Accidentally in Code

Tag: male allies

  • It’s Not an Asshole Problem—It’s a Bystander Problem

    It’s Not an Asshole Problem—It’s a Bystander Problem

    Arriving to My New Home by aksarnerk
    Credit: DeviantArt / aksarnerk

    A man left an obnoxious comment in a professional document. A more senior man noticed the comment and replied, “<sigh>”, signifying—I think—that he had seen it, and that he didn’t think it was funny. But he didn’t actually address the comment being there, and so it remained there for me to discover several months later.

    I heard on the grapevine that the guy who had made the original comment got a talking-to but not the guy who sighed. It was fine, somehow, to be a bystander.

    I disagree. I don’t think the tech industry has an asshole problem so much as a bystander problem. It is the main thing I ask of would-be allies. Don’t be a bystander. Don’t just sigh. Do.

    I didn’t expect to be a part of this conversation on male allies in the tech industry. For the longest time, all I wanted from men in the tech industry was for them to leave me alone, stop being obnoxious, be nice rather than “nice”, and let me get stuff done.

    I read Lean In and looked around at the women I knew, and I noticed how, for most of us, it “just so happened” that a guy was promoted over them. It “just so happened” that he was the tech/team lead, or the manager. It “just so happened” that we hadn’t been promoted before our projects were killed. After I talked to the few women I knew who seemed to be thriving, I thought about the situations where I had thrived, and I observed a common thread of having a sponsor. Having a sponsor meant having good stuff to work on. It also meant that the obnoxious people, seeing someone looking out for you, mostly left you alone.

    There’s an emotional cost to being pushed around, overlooked, belittled, and called names. I got tired of paying it. It’s time consuming, those grey-area events that you talk over with your friends (“Is that fair?”, “He means well”). Meeting with HR to go through the process of deconstructing every interaction you ever had with someone is time-consuming, draining, triggering, and risky. On top of that, all your actions will be critiqued, and you’re liable to be fired. They are not on your side.

    I used to think that it must be so nice to be a white dude in the tech industry. No one demands your thankless emotional labour for the “greater good” (a.k.a. the pipeline). You aren’t representing your entire sex, fearing that a guy you work with might later say, “Yeah I worked with a woman once, I’d prefer not to again”. You can ask stupid questions. You might get called an idiot or a jackass or an asshole—but not a “dumb bitch” or a “c***”.

    My embracing of the need for male allies stems from—most depressingly—a realisation that the obnoxious ones are never going to just leave us alone. I suspect this is because mistreating women (and other minorities) in the tech industry is such a low-risk–high-reward activity. The risk is low because obnoxious white men appear to suffer almost no social consequences. And the reward is high because, as I’ve observed before, it tends to be incompetent men who play these games, and so there are significant benefits if they can undermine and eventually eliminate their competition.

    So how should male allies help here? It’s other men who have the power to create social consequences. It starts with refusing to be a bystander by calling things out. Ultimately, if men stopped working with, hiring, and funding those men who behaved badly, the effects would be dramatic.

    And I’m tired of pointing this shit out: when I say, “Hey, does it really just so happen that all your leadership is men?” I’m seen as asking for something that would benefit me—even if it wouldn’t. But when a man points that out, he’s seen as offering to give something up, even though he’s unlikely to be called upon to do so.

    Which really is another discussion of social consequences.

    So I came to this concept of male allies, and I saw the value of it. And then… what? Well, we made a bingo card to playfully illustrate some of the ways men can help.

    I’ve also reflected on the price of failure for would-be allies. In an article that Karen Catlin and I wrote, we pointed out some of the shortcomings of Vivek Wadhwa, a would-be ally. And we were criticised for that. The criticism came in two forms: that he meant well and so we shouldn’t have critiqued him, and that he meant well and so we must be wrong. But the way I saw it, if he was really that good, our two paragraphs of mild critique wouldn’t harm him, and our remarks would eventually be shown to have been premature.

