Tech, Gender, and Egalitarianism

Thoughts on diversity and the importance of acknowledging dissimilar experiences

13 min readOct 23, 2016

Thanks for sharing your story! I’m glad to hear that you’ve had a positive experience as a software engineer in tech.

I’m also a woman in tech, and I know women who’ve had positive experiences, negative experiences, and both — so, it’s great to hear from people on all sides of the spectrum.

It seems like we have different levels of familiarity with this topic. So, I want to address a few of the points in your response, namely that:

The tech gender gap is primarily perpetuated by fear of sexism and negative experiences
Qualified female applicants are rare because women aren’t entering the field in the first place
Sexism in tech doesn’t generally impact women’s careers and isn’t worse than society at large
Tech is generally egalitarian: if you do good work, it will be rewarded equally if you’re a man or a woman

That’s a lot to unpack from a short response, so this is going to go fairly in-depth.

1) What’s actually causing the gender gap?

Is fear of negative experiences contributing to the gender gap?

That’s entirely possible. However, I’ve never heard fear of sexism (as opposed to experiences with actual sexism) cited as a reason why a woman didn’t want to major in computer science.

In general, the reasons cited by researchers for the gender gap in tech include:

The pipeline problem
Sexist hiring practices (e.g. Job listings and hiring practices)
Workplace sexism (including explicit and implicit bias)

The pipeline problem, aka “women don’t choose computer science”

You’re correct that many women simply aren’t choosing computer science. What you’re describing is the “pipeline problem”: the idea that there isn’t enough “supply” of women to meet the industry’s demand. Women in CSE peaked in the 1980s and have been on the decline ever since, with some exceptions like Stanford University — in 2015, computer science was the top women’s major.

Research indicates there are many reasons for the pipeline problem, including:

Disparate computer education at an early age: Computer Science degrees for women have been decreasing since 1984. This corresponds with the time when computer and video game manufacturers began marketing to a predominantly male audience. This led to the cultural narrative that computers were for men, and also the phenomenon where parents bought computers for their sons to play with, but not their daughters.
Perceiving Computer Scientists as geeks: According to an article from the New York Times: “When high school girls think of computer scientists they think of geeks, pocket protectors, isolated cubicles and a lifetime of staring into a screen writing computer code. This image discourages members of both sexes, but the problem seems to be more prevalent among women.”
Undergraduate barriers to advancement: Even as undergrads, women can face obstacles like lack of peer support and mentorship (already a challenge when a woman may be one of few in her major) to outright sexism and hostility from male peers.

Even as undergrads, women in tech can face obstacles like lack of peer support and mentorship. (Tweet this)

But it ends up this is just the beginning of the diversity issue in tech.

Beyond the pipeline problem: hiring bias and workplace sexism

Sadly, the pipeline problem is just the tip of the iceberg. Once women start looking for jobs, they face new barriers. Due to both conscious and unconscious biases, there are other factors preventing women from getting hired.

In her fantastic article on how the pipeline problem isn’t the only tech diversity issue, Rachel Thomas writes:

When men and women read identical scripts containing entrepreneurial pitches or salary negotiations, they are evaluated differently. Both men and women have been shown to have these biases. These biases occur unconsciously and without intention or malice.

She goes on to include examples of unconscious gender bias from studies of entrepreneurial pitches, scientific faculty interviews, job offer negotiations, and more. It’s really illuminating seeing how pervasive implicit bias can be.

Unconscious (or implicit) bias is so pervasive that there’s now even a startup that specializes in resume anonymization. The idea is that getting rid of gender and race markers might level the playing field, at least when employers are evaluating resumes. Unfortunately, it won’t help candidates once they actually get into an interview loop. At that point, their gender (or race, or other minority markers) will be apparent, and unconscious biases kick in.

Meanwhile, Google and many other companies have launched unconscious bias and diversity training workshops to address both hiring and workplace bias. However, the problem is there’s no empirical evidence indicating this training works. Worse yet, in some cases diversity programs can backfire.

