The Brotopia Myth
“A lie told a million times become the truth”
In the tech circle we hear time and time again that women are left behind and treated unfairly. One of the biggest lies said in public is that in the early days of computer science, the percentage of women in tech was extremely high and it went down since then, hitting a peak of 40% in the 80s. They say that this was caused by the tech industry not treating women equally. Let’s look at the numbers:
But the numbers tell a much different story. The number of women has varied over time, and so of men. At the early days of the computer science field the percentage of women has varied widely, going up from the 70s to the 80s but the total number of graduates was small in total. The percentage of women went up in the 70s hitting peak in the 80s. Later on, in the late 2000s the percentage went back to what it was in the early 70s.
The argument that is used to claim that the percentage of women is small is that the industry is just looking for socially inept workers, leading the men to be more likely to be hired. The irony is that the argument is based on a stereotype. It seems that making use of stereotypes is ok only when it’s used in favor of the right narrative. When the same argument goes to explain how it is natural for the industry to have more men than women, then that is treated as vicious or wrong.
When the “wrong” side argues that women are different than men they lose their job. But when the “right” side makes the same argument, they get paid vacation to write about it and are praised by the industry.
At the same time, some women have been benefiting widely from this movement, with books and money. When the same people underperform, it’s because of their sex and not because they can’t do their work.
The fact is that if you are a women, you are more likely to get hired by a top tech firm or a VC firm given the same amount of work is not talked about openly, but it is a well known fact.
Mistreating and treating women unfairly is wrong. That doesn’t justify treating certain people unfairly and to give an advantage to a group. The argument is that diverse teams are better than non-diverse teams.But the agenda has never been about diversity. If it was, then we would be fighting for everyone. Is that the case? What about Latinos or Asians? Latinos represent 16.7% of the American population and Asians represent more than 60% of the world population. But how many articles have you read about how few Latino CEOs there are? How many articles have you read on how Asians are treated unfairly? It’s not about equality.
Women should be treated fairly and cannot be in a hazardous environment or mistreated because of their sex. But that doesn’t mean that they should be promoted or hired because of their sex, people should be hired independent of their sex. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
The fact is that we’ve seen this behavior happen before, when a silent majority is suppressed. If liberals don’t listen to the other side and keep pushing an an agenda that disenfranchises the other side, we might see another black swan again. When is the tech industry gonna start treating people equally independent of their sex or color? People are different, but that doesn’t mean that we need to treat them differently. We should treat people equally.
