A photo of me (center) in Bay Area Musical’s “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” 🎭🎶Photo by Ben Krantz.
In July of 2017, I wrote a post on Medium titled What It’s Like to Be a Woman at a Tech Conference. The article has since been viewed ~64k times, and has become the piece of writing I am most recognized for. Usually if someone says “hey you look familiar” at a conference, I do the pose (😐👍pictured below) mimicking me in a wine cave full of dudes, and they figure it out.
There’s a reoccurring theme that continues to happen to me when I go out with my partner and we happen to strike up conversation with strangers. Be it at dinner, attending a wedding as a plus one, making small talk in an elevator, and even attending a conference as a speaker:
I am rarely asked what I do for a living. 😐
I’ll paint the picture for you- here’s a picture of me and my partner at an event…
Everyone agrees the rant author is a scoundrel. The real question is: how can you avoid having his type in your startup? There are ways.
Sexism is a big tent. It includes sexual harassment like overt unwanted contact, inappropriate comments, sexual advances, and withholding promotions for unreturned affection; it also includes gender-based bias — far more common and far more difficult to label and identify. Each of these two extremes deserve significant attention from companies, but this article is devoted to the latter. Gender-based bias, or ‘Dude-bro’ism’ is a culture of bias that proliferates in tech. Like all outbreaks, prevention is cheaper and easier than treatment within work environments and corporate culture. Prevention begins at the first job interview, but also requires steady maintenance to keep away. This is a guide for prevention.
Not too long ago, I attended my first conference as an engineer. To give a bit of context, before I made my career transition into software engineering, I was a musical theatre performer. Theatre, unlike STEM, is a field that is in dire need of men. Seriously, want to do musicals? Can you kind of carry a tune? Are you a dude? You’re cast! But I digress…
This could be you, dude.
So, imagine my surprise when I attended my very first engineering conference as a woman… it felt a little like this:
Here’s how my inner-monologue sounded:
“So…many…dudes… oh! Is that a woman? Hmmm, no… she’s on the catering team. Oh wait! Is that another one? NOPE just a dude with a man bun.” 😐
If cars can drive themselves and a settlement on Mars is within reach in the next decade, it seems reasonable we could have an awesome environment for women looking to work or start something in tech. But there is daily, if not hourly, proof that we’re nowhere close as an industry.
We believe in the transformative power of technology to change the world at breakneck speed when we put our minds to it. Why is it when it comes to the very same humans who will make it happen, we set our bar so low? My daughter’s preschool demands more of four-year olds in their code of conduct than we’re asking from tech bros behaving badly.
We shouldn’t have to pledge to be decent to each other. If you can’t be decent, hand over your La Croix and get the fuck out.
Know anyone who wants to start a new tech business that makes a big social impact, but who also needs help with finding a great co-founder, time and space to work out the ideas and need expert help to build great new products?
If you do, please let them know they have 2 weeks left to apply to the Zinc Transformer Programme, and please share this post, which tells about the 450 people who have applied already and who could become their future co-founders.
Twice in my career, I’ve left jobs because of gender discrimination resulting in unequal pay. One time I quit. The other time I got fired.
The time I quit, I was part of a gender balanced leadership team. It was amazing. We had a high level of trust and truly enjoyed building a team together. After being part of this team for four years, I learned that a male peer of mine in another department had been making more than me for the past four years, despite the fact that he was running a team of 2 and I was running a team of 65. I also discovered that another male peer of mine was promoted above me in both pay and title, despite having consistently poorer performance reviews than I had had over the years. I was confused. I felt betrayed and lied to. I did go to HR, who did try to help, but no real change came from it. So, I packed my bags and said my goodbyes.
Filmmaker Robin Hauser debuts a teaser for her next documentary
Robin Hauser Director & Producer Unleashed Productions, Inc.
Robin Hauser hit a nerve with the debut of Code, her first feature length documentary on the role of women in technology companies. The reaction to that film drove Hauser to dig into the deeper issues behind bias in our society, and is at the center of her next film, Bias, which is coming out next year. At NewCo Shift Forum, Hauser screened a teaser for the upcoming film, and spoke briefly about her work.
Robin Hauser: Unconscious bias is a huge subject that’s somewhat intangible, so I’ll let you know how I got to now. In 2015, I directed and produced a film, along with a great team of people, called “Code: Debugging the Gender Gap,” about the lack of women and people of color in tech. Initially I thought, “OK, this is a subject that’s going to speak to Silicon Valley, Silicon Alley, maybe Silicon Swamp.”
With men comprising a high percentage of those in the tech space, it can be difficult as a woman trying to compete. Tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Twitter have extremely low numbers of women in their tech roles, and Uber just added their dismal data to the mix. In 2015, women in tech roles at these companies were only 16.6 percent at Microsoft, 10 percent at Twitter and 17 percent at Google. When you look at the numbers in executive leadership roles (not just in tech), only 23 percent of Microsoft’s leadership roles are filled by women, 21 percent at Twitter and 21 percent at Google.
Previously, I wrote about the “Highs and Lows of Women in Tech” to highlight some of the challenges women face in the industry. With thousands of shares, comments and likes, it was clear that it hit a cord in the tech space by highlighting the fact that there is still a lot of work to be done in the industry. As a follow-up to that piece, this covers the major challenges that women face in tech and avenues and advice from experts to address and potentially overcome those challenges.
