#sowhoknew: Is Silicon Valley sexist?
Zuckerberg from Facebook. Silbermann from Pinterest. Kalanick from Uber. Spiegel from Snapchat. Notice anything? Apart from being some of the most powerful people in tech? They are all men. And that isn’t just a coincidence according to recent reports in Newsweek, Huffington Post & the BBC – they all claim that sexism is a systemic problem in Silicon Valley. From the tech founders to the venture capitalists and from the engineers to the general workforce it seems the issue is endemic.
The statistics on the subject are surrounded in secrecy but there is some overwhelming evidence to suggest that the tech business is incredibly biased towards men. For example roughly half of America’s publicly traded technology companies, including the likes of Twitter, have boards entirely comprised of men. In software and computing, the proportion of women employed has actually fallen from 34 per cent in 1990 to just 27 per cent in 2011. That ratio is pretty much replicated by the likes of Google, whose own gender split is also around 70:30. And a recent Kaufmann study into entrepreneurship, discovered that of all the key technology companies created pre 2004, only one per cent were founded by women.
Of course there are some incredibly high-profile women in the South Bay area such as Marissa Mayer at Yahoo, Meg Whitman at HP or Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook but these are the exception rather than the rule. It is also true to say that these power broking women came along after the launch of these companies and were not responsible for their launches.
When it comes to venture capital, it has been reported by the Economist that this particular work environment is even more fuelled by testosterone than oestrogen. In a study by Babson College it demonstrated that the percentage of female partners in US based VC firms has declined from 10 per cent in 1999 to just 6 per cent in 2014. In support of that claim, a survey of the top 92 VC firms by Fortune magazine disclosed that only 4.2 per cent of the partners were women.
So what’s the problem here? Some have blamed the situation on the dearth of female tech talent. It seems that women are simply not as interested as men in a degree within the realm of computer or information sciences. In the past 30 years in the US alone the number of women graduating in these disciplines has fallen by more than half.
If that is the case then maybe the snag is partly a supply side issue rather than that of demand. But surely that can’t be the only reason? So another explanation postulated by industry commentators is that of a ‘boys club culture’ – or the ‘Valley of the Dudes’ as it has been dubbed. A domain that is dominated by geeky guys, shaped by frat house style male-bonding rituals and driven by their disproportionate wealth. Its harshest critics have even likened it to an East coast version of the movie ‘The Wolf of Wall Street” replete with sordid tales of debauchery and excess.
In a recent California court case, Ellen Pao was suing her former employer, venture capitalists Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, for sexual discrimination. In her testimony she cited various ‘small indignities’ that women were subjected to – such as being excluded from a high profile dinner with Al Gore because they would ‘kill the buzz’. In fairness though, the jury didn’t buy Ms Pao’s testimony and her claim was not upheld.
Despite her court loss Ms Pao’s case has raised the stakes dramatically and the Valley is getting very jumpy over the rampant claims of misogyny. Satya Nadella from Microsoft, the aforementioned Mr Zuckerberg from Facebook and Intel’s Brian Krzanich have all made public statements committing to genuine diversity and have specifically appointed representatives at their firms to improve it. For example Maxine Williams, head of global diversity for Facebook, is already in the process of realigning their recruitment protocols in an attempt to eradicate any bias. Intel has made a time capped pledge that they will be “fully representative of the diversity of the country’s available talent” by 2020.
Clearly there are still some enduring bastions of male domination in other industries but they have largely been eroded over the years. These industries have ultimately realised that there is an overwhelmingly strong business argument for providing women with equal opportunities. And there is also a moral obligation too. Hopefully now Silicon Valley has had the same epiphany and as the battle for the best talent rages amongst these tech giants they will realise that to neglect half of it is at best naïve and at worst damned stupid.
