Since 2010 San Francisco has been my home. Extraordinary possibilities surround us every day, in the land of geek and home to the irreverent. I love what I do and where I do it, for 20 years I have only ever worked in technology. Despite my optimism, however, in the past few years it’s become clearer and clearer to me how all the opportunities here are not manifesting the same way for all of us.
There simply aren’t enough female leaders in technology, especially women of color. Increasing female leadership requires higher visibility and motivation, i.e. women like me to step forward and speak, which it seems like Silicon Valley would be the ideal place to do that. I frequently speak on panels and I love to do it, but recently one of them turned into a strange gauntlet of chauvinistic tribulations.
This post isn’t about calling out individuals at some random blockchain conference, it’s about illustrating the every day issues we as women in Silicon Valley are facing. In chronological order, here’s the play by play.
Ten minutes before the panel
I arrive and talk to the sound engineer. We are using hand-held microphones and not lapel mics, which rules (no wires). I inquire about the battery life as the microphones were already in use during the previous panel (I came by before to scope it out). The sound engineer checked the battery levels, made a battery swap, gave a nod and we were good. Then I email to ask my fellow panelists where they are with a brief description of what I was wearing so they’d recognize me. No dice.
Four minutes before the panel
The moderator finds me and says hello. He is nice and we chat for a bit.
Three minutes before the panel
The previous people from the last panel hadn’t cleared out of the room. They didn’t take the cue from seeing us sit down on stage so I usher them all out politely but firmly.
Two minutes before the panel
One of the other speakers arrived. It’s clear he is inexperienced so I smile and remind him to take off his badge. (Badges don’t look good in pictures.) We exchange pleasantries and he is also nice to me, but with that small hint of skepticism mixed with condescension. “Oh, YOU are into crypto? That’s cool.” This doesn’t phase me, because as a woman in tech I get that a lot. He meant well. Everything is OK, aside from the fact the others were not there yet.
Panel is starting
Third and fourth panelists quickly take their places. There was no time to get to know each other or do a quick hand shake. We do the standard introductions, the moderator reads off our bio snippets. Cool cool cool. Off we go!
Twenty minutes into the panel
There are two speakers who feel a little more microphone hungry than myself and the nice guy, but that’s OK. We’re all pretty fired up about the topic so I smile, I listen. I watch the man next to me stare down at his phone sending texts, emails etc. like he’s not on a stage and while the rest of us are speaking. He’s the type of person who pretends to listen only so he gets the chance to speak again.
Thirty minutes into the panel
A fifth speaker magically shows up and says, “Hey, I think I’m on this.” He sits down at the end with a smug expression, giggling to himself, because he definitely thinks he’s the absolute coolest for being so late. There were no apologies made, in fact he chatted up his neighbor on the end while the rest of us were speaking.
Thirty eight minutes into the panel
Another speaker starts referring to the crypto community as a “circle jerk.” Not once or twice, but three times he clearly repeats “circle jerk” each time more and more sure of his word choice. Simultaneously he starts an increasingly passionate swirling hand motion to help emphasize his commentary (circular jerk-like motion). At this point I’m wondering is this real life? He also posited a theory that everyone in the room got into crypto because “hey we think it’s cool now and nobody in this room understands the tech.” Say what now? …I’ve been into cryptography since the late ’90s when I was using PGP to encrypt my personal emails for fun. For whatever reason I was most offended by the outright dismissal of everyone’s technical knowledge.
Thirty eight and a half agonizing minutes into the panel
I take a deep cleansing breath and look at the faces of women across the room. Some were wincing or looking down. The air feels heavy, my heart feels heavier. It’s in this moment that I realize I’ll probably have to say or do something to address what’s unraveling because nobody else was going to.
The panel horror ends and the Q&A shit show starts
First question out of the gate is directed to me by another woman, which I knew because she said my name. The speaker (who’s been texting) decided he’s answering the question for me. He continues to interrupt as I try to answer. He spends so much energy interrupting me he literally loses his train of thought and starts going “uhhhh.” Utter silence washes over the room and so I offer again to answer the question. He loudly says “no” to me and blathers on about something sort of related tangent that didn’t answer the actual question. It feels like everyone in the room is looking to me, about 100 pairs of eyes, because it’s impossible for me to hide how I’m feeling at that point.
I’d had enough. I take the microphone and open with, “Well now that feminism has taken a step back ten years…” Then I spoke from my heart. I talked about why I fell in love with crypto and why I believe in what it can do for the world. The men on the panel are glaring at me and smiling at each other, but I don’t care. I continue to talk about those who’d been lost or forgotten by society (the unbanked) and how crypto gives them another shot to elevate themselves. The rest is a blur, but the crowd clapped loudly for me. About half of the women (of the 10 in the room) came up and thanked me for saying something, because they were upset, too.
Regardless of what happened at the conference, I love blockchain technology. Blockchain is a vehicle for enablement and accountability, which in turn becomes an equalizing force.
Making sense of it all
For me, the experience encapsulated what it’s like to be a Silicon Valley female executive. You get there first, you prepare the most, while also being more qualified than anyone else in the room. Yet we still have to remind everyone else where to go, how to behave and how to perform- but don’t forget to smile while they talk over you, spewing diatribes about your area of expertise.
As a futurist, business leader and published author I have worked hard to gain the respect of my colleagues and peers. For many years I have struggled to be defiant, but in all the right ways. One of the ways I’ve found my success is by hyper focusing on work and pushing down what I used to tell myself were the “little things.” Little things like repeatedly getting groped by a star client and asking his advisors to help me (they didn’t) or being called “cute” by a board member after a presentation or “unfriendly” for expressing my concerns about performance failures. Deep down I pushed everything into a well of secret despair.
It took a lot of what happened this past year, and the wake of #MeToo to help me realize that these are not normal things.
The easy thing to do and the right thing to do are often divergent paths. One must always consider the long-term career ramifications of speaking out against what’s wrong, but nothing changes when we don’t. The #MeToo movement pierced the veil blanketing our collective hidden pain. We have to stop telling women, “don’t speak out, just move on, nobody will believe you, do you want to ruin your career?” We have only just begun to unpack the ramifications of secrecy as the default solution for handling sexism.
Sexism in Silicon Valley is still prevalent and yes, that means we have to keep talking about it. Silence isn’t the solution, it never was.
