key creative roles, and a sense of feel installed in
one's career are the main reasons why women leave. Undermining
behavior for managers is also a major factor. So basically,
these women are not dropping out of the workforce to
be to, you know, start families, become parents. They're staying
in sectors that allow them to use their incredibly specialized skills,
but they just don't want to do it in an
(19:35):
industry that treats them like crap. Right, And that's why
so many tech companies right now are struggling to figure
out how can we adapt, what can we do to
make what is already a very appealing sector in terms
of the kind of salaries that you can get, the
kind of benefits, the kind of workplace flexibility that's offered
at tech companies. All of those benefits are pretty compelling
(19:59):
and pretty attractive. So how can we make sure that
our culture isn't driving women in tech away? So when
we come back, we're going to share the inspiring and
truly courageous actions that are being taken by women in
tech who won't stand idly by and let the status
quo persist. And it's really due to whistleblowers like these
(20:21):
women that companies are starting to not just make promises,
but really put their money where their mouths are on this.
We'll be right back after a quick word from our sponsors,
and we are back, and like you listeners are, blood
(20:43):
is boiling thinking about what it must feel like to
be a woman in STEM who's constantly questioned on your credentials,
on your mere presence in the office being somewhat annoying
to your male colleagues, if not the subject of their
sexual desire. But before where we go any further, we
have to talk about Ellen Pow and the lawsuit that
(21:04):
she filed after working for six years at the Silicon
Valley VC firm Kleiner Perkins, Caufield and Buyers. She had
been a junior partner and chief of staff for managing
partner John Doer and Kleiner. The firm she was working
at was then one of the three most powerful venture
capital firms in the world. So this VC firm was
(21:27):
involved in hugely disruptive tech companies and making those ideas possible.
Pal published a sample chapter from her book in The
Cut dot com describing some of the sexual harassment that
she faced while working there, and her reports are so troubling.
She says, seven months later, I would sue Kleiner Perkins
for sexual harassment and discrimination in a widely publicized case
(21:49):
in which I would often be cast as the villain. Incompetent, greedy, aggressive,
in cold My husband and I were both directed the mud.
Are privacy destroyed. It's really shocking to me how she
described was starting out being so happy about this job.
She talks about the job description sounded like it was
basically her resume, but then she finds all of these
(22:09):
cracks in what seemed to be this great situation. She
says that her boss specifically requested an Asian woman because
he liked the idea of a tiger mom. I can't
imagine hearing that and then still feeling good about a
job that I was supposed to be doing, And it
was like an early warning. She goes on to say,
sometimes the whole world felt like a nerdy frat house.
(22:30):
People in the venture world spoke so fondly about the
early shenanigans at big companies. A friend told me how
I used to sublit an office space for Facebook only
if I'm people having sex there on the floor in
the main public area, and that was looked back on
it with like delightful charm and nostalgia, like, isn't this
a fun workplace environment? Remember wh when I used to
have sex on the floor in public at work, the
(22:50):
good old days before the women came in and ruined
it all. I mean, that's that's really the vibe you get,
is that it is like a frat party, and that's
almost what's appealing about it. There's almost an element of
the mythology of early startup culture like Facebook's rise. Having
worked in Silicon Valley, what I see time and time
(23:10):
again being lifted in her story is that in Silicon Valley,
the early kind of rag tag wild world West. People
don't look back on those times with disgust or horror
or saying, oh, gee, we sure didn't have it figured out.
Then they look back on it with glee and with
with they think it's very charming. And so plenty of
startups start and they have kind of a jankie culture.
They don't have any start department. There are three people
(23:33):
in a in a basement or whatever. But to look
back on all the wild times you had when you
didn't know what you were doing, you should be looking
back on it at least being a little bit embarrassed,
not looking back and saying, gee, those were the good
old days and we could just do whatever and there
were no rules. Yeah, And and the central characters to
a lot of those early stories are all men. That's
the thing. It's like, no one's aware of who's not
(23:54):
at the table. No one's cognizant of what didn't happen,
which is getting the input of a diverse array of
people at the start of our companies, and not every company,
but a lot of companies. Look at the movie about
the invention of Facebook, it's like that is seen as cool,
it's seen as exciting. All of all those shenanigans are
it's seen as a good thing. And here's the thing,
the shenanigans you're talking about, they were alive and while
(24:16):
in her venture capital firm, the third largest in the world,
she went on a business trip when her colleague, a Jeet,
basically starts hitting on her pretty aggressively, tries to get
into her hotel room, is expressing all of this sadness
over his marriage that's not sexually satisfying, and making the
case for why they should have an affair or be together.
