How To Win The War Against Sexism In Tech

8 min readSep 22, 2014

Last week, I attended a conference on software and tech. The most thought provoking talk was a talk on sexism in tech.

I thought about it for several days afterwards, but not because I felt the arguments held water. On the contrary, I walked away from the talk about how not to hurt women in tech thinking: “This talk is hurting women.”

Sexism in tech is real. It happens. And it happens every day, every hour, everywhere.

We need to collectively accept this as a starting point for constructive change. This writing is directed at readers who believe this statement and want to be a part of the solution.

Some people do not believe and will not agree that sexism is a problem in tech. They’re wrong.

But it’s also wrong for you or me to argue that sexism in tech is an entirely *unique* problem. Sexism in tech stems from sexism in society. We have our own gender problems in tech, but it’s important to separate sexism in tech from sexism in society.

If someone argues sexism in tech isn’t a problem, ask them if sexism in society is a problem. If they say no again, your emotional energy might be better spent somewhere you can sow the seeds of change.

Here are 3 things everyone can and should be doing to help.

1. Skip Sensationalism, Fix Broken Windows

Rape, rape threats, death threats, and hateful speech are attention grabbers.

They have happened. They will happen again. They are terrible things.

But they are not “sexism in tech” problems. They are “jerk” problems and “hateful asshole” problems.

There’s a much more widespread, subtle, persistent brand of sexism that is hurting our industry every day. Male-centric culture, a lack of support for women in the industry, not listening to female peers, dismissing the opinions of women online and in person.

It’s everywhere and it’s probably accidental. It’s committed by men and women alike. It’s committed by our friends, colleagues, and peers who we love, respect. Most importantly it’s committed by people who do not consider themselves sexist and other people do not consider sexist.

It’s not intentionally hurtful, but it’s a part of the problem and it’s something we can all be a part of fixing.

The FASTEST way to push people away is to start the discourse with rape and death threats. It sucks the air out of the room. It’s a crime that elicits such a visceral reaction in people that it eclipses the everyday sexism that hurts us.

It polarizes the world into “sexist rapists” and “not rapist-not sexists” and it makes it easy to say “I’m not a sexist because I’m not a rapist”.

Suddenly an entire group of men who might have been allies and participants in behavioral change no longer look within to be a part of resolving sexism. Now they’re protectors against rape and overt, hateful gender discrimination but blind to the everyday oppression.

The industry doesn’t need convincing that “men shouldn’t rape women” or “we should stop sending death threats”. Assholes need that, and society is already policing that.

Daily sexism is the “broken windows” of the issue. Fixing that makes the obvious transgressions even more unacceptable. Focusing on the attention grabbers makes your talk get remembered, but it also makes it too easy to believe we’re not all part of the problem.

And that hurts women.

2. Use Bulletproof Arguments

Statistics and data can be deceptive. It’s easy to make numbers look better or worse to fit nearly any narrative.

When we build arguments to demonstrate gender inequality, it’s important to build them to be comprehensive and incontrovertible.

Using arguments that can be refuted easily or lack evidence invites critics to dispute claims against gender inequality and gives critics easy excuses to discredit the entire message as flawed.

As an example of a bad argument, let’s look at Google’s recently released diversity report.

The bad headline sounds like this: “Google discriminates against women because the leadership is only 21% female.” (Presumably, the appropriate ratio is approximately 51% female to reflect the population demographics.)

The numbers we have from Google on women are as follows:

30% Overall
17% Tech
48% Non-tech
21% Leadership

It doesn’t make sense to say that Google is doing poorly in the absence of a claim about what the Google’s diversity statistics *should* be.

Let’s see how Google is doing. Admittedly their leadership numbers deviate from the population demographics at large.

Assume we want to evaluate gender bias in their practices for promoting or hiring women into leadership.

A reasonable argument (though not the only reasonable argument) would be to say that their leadership ratio should approximate their population ratio. By that standard, Google seems to be falling short.

But there’s a tremendous skew in gender ratio between their tech and non-tech practices. The employee data given by Google does NOT tell us what percentage of the company is classified as “leadership”, what that means, or what the “leadership” ratios are in the tech practice compared to the non-tech practice.

Why is this important?

It’s possible to construct situations that describe the Google diversity report such that the percentage of women in leadership is the same as the percentage of women in the workforce in both the tech and non-tech practices that exactly reflect the diversity data. If the women leadership in tech ratio is 17% and the total women in tech ratio is 17% would we still be able to indict Google’s leadership promotion practices?

