The Problem With the Lack of Women in Tech is Men

I was a woman in tech before “woman in tech” was a phrase.

I had my first email address in 1989. It was via Prodigy.

Then, a year or two later, we got AOL. My email was kelly at aol dot com.

(Yes, for those wondering, I kick my ass nearly every day for deleting that account for something cute and trendy, as a 10 year old would.)

Also, when I was 10, I designed my first website. One of many I would learn to code the hard way, via raw HTML and CSS.

When I was 17, I was allowed into clubs in Seattle in exchange for designing their websites.

That year, I also started college. Despite my lifetime of computer expertise, I pursued a Nursing degree. Why? Because during the computer science orientation, I was the only girl; and the professor (or whoever the hell he was) made a misogynistic and sexist comment about how this industry is very demanding and some other words to exclude the female gender.

(I had a similar experience in band in 5th grade; I wanted to learn percussion. I was excluded because of the size of my hand, which was determined by comparing it to the drawing of a MUCH larger hand on the blackboard. Inherently a 9 year old girl was obviously not going to have big hands, so the teacher found a way to ban girls from learning to play a drum. My parents were probably thankful, despite my anger.)

At the University of Washington, I tripped and fell a few times, never quite finding my way academically, eventually earning a BA in Pre-Law. During my time at UW, I watched as social networking emerged; I was one of the first to use Facebook, and I met my first serious boyfriend just a few months before that via a similar network designed by and for the students at our school.

However, when I started at UW, I stopped blogging. I actually stopped developing and designing altogether. I had left the “tech scene” — for what it was — behind entirely in exchange for parties and sleeping.

It wasn’t until 2008 that I picked blogging back up, learning Wordpress, WYSIWYG and the “fake” way of building a website, which was like finding a secret and faster way to bake chocolate chip cookies. I discovered Twitter. I discovered MySpace had died and Facebook was mainstream.

That year, to me, was the emergence of the innocent, perfect, beautiful, hope-driven technology that might make us all better.

Now it’s 8 years later…after finding a career in what I’ve been doing my whole damn life…after literally 1000s of articles about tech….a year and change in B2B tech writing about tech (and learning a lot of things about the reality of tech that scares the hell out of me)…almost six months total in Vegas for conferences (excluding my month of “living” there)…hundreds of nasty comments….too many twitter accounts blocked than I can count due to harassment….and some really cool shit like meeting 50cent, Jake Gyllenhaal, Sir Mix-A-Lot, Macklemore, Hanson, Perez Hilton, the guys from Workaholics, Olivia Wilde, as well as being at some of the most wicked concerts I could ever imagine..and it’s been a wild ride.

It’s also sucked. I’ve considered myself a journalist for the past 5 years. I don’t know when I ditched the term “blogger,” but I think it’s when a high school classmate decided to troll me on Facebook and he announced “Wow, anyone can be a journalist now.”

…Well, yeah.

In diving deep into the west coast tech scene as a journalist — actually, scratch that, a female journalist — I’ve put up with a lot of shit. To cope, I became one of the guy’s guys. Or I allowed someone to make out with me. Or I slept on couches at my CEO’s house “in an effort to save money” when a hotel should have been paid for. In the worst power plays, I’ve been asked to sleep in someone else’s (dirty) bed. (Ok. It was my CEO’s bed stained with bodily fluids. Yes. Ew.) Or booked on flight that left at 5am because, again, “it saved the company money.”

(The reality was the founders were misappropriating the earnings/funding for themselves and blowing it on a house in SF that they paid $8k in rent, several parties a week, etc. I ended up rebooking this flight at my own cost because, fuck that, I have respect for myself and my family.)

I was also asked to manually publish articles at 3am because our Wordpress Installation was somehow very messed up and no one with access to the server would look into it — so again, the lack of respect for me impacted my health, and my family.

I was always paid well. But my career was shaped not by my success, or analysis of how social media shapes us and that “hope” for a better future — but my gender.

And that’s unfortunate. It’s a discussion talked about daily on blogs:

“Why aren’t there as many women in tech as men?”

“There are so many opportunities for women in tech — so why aren’t there more of us?”

“What’s the real reason there aren’t more women in tech?”

The above questions are a few of the top few Google results (articles from reputable publications) when I search for something about “more women in tech.”

There is some general consensus that — as I experienced in both band and in college — it is about exclusion. The majority of employees at tech companies are male, and this majority is more likely at higher levels, meaning female employees in tech are likely to have male bosses and mentors. Inherently, there’s nothing wrong with this, but in a systemic practice, it looks a little sexist. It also drives home stereotypes, which, for a young entry-level female, just drives her to another career. In some ways, it could be extremely problematic when an entire leadership team is male, has never had any type of leadership experience, and now has an immense amount of power. Without any proper mentorship themselves, this can turn into a terrible powertrip, leading to anything from general exclusion to much worse types of harassment or much worse illegal activity.