    I don’t think the social consequences of being a bad male ally are particularly high, but I can understand the fear of those consequences.

    I came to a point of empathy with the many would-be allies who don’t really know what being a good ally looks like, fearing that they might get it wrong or be accused of white-knighting. Because the truth was that I didn’t really know what a male ally looked like either. Eventually I realised that—like a lot of intangibles—good ally work is often invisible.

    For example, any of these gestures could go unnoticed:

    • If that document’s obnoxious comment had been dealt with at the time.
    • Or if a guy who was researching managers was told, “That guy might be OK, since you’re a white dude, and it depends on whether you’re OK with that”, and he replied, “I’m not OK with that” and went elsewhere.
    • Or if a manager noticed that a guy consistently undermined a woman on his team, and he proactively addressed it.

    The effect of these would probably look pretty small. Perhaps it would look like nothing had happened, because in fact almost nothing would have happened. Instead, something would have been prevented. It’s not as if someone had come in with a cape to save the day. And yet without those gestures, our spirits can be slowly crushed, not unlike the way a river slowly erodes its course. Self-confidence isn’t annihilated in one bad interaction—it’s worn down over time.

    One thing I’ve noticed in myself and other women is that we often trap ourselves in bad situations because we look at the data and say, “Hey, is it really going to be any better elsewhere?”

    But the data tells us what we can expect over the course of a career, not the duration of a year.

    If we think of the data’s findings as not what can be expected but what can be can tolerated, it’s not unreasonable to believe that would-be allies refusing to be bystanders could reduce the (micro-)aggressions within the tech industry and drive up the average tenure of women*.

    Or we could just sigh. And keep longing to be left alone so we could get stuff done.

     

    * Most things about women I think generalise to other minorities, but I have not found any data of retention of other minorities. Also I recognise that leaving the tech industry can be a measure of financial privilege which in the US especially is stark along racial lines.

    Massive thanks to Ari, Brett, Jan, Karen, Marc, Marco, Nat, Phil who proofed and sent feedback, especially to Ashley for her fantastic copy-editing (and educating me about grammar!), and the many others who offered!

    Book links are Amazon Affiliate links.

  • Speaker Notes: Burning Down The Patriarchy

    Speaker Notes: Burning Down The Patriarchy

    Edited notes from my talk at UW Oct 15th which was in part a reflection of what had happened at GHC this year. This is the talk I live tweeted.

    collection of tweets from my talk

    I gave a talk on mobile last week at GHC, and I was feeling a little weird about the level of visibility I was experiencing so I started with a joke, “don’t worry, I’m not going to talk about burning down the patriarchy.”

    And I came off stage and saw these tweets that were like, “damn”, and I always want to take feedback on board. So here’s that talk. You’re welcome to tweet it.

    Sexism in Tech: a Problem?

    Who went to GHC this year? Do you know why we have it?

    We have it because women still make up 20% of software engineers (2012 survey, web dev higher), the experiences we use constantly are built by predominantly men: 17% at Google, 15% at Facebook, 11% at Twitter. These numbers encompass more than software engineers, incidentally, including at minimum UX and PM and often more. We have it because 56% of us leave at the mid-career level. Because 63% of women in STEM report being sexually harassed. Because right now multiple women are being sued because they named the man who assaulted them. Because just last week two women and their families were driven from their homes because of threats to themselves and their families. Because Anita Sarkeesian regularly gets bomb threats when she is scheduled to speak, and today has been silenced due to poor security measures in response to a threat of shooting. Because Julie Ann Horvarth got harassed out of her job at GitHub. Because one of my friends just abandoned Twitter because she couldn’t take the amount of online harassment she puts up with anymore.

    We know that the tech industry monoculture makes for poor products. There is a long and proud history of tech companies shipping products that do not work for large portions of the population. Early voice control software did not work for women. Early facial recognition systems did not recognise black people. The Apple Health app just released without period tracking. And the data shows that more diverse teams innovate more, when measured by things like patent filings.