Once a woman is hired, she faces a new problem: sexism in the workplace. You mentioned your experiences with workplace sexism, so let’s chat some more about that.

Workplace sexism and the “fight or flight” moment

You mentioned that: “I’ve experienced [sexism], but never in a way that had a real negative impact on my career.” Your experience is completely valid and I’m glad to hear sexism hasn’t negatively impacted your career. However, it isn’t necessarily representative of all women’s experiences.

The LA Times article Why are women leaving the tech industry in droves? describes many women whose careers have been impacted — and even derailed — by workplace sexism and hostility:

Redmond, now 40, didn’t want to leave her tech career. But she felt stuck, with no way to advance. She said male co-workers seemed to oppose her. “It was like they were trying to push me out at every stage,” she said.
[…]
“They just kept asking me to prove myself over and over again,” she said.
As an isolated incident, Redmond wouldn’t have thought much of it. But she noticed a pattern. She said she was often passed up for no apparent reason, and her projects were frequently taken away or dismissed.

And it isn’t just women who notice this:

Wayne Sutton, a partner at BuildUp, a start-up that seeks out companies founded by women and minorities, says he often sees women treated unfairly. He recently watched a woman introduce herself to a venture capitalist only to be told that she should get a job instead of starting her own business “because you’re not going to make it here.”

A Harvard Business Review special report on female “brain drain” in STEM fields found that:

On the lower rungs of corporate career ladders, fully 41% of highly qualified scientists, engineers, and technologists are women. But the dropout rates are huge: Over time 52% of these talented women quit their jobs. Most strikingly, this female exodus is not a steady trickle. Rather, there seems to be a key moment in women’s lives — in their mid to late thirties — when most head for the door.

Meanwhile, Elephant in the Valley, a site dedicated to collecting anonymous accounts from women in tech, has found:

84% of women were told they were too aggressive
66% felt excluded from networking events due to gender
59% felt they haven’t gotten the same opportunities as men
90% witnessed sexist behavior at offsites or events
88% have had questions addressed to male colleagues that should have been addressed to them
87% have had demeaning comments made about them by male colleagues
75% were asked about family life and marital status in interviews
60% have had unwanted sexual advances
…and the list goes on

For further reading on this topic, I also highly recommend Rachel Thomas’s other amazing article: The Real Reason Women Quit Tech.

2) Diversity isn’t an issue of too few qualified candidates

It’s very rare that there are too few qualified candidates to fill hiring requirements. This myth is very nicely deconstructed by Emily Peck in her article on the topic. As she notes, many of the actual issues are:

Failure to prioritize diversity hiring
Hiring employees through existing social networks (which, if employees/executives are already predominantly white and male, reinforces these patterns)
Affinity bias (which is a form of unconscious/implicit bias)

This is true for women at every level, but also for minorities. Only half of minority candidates graduating with technical degrees from top universities are getting hired. Again: this isn’t due to lack of qualified candidates. These candidates are highly qualified. This disparity is due to bias and companies’ failure to seek these candidates out. As noted in the linked article:

Technology companies blame the pool of job applicants for the severe shortage of blacks and Hispanics in Silicon Valley.
But these findings show that claim “does not hold water,” said Darrick Hamilton, professor of economics and urban policy at The New School in New York.
“What do dominant groups say? ‘We tried, we searched but there was nobody qualified.’ If you look at the empirical evidence, that is just not the case,” he said.

3) Sexism is definitely worse than our overall culture — and it’s negatively impacting women’s careers

I’m going to refer you back to the section on Workplace sexism and the “fight or flight” moment.

Women are literally fleeing the tech industry due to hostile work environments. That’s a huge deal. (Tweet this)

For more reading on the topic, I also highly recommend Rachel Thomas’s The Real Reason Women Quit Tech.