(24:38):
She expressed nothing but protestations, tried to get him out
of her room, and years of this, like continuous kinds
of hitting on her unwanted sexual advances came to a
head when he said I left my wife and I
want to be with you, and she started to think, hey,
maybe this, maybe this is a relationship I should concede to,
(24:59):
Maybe this is something I should pursue, only to find
out after they hooked up that he had actually lied.
He was very much still married, he was very much
still his wife. So she cut things off. She was livid,
and basically she did not have the skill set we
described at the start of this podcast, which is how
(25:19):
to sexually reject her mail colleagues without bruising his ego,
because quite literally, the next morning after the first sexual
rejection she had to give to this dude, he was livid.
Quote he stormed off to the airport by himself. So
she's trying to manage relationships with her colleagues and keep
things professional. He's trying to get in her pants, And like,
(25:44):
can you just imagine on top of the million dollar deals,
you're navigating the potential for total industry disruption that you
have to worry about that you're also trying to figure
out how not to piss off your married co worker
who wants to sleep with you. What resonates with me
from that story is that not only is it dealing
with the super overt you know, when your boss shows
(26:05):
up that your hotel door in a robe in the
middle of the night, it's all and you have to
navigate that in a way that doesn't hurt his feelings,
it's also navigating an entire slew of things that you
really shouldn't be responsible for on top of your your
your job. It's not just the overt gross things, it's
also the less overt navigating all of that just because
you're a woman exactly. And she goes on to describe
(26:27):
how she did elevate this issue to HR. Multiple women
at the firm were being hit on by this colleague.
Multiple people were feeling harassed. They went to HR. The
firm clearly was not willing to make the hard decisions
about actually rectifying the situation so that the women at
the firm felt safe. She goes on to describe how
he became increasingly aggressive about getting between her and her business.
(26:52):
Her deals were being sniped on by her colleague. She
was being called by some of the ceo s for
the ventures that she backed. This was like her venture,
her project, and the CEO would call saying, hey, what
of your colleagues just called me going around you to
talk about being a board member and trying to replace you.
So she's being sniped on at all ends. Life at
(27:14):
Kleiner got progressively worse for her, She says. At one point,
I found out the partners had taken some CEOs and
founders on an all male ski trip. They spent fifty
dollars on the private jet to and from Veil. I
was later told that they didn't invite any women, because
women probably wouldn't want to share a condo with men.
So she ends up making a claim after an independent
(27:36):
investigation into widespread sexual assault and discrimination at Kleiner went
undealt with, completely undealt with by the company itself. And
her claim, which was twelve pages covering everything that had
happened to her over seven years at Kleiner, really specified
gender discrimination in promotion, in pay, retaliation against her after
(27:57):
she reported that harassment, and basically she says, quote I
asked for damages to cover the lost pay and prevent
them from doing it again. Meanwhile, Kleiner had notified me
that its investigation was done. It's internal investigation, the finding
was that there'd been no retaliation or discrimination at all.
Oh isn't that convenient. Basically, here's the sad part of
(28:18):
the story. They crushed her in court. They absolutely decimated Pal.
Their attorneys outsmarted Pal's attorneys at every turn. They turned
her story into a widespread pr campaign against this greedy, selfish,
cold heartless woman, Ellen Pal. And they created even troll
(28:40):
farms to create integrated networks of influence used for quote
reputation management UM. And so basically they said they made
this case in court that it's the kind of sexism
you couldn't quite legally proved, right, And I think what's
really so telling is this bit from her investigation. She says,
(29:02):
at one point, the investigator asked, in a gotcha tone, Well,
if they looked down on women so much, and if
they block you from opportunities, they don't include you at
their events, why do they even keep you around in
the first place. And here's what she says. I replied
slowly as the answer crystallized in my mind. If you
get the opportunity to have workers who were over educated, underpaid,
and highly experienced, whom you could dump all the menial
(29:24):
tax that you didn't want to do on, whom you
could get to clean up all the problems, and whom
you could create a second class out of, wouldn't you
want them to stay? Man? Yeah, that just really nails
the sort of toxic paradox of what was going on there.