    It turns out you can’t just, as they say, “shrink it and pink it”, you have to actually think about it.

    It’s actually pretty clear that women have a problem in this industry. But we can say some good things about it.

    1. Firstly, the pay gap is lower than other industries, although make no mistake, it still exists, an average of $6,358 a year. Finance is worse, so you can’t escape this by becoming a banker.
    2. Secondly this year we have seen an openness about the data, and a recognition that the data is really bad. That so many powerful men took time out of their schedules to speak at GHC is a recognition of the importance.
    3. And the third thing is that there is in general a recognition amongst women that in this environment we should support each other.

    Pipelining

    I’m going to talk a bit about why people were annoyed at this panel, but first I’m going to explain what Angry Internet Feminists, of which I count myself a proud member, mean when we talk about “Pipelining”.

    Pipelining means that people in industry look at these numbers and they blame the graduation rate. We don’t hear quite as much about this one, but universities can look at their numbers and blame schools. Anyway this completely ignores the attrition rate. They say, well our numbers reflect the graduation rate, and therefore they are as good as we can do.

    Three major problems with this. Firstly, the graduation rates have been declining for the last 20 years and these companies are not made up entirely of new grads. So this comparison is at best ignorant and at worst intellectually dishonest.

    Secondly it’s a complete disavowal of any responsibility. It’s throwing your hands up and blaming other people, and note, these people have less economic resources. I don’t understand how companies can have numbers on par with the graduation rate and claim to be leading in diversity. There are so many places they are not competing with!

    Thirdly, the common answer to the pipeline being the problem is to send out the female engineers you have and have them evangelise your company and the tech industry. Which just adds thankless emotional labour on to their actual job of being an engineer. There’s this joke that when you’re a female in the tech industry that you get 2 jobs. Being an engineer, and being a female. But you only get paid for about 88% of the first one.

    I have heard many stories of managers saying they don’t like to hire women because their wives don’t like it. I have heard stories ranging from the weird things that will make you second guess yourself, through to stories of sexual assault. Every day women in this industry put up with nonsense that men don’t, and then if they dare to discuss it they risk being harassed, sued, and professionally discredited. In this environment the shocking thing is actually that we hear as much as we do.

    So pipelining was the free square in the middle of the bingo card. Because it’s just a joke that that is what it always comes back to. I like to play a game, when important people give talks and mention diversity, I ask them a question that is specifically not about the pipeline and see how long it takes them to get back to it. It’s a comfortable thing for them to talk about, because the pipeline is all external and requires no difficult examination of their own culture.

    Why People Worried About That Panel

    I’m going to cover a couple of things that made people concerned about the panel. 

    1. The time slot. This was a plenary panel and a keynote. Previous years this is when I’ve seen Sheryl Sandberg, Carol Bartz, Megan Smith, Nora Denzel speak. This year Megan Smith, as CTO of the USA gave a 10-15 minute talk. These timeslots elevate listening to men, and replace listening to women.
    2. GoDaddy. Everyone has heard of their ads. And they are now claiming to be rehabilitated but I think we’d like to see more evidence there. They have done a lot of harm. I think Blake (their new CEO) is well intentioned, but intentions aren’t magic and do not eliminate their previous actions. Sexist marketing materials are an incredibly low bar to step over.
    3. The companies in general have pretty poor numbers. Facebook 15%, Google 17%, GoDaddy at 18%, I couldn’t even find Intuit’s. Someone sent me them  on Monday and they are actually at 27%, which is great. Bank of America won the ABI Top Company for women award this year, none of these companies had. Intel won the year before although they completely shamed themselves over GamerGate right before the panel. If we read much of the material about women in tech to come out of these companies, it’s heavily about the pipeline – I don’t think there’s much evidence that they are innovating there.