Personally, this rarely affected me. It did, at times, and I’ve discussed that publicly before. But I’ve had the best of male mentors, and bosses, and they have all held doors wide open for me. I have had literal front row seats at some events that I’m not sure I really should have had access to, let alone sitting next to media from CNN while drinking wine and writing about some startups with, uh, interesting ideas.

I could probably ramble on about some of the men who have been so incredibly kind and gracious over the years, unknowing they broke down some incredible barriers that shaped my career and myself into the person I am today.

And with that, I am terrified other women might be afraid to jump head first into a kiddie pool, as I did, because the rest of the tech field totally sucks.

The rest of the tech field operates like a frat house. Paychecks are skipped, or bounce. Some operate, 10–4, mostly between buzzed or drunk. Drugs and alcohol are so deeply embedded in the culture it’s not unheard of for companies to do “culture fits” at bars. Can you keep up and hold it down?

And to emphasize that men lead this shitshow, there’s the problem that when tech companies (or so, so, so much worse — tech publications) hold a summit or conference, the number of men who speak drastically outnumber the women.

In a blog post about the ratio of women speakers in tech, Phil Sturgeon explains how he used to think that the lack of women speakers was a result of the lack of women in the industry.

But using data from 2012*, he quotes:

“Women comprise 34% of web developers; 23% of programmers; 37% of database administrators; 20% of software developers; and 15% of information security analysts”

*This data is four years old. We can only hope those numbers have only increased.

And that’s only some of the types of tech women work in. I’ve delved deep into the ad tech industry, which isn’t shy of prominent women. Let’s also not forget that in the last month, two major moves were made by women in the tech space; one sale by Marissa Mayer, and one departure by Arianna Huffington.

Should I go on?

When a conference, such as Seattle’s local Geekwire Summit (hosted by the Geekwire tech blog), announced via email that the first batch of speakers include only two women out of 8 total speakers, it’s a concern on multiple fronts; I am concerned about the stigma the conference and Geekwire continues to perpetuate; I am concerned about the lack of effort Geekwire displayed in trying to find/accept more women as equally inspiring and qualified; and how this will impact local women who see this disparity.

Especially those so desperately looking for a reason to choose tech.

I’m so damn proud of my former mentors and teams in Seattle. Those that have looked at their previous conferences, acknowledged it also had a disparity and turned that on its head to feature MORE than 50% women in their next annual conferences. Yes. In the tech space. This same company also created a space for women to live to ensure they can study CS in a safe space. Both companies I’ve worked for in-house are happy to promote women. And both provide ample benefits and accommodations for pregnant and nursing women.

I’ve also been so honored to be invited to host or speak at dozens of conferences, even internationally. I’ve witnessed organizers reach and stretch to include women. I’ve been floored when I was literally hunted down to judge a competition when another female journalist was stuck in an interview, specifically because they needed a female judge. I’ve seen other women in tech be hunted down just the same, flown around the world to talk tech. And those who I know by first-hand account are also young, albeit gifted and brilliant at what they do and know.

As I see it, and have experienced it since I was a little kid, the problem with the lack of women in tech is men, via intentional exclusion.

In the same, I’ve experienced men also opening so many damn doors and making me sit down at the fucking table I feel like I’m in Oz some days. Men that gave me a platform to blog on, men who offered to edit my articles for no benefit but my own, a platform to host YouTube shows on, who allowed me to sit front row at an elite demo conference. The men from down the coast who were kind enough to generously say yes to my invite and listen to my B2B ad tech company’s pitch and tweet about it to literally millions of others in the industry. The men who have invited me to speak, to sit on boards. The men who have offered me a room to teach others. The men who said yes when I pitched them a nearly six-figure media strategy.

And there are so many women that fly under the radar as mentors as well. The women who create conferences that are understated yet with balanced elements of elegance and fun. These teams have put in the time to reallocate sales profits to invite true thought leaders and ensure inclusivity (did I mention being literally breathless during my first round of judging that pitchoff from running across the venue?). One of my favorite conferences now regularly features a power session for women in the evening, featuring some of the most elite women in the industry — and wine, of course. Unfortunately, I can’t thank every woman I’ve known in tech. When I have been laid off — it was by a woman. But I owe it to many of my female mentors and so many friends for also helping me in my career.

….But, to be honest, it was mostly men who helped me. They didn’t create my career for me, or do my job. But they opened more doors, bigger doors, paved most of the paths, and told me where that table Sheryl Sandberg talks about is. And when I was scared to sit, well, I sat. But I’m so very aware I’m an anomaly in this industry. Not an example of the norm…though perhaps an example of what should be.

So if men can cause the problem of the lack of women in tech, and if men can clearly help women create an amazing, mind-blowing career… they can change all of this.

Please, change the ratio.