And after working there, she went on to be the
CEO of Reddit again sort of came in as this
(29:46):
person who was supposed to clean up what was a
really toxic, gross, messed up culture, and she had already
been set up with this horrible pr campaign about how
awful she was. She was this greedy, cold person who
is being sent in to clean up the boys club
and people even you know everyday rehdators really treated her
like crap. I think because of how she was set
(30:08):
up in that lawsuit. I completely agree, And it's so
depressing to read about this until we realize what the
long term effect is. And this is part of the
idea of our justice system being supremely imperfect and not
always able to deliver equal justice under the law, because
(30:29):
what was a short term loss for Ellen Powe, in
my opinion, had a long term positive effect that some
people even call the Pow effect. She describes it as
saying that reporters came up to me with a name
for the phenomenon of women or minorities in tech suing
or speaking up, because that's what happened after her lawsuit.
(30:50):
Even though as a failed lawsuit, women in tech were
leaving the office to watch the hearing, people were tuning
in bringing their daughters to court to watch the briefings.
This had a huge impact, especially in Silicon Valley, in
terms of seeing, Okay, how accountable are we holding VC
when it comes to harassment and discrimination. Her upcoming book
(31:11):
called Reset by Alan Powe describes her lawsuit in the
context of what is developed since when this first went down,
And I am optimistic in hearing of some of the
incredibly courageous whistleblowing women who have come after her, notably
this year. Yeah, when you look at this Ellen Powe
(31:34):
with that of all these women first of all watching
her lawsuit on fold, with this kind of hope or
it's kind of you know what's going to happen attitude,
and then all of these courageous women who she inspired.
I think it really goes back to this idea that
as a woman, or a personal color or any kind
of marginalized person in this space, when you speak up,
it obviously has consequences and that's a tough choice. But
(31:57):
you never know who you're inspiring to do the same.
You never know what culture shift you are kickstarting. And
I really think that by having this big public lawsuit
that she was kick starting a culture shift that we're
seeing the effects of today. Yeah, And honestly, you have
to read her book or this chapter in the cut
to hear just how much of a toll the lawsuit
(32:17):
took on her I mean she ended up losing a
pregnancy from it. She was physically ill from the stress
and the continuous harassment. Not only are we taking about
professional losses, but her personal life was seriously dragged through
the mud in a way that was devastating. So the
sacrifices she made, we have to make sure that they
pay off. And one of the women whose name comes
(32:39):
to mind this year, who has carried that torch forward
of Susan Fowler. You might have read her viral account
of her workplace experience at uber that went pretty crazy
on the internet not that long ago, maybe a couple
of months ago. It was in February of this year,
and she titled her own blog post reflecting on one
(33:00):
very very strange year at Uber. In it, she really
meticulously documented all the kinds of ways in which her
claims in HR fell on deaf ears, how the systemic
presence of gender based discrimination made her feel hopelessly held back,
to the point where she ended up leaving because no
(33:21):
one was doing anything about the kind of sexual harassment
she'd been experiencing. And that viral blog post finally ended
up triggering an internal investigation that led to the firing
of twenty employees, and shortly thereafter, due to a lot
of public pressure put on Uber and twenty other women
(33:42):
at Uber who basically shared their comparable stories. It led
to Travis Kalani stepping down a CEO. Yeah, I mean
her her story is incredible. If you haven't read it,
you should read the whole thing. This may sound like
a small detail, but something that I that just sticks
with me from her story. It's just something word talking
about this idea of the kind of sexism you couldn't
(34:03):
prove in court. Her story obviously has all kinds of
super over messed up stuff, but one of the small
details that I thought, I remember thinking, God, this this
was really just crap all the way down. The company
bought special jacket for all the for all the dudes
on the team, and she didn't get it. They didn't
get any jackets for the women, and so she was like, Yo,
can we the women get jackets? And they were like, oh, well,
(34:24):
if y'all want jackets, you can just pay for them yourself,
and something about that. Where but in a lawsuit that