    What Happened

    I outlined some of these concerns in a blog post, which got shared widely. A large part of the response was “men needed to be involved in the conversation” which completely missed the point of most complaints that I saw (and had). 

    I decided to live tweet it, and ehashd came up with the hashtag “#ghcmanwatch”. As I was collecting people for the shenanigans, I ran into Alan Eustace who seemed pretty chill about it. I told him I would be live tweeting.

    Then I picked up one of my badass friends and discovered she had bingo cards.

    Then… the live tweeting began. And we made #ghcmanwatch trend. ABI had set another hashtag, I’m not even sure what it was, I think maybe #MaleAllies. Whatever. We took over. We made them come to us.

    The intro to the panel actually mentioned my blog post, which was pretty incredible. If the guys on stage had read it they might have made our game of bingo harder.

    I’m not going to go too much into what was said, because if you’re interested you can read the storify. It was very pipeline. It was very Lean In. They talked a lot about unconscious bias training, but not about evidence that UB training actually works.

    The next day, so random, I get this tweet from Alan Eustace. Who at that point has 40 followers. And he’s organising a reverse “you talk and I listen” panel, and Schrep from Facebook chimes in and says he will be there too. So I amplify it, share it with friends, and show up. I have to rush there because I was giving an interview to ThinkProgress right before it. Blake from GoDaddy is there too. By the time it’s over, the room is full.

    Alan opened by saying that he’d got some feedback and realised he had made a mistake, that the format hadn’t been right, and that it had kept him awake at night. It seemed like a lot of people (women!) who knew him had been in touch to let him know where he had gone wrong. And so they had come to listen.

    So for the next hour, they said next to nothing. As women after woman commented on their experiences in the tech industry. We covered the effects of going to HR, which is not there to protect the individual but the company, the prevalence of bad managers, intent not being magic, the despair felt by the phrase “just work harder”, the words that get used about women, and only women. This was me, trying to recreate the what for me has been a powerful experience I think every year at GHC – where almost every woman in the room admits to being described as aggressive, or abrasive, or some other gendered word that means she tried to stand up for herself and was discouraged from ever doing that again. Hands stayed up when I asked who had been called a bitch. And who had been called the C word by a guy who should have treated them with professional respect. A friend of mine talked about how hard it is for her to keep doing pipeline work, she feels morally conflicted about it.

    And then it was over. After, I had a brief chat with the panelists about online harassment. The economic disparity is a big issue. Men, especially prominent ones, do not get how much they are protected by their status. Women benefit from this, too, I started getting harassed more once I removed “google” from my twitter profile, a month or so before I left.

    Schrep, the Facebook guy, said it had been one of the most useful sessions of the conference, which was really gratifying. I find it funny that he gave me credit for organising, I did a lot of thankless emotional labour in my time in the tech industry that went unnoticed by men in power, and Alan really did the organising. I did (some of!) the hell raising.

    What Should You Do (University Students)?

    1. Take full advantage of the pipelining. It benefits university students and will discontinue once you are in the workforce.
    2. Believe and amplify other women. Men on Twitter have more followers, get amplified more. If you look at your own behaviour you will probably find that you are perpetuating this.
    3. Focus on your own message. I got told – by women! – that I was too angry last week, and also that I wasn’t angry enough. This is in no way a productive discussion. If you think someone’s message could be improved, go ahead and make that your message and try it. Let me know how you get on.
    4. Check your privilege. We talk about how bad women have it in this industry, and we do. But other minorities, trans people, people of color have it much worse. The best thing I did for my thinking on this was read the book Whistling Vivaldi by Claude Steele (Amazon). We have enormous privilege. UW is a very good school. The coop program means you can earn throughout your university degree and graduate with low or no student debt. We live in countries where we can fight for our rights to equal pay, when some women are just fighting for the right to work at all. Other, less noticeable things – how many of you have a parent in STEM? My mom is a doctor, so I grew up with the expectation that I would have a job, that I might earn more than my partner, and that that would be OK. That has tremendous impact.