An extensive survey of hundreds of books, articles, and white papers concludes that women leave the tech industry because “they’re treated unfairly; underpaid, less likely to be fast-tracked than their male colleagues, and unable to advance.” A study by the Center for Talent Innovation found that 27% of women in tech feel stalled in their careers and 32% are likely to quit within one year; 48% of Black women in tech feel stalled.
It’s harder for women to get promoted for a number of reasons. Women frequently experience being excluded from more creative and innovative roles and instead channeled into less fulfilling execution roles, not receiving high visibility “stretch” assignments, having to prove themselves again and again, and having their ideas ignored until a man makes the same suggestion later.

This is just a tiny portion of it; she’s summed up an incredible body of research, so I really recommend just reading the whole article and the accompanying links.

4) Sadly, tech also isn’t egalitarian

I had a wonderful boss who always liked to say: “Tech isn’t a meritocracy. I wish it was, but it isn’t.” He had repeatedly witnessed how men were given preferential treatment over women. He did what he could to empower his female employees — but he still saw how institutional bias impacted women outside his influence.

From Rachel Thomas’s aforementioned piece on how the pipeline problem isn’t the only diversity problem in tech, the following studies are especially interesting:

In a randomized, double-blind study by Yale researchers, science faculty at 6 major institutions evaluated applications for a lab manager position. Applications randomly assigned a male name were rated as significantly more competent and hirable and offered a higher starting salary and more career mentoring, compared to identical applications assigned female names.
When men and women negotiated a job offer by reading identical scripts for a Harvard and CMU study, women who asked for a higher salary were rated as being more difficult to work with and less nice, but men were not perceived negatively for negotiating.
Psychology faculty were sent CVs for an applicant (randomly assigned male or female name), and both men and women were significantly more likely to hire a male applicant than a female applicant with an identical record.
In 248 performance reviews of high-performers in tech, negative personality criticism (such as abrasive, strident, or irrational) showed up in 85% of reviews for women and just 2% of reviews for men. It is ridiculous to assume that 85% of women have personality problems and that only 2% of men do.

Anecdotally, these kinds of patterns also play out: a friend of a friend created completely identical LinkedIn profiles, one with a male name and one with a female one. I’ll let you guess which one still gets consistently more tech recruiter messages.

Again, I recommend reading the whole article, because it’s truly excellent.

In tech, the cards aren’t just stacked against women, but people of color, too. For example, minorities earn less in skilled tech jobs than their white counterparts. Emilio Castilla, an associate professor of management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, has extensively researched the culture of meritocracy. He says (emphasis added):

The lesson is not that companies shouldn’t adopt merit-based practices but that the pursuit of meritocracy is more difficult than it first appears. If not designed and implemented carefully, merit-based practices may trigger bias against women and ethnic minorities.
Perhaps implicit in companies and industries that pride themselves on being meritocratic is the presumption that they are fair and that they provide great workplace opportunities. However, because merit-based practices are ultimately implemented by managers, there are hidden risks.

A resume study even revealed that “white-sounding” names got 50% more responses than “black-sounding” names.

What do all of these studies tell us? Well, namely that doing equal work doesn’t necessarily reap equal rewards if you’re a woman or a minority. You can have the exact same skills, but you’ll very well be evaluated differently. As much as we would like to believe that tech is fair and equal for everyone, tech is not egalitarian — and it’s not a meritocracy.

So… Why satire?

The goal of using satire isn’t to discourage women from entering tech. It’s about using humor to criticize the industry’s issues. I wanted to escape the preponderance of serious think-pieces while still building awareness and linking to actual research. It’s a sneaky-subtle way of getting people to read about tech diversity when they otherwise might not. (I guess my secret is now out.)

Although I’m as much a fan of a well-written, serious essay as the next person, I’d like to think we can accomplish change with a little sarcasm sometimes — like pointing out how ridiculous it is that hiring bias in tech is a point where we’re now seriously being told to use our initials (so, hey, why don’t we just completely pretend to be men while we’re at it?) We’re regularly being told to fix ourselves to get hired, instead of fixing the broken industry.