probably would be easy to make it seem like it
wasn't a big deal, Like, can you imagine if your
team if if something they got a treat or something
like that, or a perk or a gift and you
just didn't get it. Like it's so it's such a
small thing, but it really highlights how deep and how
(34:48):
pervasive this culture was exactly, and Susan Fowler's experience sort
of built on ellen Pow, the ellen Pow effect in
the verge, there's a really great rundown of this c
on a logical domino effect that happened saying that quote. Meanwhile,
what was happening at Uber was echoing across the industry
and other companies. In late February of female engineer sued
(35:10):
Tesla for sexual harassment and discrimination and was later fired
in what she claims was retaliation. Then multiple women came
forward claiming they had been harassed by venture capitalist Justin
Caldwell of Binary Capital. The accusations snowballed until called back, resigned,
and Binary Capital collapsed when investors pulled their funds. They
(35:31):
go on to say, with the collapse of Binary Capital,
more women came forward to accuse other venture capitalists like
Dave McClure and Chris Socca, and it all culminated in
this big new York Times expose in which senior women
in tech sat down, named names, got clear about their claims.
And this kind of whistleblowing didn't happen in a court
(35:52):
of law. It happened in the public domain. And going
public with these stories seems to be the only thing
that's had real impact in rammifications, and it has caused
some of these guys at least temporary career. What's so
important about what you just said is that they were
willing to say who it is. I think the woman
in fields that have been pretty much male dominated, so
(36:12):
much of when we share information with each other is
sort of kind of becomes kind of whisper campaigns. I
have long said there was power in gossip. Gossip is like,
don't discount gossip as you know whatever. Frivolous gossip is
all people who don't have power get the word out.
And so for a long time in my own industry,
there have been whisper campaigns about noted sexual harassers. And
it wasn't until someone vocally said this is who it is,
(36:36):
this is what happened. Other people say, yeah, it happened
to me, Yet it happened to me. You don't have
to have it be you know, whisper campaigns. Watch out
for this guy, watch out for that guy. When you
go on the record. It's hard when you name names,
it's tough. There are consequences, But that is the thing
that's going to be that first domino that can really
create lasting culture change. Exactly. I think that this culture
(37:00):
of sexism thrives in the dark, definitely, and that shedding
any kind of light on it is the first step
to reconciling what the heck we're going to do about this.
So when we come back, we're going to talk about
why an industry like tech that for all of its newness,
doesn't really have the same historical baggage with gender discrimination.
(37:23):
So why why does this industry that's still relatively young
in terms of its historical existence have such a backwards
Mad Men era like culture of overt hostility towards women,
and of course, what we can do about it. We'll
be right back after this quick break, and we're back
(37:52):
and we're talking about why tech is so overtly hostile
to women in particular. We heard a little bit about
the whistle lowers, the brave change makers, Ellen Powe, who
really paved the way for other women to come out
and share their stories of hostile work environments and sexism
in tech. But first, before we go any further in
(38:15):
this conversation, can we just take a temperature check Bridget
and say, why is tex so sexist? To begin with?
It's not like medicine. It's not like the law, whereby
they have a long history of gentlemen only ladies forbidden
women not even being able to study these things exactly
on the books. Historically, this is supposedly data driven industry, right,
(38:38):
that's so obsessed with optimizing our world and disrupting the
old way of thinking. Why on earth can't this basically
pubescent industry get woke when it comes to women. I mean,
what are some of the reasons why tech seems to
really struggle with this in particular. Well, there's a few
(38:58):
theories behind it. One of it's just idea of the
genius fallacy. Basically, in tech, we have this idea that
people who become these big tech people are innate geniuses,
and think about other fields like surgery or astronomy or law.
Maybe you think of some people as having more aptitude
than others, but you don't think of them as being
(39:18):
innately born with some sort of magical quality that makes
them better or the best, But tech isn't really like that.