    What Should Men Do?

    1. I would actually advise men in general not to speak on panels of only men. Don’t speak at conferences with no women on the lineup. My speaker coach who writes The Eloquent Woman blog has a post about evaluating speaking gigs for bias. There is no reason why men can’t use that too. Don’t attend conferences where there are no women on the lineup. Demand that the organizers do better. You can also take the Code of Conduct pledge.
    2. Don’t be a bystander. We hear all the time, I heard this last week, that it’s a small minority of men who do things that actively hurt women. Maybe so, but it’s a large majority that stand by and let it happen. Men need to speak up when they see things happen in front of them, whether it’s shameless objectification of women, offensive words which get used about women and only about women. They need to start speaking up and saying, “yeah great idea bro but I liked it when Susan said it earlier too.” Especially when it’s offensive. There’s this fear of white-knighting, which I think is completely over-stated, but one way to mitigate that is for men to make it about their own feelings. Like, “hey I don’t like it when you use that word to talk about women”. You don’t have to be female to be offended when a man refers to women using gendered expletives.
    3. Look for ways to amplify and sponsor women. Anil Dash challenged himself to only retweet women for a year, which I thought was great. This applies to your team projects, I remember when I was at uni, which wasn’t exactly that long ago, we did this group project. One “girl” was doled out to each team. Along with one AI student, and one business student. At the end of the semester, we presented, and everyone had their role on the team. A shocking number of the women had the title “token girl”. You can shape a better environment for the women around you.
    4. When hiring or promoting, insist that there are women on the committee. This is how you get female speakers at conferences, and how you get women into positions of power.
    5. Be mindful about thankless emotional labour. Offer to take notes. Offer to organise the team event. Never, ever assume that a woman will do it, never assume she’s happy to do it, and never assume she is being appreciated by her manager or other people. Again and again I hear that is not the case. And, if you call out something like that follow up and make sure it is addressed.

     

    We all suffer in a world where we are constrained to behaving in gender- and race- “appropriate” ways and punished when we do not. Some of us more than others, admittedly. But, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said, and Beyonce sampled, “we should all be feminists”. So let’s burn the patriarchy down. Or at least, tweet our dissent until the men in power listen.

  • Tweeting Shit That Men Say

    Tweeting Shit That Men Say

    Background: Last week was GHC, it included a Male Allies panel (live streamed) and a male keynote event (available to watch online). I tweeted a lot (with others) and wrote a couple of things. The Male Allies panel was followed by a reverse “you talk we listen” event. There was also a Male Allies Focus group which I did not attend.

    I often, in conversation with friends, coworkers, strangers, utter the words “I have to tweet that.” Sometimes people know what that means and sometimes they don’t, but they usually agree anyway, and are sometimes surprised by the response.

    Sometimes I don’ t ask. Earlier this year I live tweeted a date with a misogynist. I didn’t ask him for permission, or for forgiveness. I tweeted an unfortunate comment a guy made advertising a conference (“beautiful women” as an incentive on par with “international airport”, who knew?!). And last week I tweeted things that men said at a conference for technical women using the hashtag #ghcmanwatch, some of which were good, and some of which were… not.

    Tone

    I have this rule, that I don’t criticise women or (by extension) women’s organisations. I make exceptions for this, I might vent to a close friend, and if I think something is actively harmful. But it makes me think twice. I thought the Male Allies panel had the potential to be actively harmful, which is why a week before the Male Allies panel I was tweeting and wrote my thoughts up long form in a (widely read, so much so that the panel introduction mentioned it) blog post.

    But, I err on the side of saying nothing. I know, that the things where I feel the very mildest levels of disagreement, where I look at a situation that I have incomplete knowledge of and like to think I would have made a different choice – and note, this is all theory, we don’t know how we would actually react to that situation, are the kind of things that end in death and rape threats.