I also believe that we should continue to criticize tech, whether that’s through humorous articles or serious ones. Without criticism, how can we continue to change tech culture?

I want to encourage women with honesty and humor

I don’t think honesty about the realities of tech discrimination will discourage women. (Tech is doing a good enough job of that on its own.) And all indications I’ve gotten from women considering tech careers is that they appreciate this honesty.

I’ve spoken on a fair number of panels for aspiring women engineers. By the time I talk to them, they’ve already done their research — they know about tech’s sexism. They’ve read articles (there are an overwhelming number on the topic.)

So, one of the first questions I often get is about sexism: how bad is it? What’s it like? What’s happened to you? But, here’s the thing: most of these women have already encountered sexism at some point in time. They’re not avoiding tech because of it… but they do want an honest idea of what to expect.

Sugarcoating what I say would be disingenuous. So, when I talk to them, I’m forthright: I tell them about my good and bad experiences; about the women I know who’ve had all positive experiences; and how to pick a good company, manager, and team.

I also tell them what I honestly believe: I believe tech is getting better, but that it will take some time. I tell them that I’m optimistic, that it’s possible to find a good place to work, but that we aren’t 100% there for everyone.

The importance of acknowledgement

Your experiences and mine are clearly different—and that’s okay. Individual experiences are bound to vary. Thankfully, we have overall statistics and research studies that we can look at instead.

What these statistics and studies tell us that there are absolutely still issues in the tech industry.

So when you say that something “isn’t remotely true” because you had a positive experience, what that actually means is that it isn’t remotely true for you.

Your positive experiences don’t make other people’s negative ones “not remotely true”. (Tweet this)

I mean, the satire in my original post was over the top, but anything I linked to that had to do with sexism or discrimination generally includes people’s actual experiences.

So… they might not be your experiences, but they still happened to someone. And statistics show that these negative things are happening to a whole lot of someones.

Women are leaving tech because they’re unhappy with the work environment, not because they have lost interest in the work.

Thus, it’s important to acknowledge that discrimination is a very real and serious issue for women, people of color, LGBTQ+ folks, and other minorities in tech. And it’s definitely limiting their careers.

Are there exceptions? Yes, certainly. And we should absolutely be celebrating and elevating positive experiences. By all means, please write about your positive tech experiences — but don’t use them to invalidate the negative ones. That risks minimizing or erasing other people’s experiences — ones that are just as real and valid as yours.

Optimism for the future

You’re right: being a woman in tech is awesome. Being in tech is awesome, period. It means getting to work on cool problems with smart people. Some of the problems you work on have the potential to make people’s lives and the world a better place. That’s seriously amazing.

But that’s also why I want tech to get out of its own way. I’m ready for it to get over itself already. I’m ready for it to get over the sexism and racism and homophobia and transphobia and other bullshit that’s preventing it from being as great as it could be for everyone. At times it breaks my heart, because I love tech’s fun and challenging problem spaces, but I don’t always love tech’s culture.

Ultimately, we’re coming from the same place: encouraging women in tech. But we’ve had different experiences, and I think we have different levels of familiarity with how severe this industry’s discrimination issues are. I think that’s partially due to first-hand experience, partially due to second-hand research.

I’m still optimistic that tech can change… but it seems like it’s happening really, really slowly. Right now even if the pipeline problem improves, tech is driving women out in incredibly high numbers, and that’s a huge problem. Until the industry can staunch that flow, increasing the recruitment of women will not compensate for their mid-career departure.

You don’t have to think my satire is funny, but I do hope this more serious article provides perspective on how serious the industry’s discrimination issues are, even if you haven’t personally experienced them.

Because what bothers me a lot — what bothers me the most — is that this kind of thing is still happening. In 2016. When we should just be focused on saving the damn world already.

Kimberly is a writer and photographer. When she isn’t writing about tech culture, you’ll probably find her traveling or eating.

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