A twenty fifteen study published in Science confirmed that computer
science and certain other fields including physics, math, and philosophy
fetishize brilliant, cultivating the idea that potential is inborn. The
report concluded that these fields tend to be problematic for women,
(39:39):
owing to a stubborn assumption that genius is a male trade.
So basically, if we're all thinking that men just have
the ability to be born geniuses and women aren't really
like that, it cultivates this really toxic idea that the
men are the rulers of this industry and women are
just sort of second class citizens. I'm almost thinking of
Russell kras character in A Beautiful Mind. Oh yeah, I
(40:00):
mean think about it. Even in pop culture, we do
not see the not maybe we do it. If you
think of you know, shows that do this, let me know,
but thank you. But the first movie I've seen, yes,
but it hidden figures. They're not treated as now as special,
They're treated as they work super hard and blah blah blah.
I'm talking about where it's you know, the Steve jobs
(40:21):
origin story where he was just born and was always
different and blah blah blah. Women are not afforded that
same kind of glowing illustration of why they're good at
what they do. That same science study found that the
more a field valued giftedness, the fewer female PhDs they
would be, and at pointed out the same pattern being
true for people of color. And again, if you think
of genius as being innately white and male, and then
(40:44):
you don't even unpack what that means for your industry,
I think it's really problematic and probably one of the
reasons why tech is scene is so terrible for people
who aren't white men exactly, especially when venture capital. The
whole model of VC funding relies on making these sort
of gut decisions around whose companies you believe in enough
to throw your dollars behind. And so when there's those
(41:05):
kinds of genius fallacies impeding our ability to see women
or people of color as having that special something, it's
going to have this chain impact of not giving them
the funding to even have the shot to take their
company to the next level. And we know that people
give funding to people who remind them of themselves, so
(41:27):
that in the unconscious bias there too. It just it
sort of compounds time and time and time again. Another
theory behind why tech is especially struggling with sexism has
something to do with the meritocracy paradox. Here back in
the Atlantic magazine piece, they write, quote, we don't have
(41:47):
the same history as of exclusion, says Joel Emerson, the
founder and CEO of Paradigm, a firm in San Francisco
that advises companies undiversity and inclusion. But being new comes
with its own problems. Because Silicon Valley is a place
where a newcomer can unseat the most established player, many
people there believe, despite evidence everywhere to the contrary, that
(42:10):
tech is a meritocracy. People truly believe that those who
work hard and perform well will get ahead. And I know, listening,
you might think, Yeah, if I work hard and I
perform well, I'm gonna get ahead. That's our That's the
promise that's been made to me. And that's the promise
that's been perpetuated in the American lore, in the American
(42:31):
dream from I don't know, the Industrial Revolution on up. However,
this very belief in a meritocracy can perpetuate inequality twenty
study called the Paradox of Meritocracy and Organizations found that
in cultures that espouse this meritocracy idea, managers may, in fact, quote,
(42:53):
show greater bias in favor of men over equally performing women.
Surprise of Prize Want Want WA's depressing. In fact, they
did free experiments in which researchers presented participants with profiles
of similarly performing people of both genders and asked them
to award bonuses based on their performance. The researchers found
(43:17):
that telling participants that their company valued merit based decisions
only increased the likelihood of their giving higher bonuses to
the men. So basically, when you say I'm rewarding people
based on merit and you prime the participants in that study,
they're more likely to associate male achievement as merit based. Yeah,
(43:38):
that doesn't surprise me at all. And I think going
back to this idea of you know, the tech industry
loves talking about how it's data driven, it's really efficient
like blah blah blah blah blah. But belief in a
meritocracy is not data driven. There's so much data saying no,
the tech industry is not a meritoc RECEIP doesn't work
that way. Yet this industry continues to cling to this
(43:59):
idea despite all data proving otherwise, and while also claiming
to be very data driven and efficient. It makes no sense.