For example:

47,000 Google employees
27,290 tech
19,710 non-tech
4,639 female, tech
22,651 male, tech
9,461 female, non-tech
10,249 male, non-tech
14,100 female, total
32,900 male, total

Everything above this can be computed using published data.

The following are hypothetical data that satisfy the published data AND support a narrative of gender-blind practices for promoting or hiring into leadership roles at Google:

2,350 leadership roles
493 female, leadership
1,856 male, leadership
2,046 leadership, tech
303 leadership, non-tech
145 female, leadership, non-tech
158 male, leadership, non-tech
348 female, leadership, tech
1,698 male, leadership, tech

The above numbers agree with the published Google diversity report and illustrate that it’s possible to have leadership ratios that exactly mirror the employee ratios in each business unit:

17% women in tech
17% women in tech leadership
48% women in non-tech
48% women in non-tech leadership

So is Google doing badly? I don’t know. There simply isn’t enough information available to support or reject that statement.

Is it reasonable? I don’t know. It would mean that 87% of the leadership roles at Google are in tech business units. But would it really be that weird for one of the most technologically driven companies of our generation to have an emphasis in their tech business units and consequently have a higher concentration of leadership roles there?

Do I think this is true? Probably not.

Google probably doesn’t have equal gender ratios in leadership and general population ratios within each group. But the published information is insufficient to unambiguously demonstrate that Google is doing poorly.

Google is under no obligation to give out their full demographic information. We might not be able to get the full picture. But there are plenty of situations where we absolutely *can* provide a comprehensive, irrefutable picture of gender bias.

Building complete arguments requires more work, but that’s the cost of meaningful change. Converting critics won’t be done in soundbytes or 140 character essays.

Weak arguments invite doubt and make it easy for others to argue that gender parity already exists. This hurts women.

3. Make It Easy For Men To Participate In The Discourse

Many men immediately opt out of discussions on gender. One reason this happens is that they are afraid that what they say will be distorted or misinterpreted.

Another reason is that every time they try to get involved, they get shut down and are taught that they aren’t actually allowed to participate in discussions in a meaningful way.

Sexism, the ways it manifests itself, and the emotions around it are nuanced, difficult topics. Genuine interest and questions can be perceived as doubting or invalidating the speaker’s claims.

More than once I’ve seen men try to ask questions and get immediately shut down because “you just don’t get it. you’re a man. you can’t understand since you’ve never experienced it.”

In this situation, sometimes a man is asked to “just be supportive and understanding.” This is sweet, human, compassionate, caring, and sympathetic.

It is also disastrous for the cause of eradicating sexism from tech.

The things a person feels are personal. If any person, man or woman, for any reason feels offended, persecuted, slighted, abused, it’s important to address it and help try to resolve it. Most men will never experience the issues that women in tech face. But creating an environment where everything a man says can immediately be dismissed due to his gender and where anything a woman says is irrefutable makes it impossible for men to participate meaningfully. The only way a man can participate with those constraints is to agree with everything a woman says.

That gets us no further than we are today.

Recommendation #1: For women, this means that any discussions where the ultimate argument is “You’re not a woman” is an unproductive response, and teaches men that they can’t help and their perspectives aren’t valued.

Recommendation #2: For men and women alike, this means that responding to allegations of sexism with “Oh that? You shouldn’t feel … because …” is *always* an incorrect answer format. (Women can be sexist too. Being a woman does not make one exempt from blame in questions of sexism or ignoring feelings.)

Some conversations are hard. This is one of them. Telling men they can’t understand because they’re not women or asking them to unconditionally agree to everything is counterproductive for the cause of reducing gender inequality.

There’s a time for helping someone feel better about a bad situation. This is important and human and compassionate and we should all practice it more. But there’s also a time for honest discussion that helps fight sexism. And you might not be able to soothe a soul and fight for the collective in the same breath.

Creating an environment where men can’t question shuts down discourse, trains them to be sit out the discussion, and hurts women in the long run.

Moving forward

We all think violent crime and hate speech against women is bad. We need that to stop, but the best way to stop it is to focus on subtle discrimination in our daily lives.
Don’t use questionable stories. When you use evidence, use our best, most comprehensive, irrefutable claims. Anything less than that casts a shadow on other clearly legitimate claims.
Don’t punish men for being men. Men will be advocates for women if we all allow it.

“I’m not sexist” isn’t an acceptable thing for anyone to say. We’re all part of a society that perpetuates sexism.

Sexism is everyone’s problem. We’re all part of the problem and we all need to be part of the solution.