    No one deserves to be threatened with rape. No one deserves to be threatened with death.

    Not in Afganistan. Not in places where we send soldiers and declare war. Not in America. Not in the UK.

    This should not be the price that women pay for having an opinion. And whilst it is, I just refuse to participate.

    As an aside, and not to diminish being on the receiving end, but looking at the behaviour of harassers… Harassment seems to be a time consuming hobby. I wonder if there needs to be some kind of rehabilitation program that will find these people better things to do. Like… Knitting. Or golf. Things that don’t require an internet connection. I’d say for their own good but I don’t really care about their well being… just think of the social benefit.

    When all this was happening, my mentions on Twitter were completely blowing up, and there was so much engagement. Which is gratifying, but also in this context a little scary. And repeatedly, I noticed, and was pleased, that I didn’t get harassed. I also gave a talk at GHC – about mobile, not burning the patriarchy – and right before I had more notifications and I choose not to read them before getting on stage, on the basis that if there was something that would really throw me. That day I also didn’t moderate blog comments, remembering a particularly vicious one recently, just in case.

    I want to make two suggestions around dialog. The first is a strong suggestion, I wish we could make it a rule:

    Don’t threaten people.

    Put that in your pipe and set yourself on fire (OK), put that in your pipe and I will set you on fire (no)

    The second is to focus on our own voice in the dialog, and our own message.

    Good Feminist / Bad Feminist

    I got critique, and critique is different from threats and harassment, from both sides last week.

    Some people thought I wasn’t angry enough. I don’t know, I think we have a right to be angry. Personally, though, I have heard so much shit from men in this industry that there is little they can say that elicits more than mild surprise and disappointment. I choose to laugh, as much and as often as I can, because it’s a survival mechanism and because I believe in the power of humour to raise awareness.

    Some people thought I was being too angry and mean. These are the people who will say some version of, “You’ll catch more flies with honey.” I don’t honestly know what catching flies has to do with dialog but if someone wants to try that all I can say is good luck, let me know how you get on (sincerely).

    And some people would say, or insinuate, that I was being a good hell raiser, compare me favourably to those other, more “angry” feminists.

    Don’t do that. I might say “fuck” less than Shanley (who seems to continually lambasted as the “bad feminist; I abhor this), but I still want to burn this shit down. I support her right to be angry. I think we benefit from her delivery. I know we benefit from her insight. Whether I agree, disagree or just choose a different way to express it, I always think that she has a point.

    Most people just amplified and thanked me. And I really appreciated their support.

    #GHCManHate?

    The hashtag wasn’t #ghcmanhate. It was #ghcmanwatch. Watch. We have concerns, but we see you. We are watching what is happening, and we are witnessing, and commenting on it.

    The Satya Nadella comments were so ignorant and unfortunate, I was horrified by them, but the rest of the session he had made some good points, declined to blame the pipeline and had taken a significant amount of time out of his schedule to come and experience GHC. He told a story of failing one of his Microsoft interviews, aged 23, because his interviewer deemed him “lacking empathy” in response to the question “a baby falls in the street, what do you do?” I was surprised by his honesty there, and I liked it. And yes, terrible remark about compensation, however Maria Klawe’s calling him out and telling all the women in the audience how and why to get paid what they are worth, and her honesty about her own experiences was amazing. I’m glad her comments happened.

    What a man says in that context is less damaging that what bad managers are saying in 1:1s everywhere, all the time.

    (What he does is another story, I especially feel for every woman at Microsoft who has reported up into him and not felt they were paid equitably. I hope they are working to address this.)

    I was deeply unimpressed by many of the things said by men at GHC. But I have more respect for the man who shows up and says something stupid than the man who never said anything stupid because he wasn’t there.