It doesn't it's it's the biggest hypocrisy of tech in
my opinion. And really this reminded me of a paragraph
in the very beginning of Lean In by Cheryl Sandberg
that stuck out to me. And I've seen almost nobody
(44:20):
talk about it, but to a fault, because I think
this is really important. The whole concept of leaning in,
of working hard, of saying yes, of having your seat
at the table basically assumes that there's a meritocracy, that
the harder you work, the more you know in your face,
or the more assertive you are as a woman in tech,
(44:42):
you'll have better outcomes. And yet in the start of
her book, here's what Cheryl Sandberg says, quote one stumbling
block is that many people believe that the workplace is
largely a meritocracy, which means we look at individuals, not groups,
and determine that differences and outcomes must be based on
merit not gender. Men at the top are often unaware
(45:05):
of the benefits they enjoy simply because they're men, and
this can make them blind to the disadvantages associated with
being a woman. By the way, like double this, like
ditto that for people of color. Yeah, I would say,
as you're reading, that's just like something else I know,
right exactly. She goes on to right. Women lower down
(45:26):
also believe that men at the top are entitled to
be there, so they try to play by the rules
and work harder to advance, rather than raise questions or
voice concerns about the possibility of bias. As a result,
everyone becomes complicit in perpetuating an unjust system. And it
really shows how we all women, men, wherever you are
(45:49):
on the spectrum, we're all cogs in this one messed
up system exactly. And that messed up system is not
something we're growing out of, No, we're leaning into it,
right exactly. It does something that's just going to go
away with time. I think a lot of baby boomers
and women and my grandmother's generation like to think, oh,
women are advancing, things are getting better. You don't know
(46:12):
what it was like to really experience sexism. But we
have to remind ourselves this is not something that we
are inevitably getting over as a society, which means we
need proactive, assertive solutions on the part of companies. And frankly,
the good news here is that we are talking about
it because this stuff is everywhere. I could in researching
(46:34):
for this episode, I couldn't go a day without something else,
something brand new popping up on my social media feeds,
or someone tweeting at me a brand new article that
needed to be internalized. And that is why we have
so much more to share that we need to really
uh queue up our next episode on this right. This
is a burly topic. It's a topic that's ever evolving,
(46:57):
ever changing, but it's not all doom and gloom is
good news on the horizon, I think for this issue.
I think it's an issue that if we talk about
we really can't get somewhere with exactly. Back in Google
was amongst the first to release data on the number
of women and minorities that it employed, thanks to organizations
like Color of Change, who actually had to push tech
(47:17):
organizations to disclose these numbers a lot of them. Some
of them did it right away, but a lot of
them didn't do it exactly. And once Google did it,
there was a lot more pressure, and so kudos to
Color of Change and advocates who were involved in making
that happen. Once they did release the numbers, everyone looked
at them and was like, Oh, that's not good. That
is no good for a data driven decision making company
(47:39):
who's uh phrases don't be evil. Right, And while we're
talking about Google, I would like to just make clear
that I have done work and been paid for that
work to help Google with its gender equity efforts in
the past. But I like the way that Google really
stepped up to kind of was a leader in this
in this practice, it's by saying, you know, we're going
(48:01):
to release it. It might not be pretty, but we're
gonna take a step to sort of kick start the
conversation exactly. And what came of that was that the
company's pledged to spend hundreds of millions of dollars changing
their work climates, altering the composition of their leadership, and
refining their hiring practices. So really there's a lot of
hope in that millions have been spent and more have
(48:24):
been pledged to solve this problem. And on our next episode,
on Part two of Silicon Valley sexism. We're going to
explore how well or sometimes not so well those efforts
are progressing. We'll talk through some of the latest proposed solutions,
the resulting pushback that we're hearing from men, especially a
(48:44):
certain man, a certain manifesto writing man at Google, and
some of the pushbacks that were overcoming as people who
are advocating for gender equality. We also want to make
sure in the next episode to cover how you, yes you,
every single one of us can make a difference and
have an impact to further ensure that tech is a
(49:06):
safe and welcoming space for women's talents and careers to
fully reach their potential. We know this is a barely
one Please stick with us to at the next episode
and we'll we'll learn and grow together tech industry, and
we want to hear what you have to say about this.
If you're a woman in tech like I was for
a while, what's your experienced, But like, if you're dude
in tech, what have you seen? Please get in touch
(49:28):
with us, you really want to hear your stories. You
can find us on Instagram at stuff Mom Never Told You,
on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcasts, and via email at
mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
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Samantha McVey
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