    Talking to women who are, or were at Google, we shook our head over some of Alan’s comments but we also give him a break because he has been doing this for a long time, because he has done a lot of good internally that we can point to, and because we know because he tells these stories about stupid things that he has said and being called out on it and learning.

    I hope he never gets on stage and tells women just to work hard again. But I hope he does keep on this dialog, and next time makes a different mistake.

    Glass Pedestals

    A different mistake because none of us are perfect advocates, and perfect allies. Some (predominantly white) men said some deeply flawed things to women. But white women at GHC have used that same platform and been deeply flawed with respect to women of colour (one of my favourite sessions in recent years included Brenda Laural deconstructing the promotion materials for that year and how the women of colour were represented), and also to trans women.

    Because my fear is not that men opt out of this conversation, but that they get so PR’d in response to these gaffes that we don’t hear what they really think anymore. Agree, or disagree (and there was much to disagree with!) it’s illuminating [I liked Jocelyn Goldfien’s post on this topic].

    The Red Carpet

    One thing that comes up a lot when I talk with women about the tech industry is that the grief we get almost invariably comes from men who are… not actually competent. I do not fear brilliant men in the tech industry. They have better things to do than screw me over. I fear incompetent men.

    If we say that there are two major factors: being good, and being lucky. The men we heard from at GHC are both good, and lucky. There’s a smooth red carpet laid out and they are storming along it. But what if you’re only good? Edging along the gap between the red carpet, and the abyss. What if you are only lucky? Those people have time (and incentive!) to try and stop people edging past on the outside.

    So when a man says that he doesn’t think people (MEN!) mean to be unwelcoming and don’t actively try to remove women, what he means is that it would never occur to him to do this. He has never needed to. The good and the lucky are often moving too fast to see that that is what is going on.

    And when a man says that it’s mostly “unconscious bias” and not “major issues” they don’t know how much doesn’t get reported, and, I think, negate the long term effects of “major issues” which can send a very strong message to a marginalised employee that they are not safe, they were never safe, they will never feel safe again.

    And what exactly is major here? Because these things have compound effects. Two equally talented and hardworking female new grads join the industry. One of them has a good manager, who mentors, develops, encourages and challenges her. One has a bad manager who gaslights, ignores, and undermines her. While each thing they do might be “unintentional” and due to “unconscious bias” make no mistake there will not be a minor difference between the experiences of these two women, nor between their career trajectories.

    Bearing Witness

    I was expressing my surprise at the amount of attention I’d got to my amazing friend Leigh, because it at times felt a bit surreal. I felt like I barely commented, I just shared, mostly verbatim, what was being said. She told me, “I think there is power in bearing witness”.

    And I thought about this comment in a broader context. Of what the guy from Facebook (Schrep) talked about, watching what his wife had experienced on her way to being a CTO and noting that he hadn’t had to put up with a lot of that stuff on his way to being CTO. One of the most powerful things men can do is bear witness to what happens to the women around them. One of my male friends, he could storm the Red Carpet but prefers to mosey along. And he observed, and commented to me on the difference between the way a guy was treating me (let’s summarise: badly) and how he treating him (weirdly, saying “it’s like he wants us to go on a date”, because he was so intent on leaving me out).

    Empathy

    I just left my corporate tech job which is pretty cool because I’m building something exciting and now I can say what I really think for the first time in years (my friend Olivia’s observation on #ghcmanwatch, “you have really broken free of your corporate shackles”). Although I confess to worrying that #ghcmanwatch had become a career limiting move and that should I want another corporate job I’d probably need to retrain as an accountant or something.

    Anyway, I’d got very tired of the industry, and we have a certain capacity and energy for empathy, and I felt that mine was being used up. Nerdy boys had become interchangeable to me, I could discern very little difference between them other than perceived threat level. And this was a very weird place to be in, emotionally. I do have nerdy boy friends who I am very fond of, and I did build some strong relationships with nerdy boys during this period but it was much, much harder than it used to be.

    So lately I’ve kinda been recharging my capacity for empathy. (aside: Kronda and Adria Richards have been inspiring on the topic of empathy recently).

    No matter how rich and powerful you are, it can be hard to get up on stage in front of an audience of thousands. It can be hard to hear how badly you screwed up and how much you upset people you are well intentioned to help. I have empathy for that. Someone asked me to tell Alan in the #ghcmanwatch take 2 panel that his “just be great” comment had “incited women to despair” and it was frankly horrible to say that to a man that I like and respect. And I saw that it wasn’t nice to hear it, but he thanked me for passing it on. I have empathy for both of us, there.

    There are many men who will never say anything stupid about women in tech. Because they will never say anything about women in tech.

    But I also empathise with women who have not been paid what they are worth. With women who have been given truly appalling career advice. With women who have faced repercussions for speaking up on issues ranging from the weird to the horrifying. For the women who have tried so incredibly hard to “be great” only to be continually stymied by the System.

    We do need to burn this shit down. There are plenty of men who are not listening to the critique, who refuse to acknowledge the suffering of women and other marginalised people. They haven’t noticed, or they are even actively pursuing a different outcome. The men who are actually tuning in, maybe they don’t deserve the very strongest levels of criticism and it will be hard for them to hear. But I believe in their capacity for empathy. I think they can hear the hard truth, and say thank you, and apologise, and make different, better mistakes, next time.

    Social Media and Power

    I think one of the funny things about the #ghcmanwatch series of events was that it was very much a grass roots storm on Twitter, and it took by surprise people who really don’t use Twitter much or at all. Apparently someone asked “Where do we find this Cate?” and got a response of: “Twitter” (I don’t know if the person looking for me found that helpful).

    And I think it must have been interesting, when Alan pulled together the second session, was as a powerful white man, he needed to attract the attention of women in order to get that dialog going. He had to come to where we were, and find us on Twitter. I’m glad he did, and that the second session was packed despite the last-minute nature if it, and people were mostly there from word of mouth.

    It’s a change of pace and a shift in power. Sure, stand on stage, tell us what you think. But we will comment, we will engage, and we will have our own conversation. We raised concerns about the panel, and frankly many of us felt ignored. But once #ghcmanwatch was trending, it was clear that something was going on that they needed to engage with.

    (in)visible

    Personally, my experience at GHC this year was very weird. My interactions were much more online than in person, far, far more so than other years. I felt like when I was walking around I was mostly invisible whereas almost everything I said online was noticed.

    This year I made as many sessions as I could, and saw a total of 9 men on stage, 2 of them men of colour. I saw far more women speak, but less than 30 (including introductions). Which is a lot, but that ratio of 3:1 women : men is much lower than in previous years where it was more like 10:1. I congratulate ABI on getting 483 male attendees, but was the only way to do that to get so many of them on stage?

    I am speaking at a lot of conferences this year. I’ve heard some fantastic talks, learned a lot, met many wonderful people. Given that this is in the tech industry, many of these people were male. Men dominate the conversation in tech, just by numbers, even when they aren’t interrupting or refusing to hand over the microphone. So GHC had been this respite, where I would get to hear what women had to say. But it wasn’t this year, or not in person anyway, even if it was online.

    Now What?

    Shanley’s book, “Your Startup is Broken” is a fantastic read in it’s entirety and includes particularly relevant essays including “What Men Can Do” and “Fuck You Got Mine”. Buy it and read it.

    Julie’s Ally Series is fantastic and useful, including helpful pointers on “Ally Smells”.

    A really good summary by A. V. Flox of what happened with #ghcmanwatch.

    In depth ThinkProgress article, particularly focused on the reverse panel.

  • Male Allies and GHC

    Male Allies and GHC

    strings of a broken heart
    Credit: DeviantArt / DubiousOrchid

    This year will be my 5th year at GHC (Grace Hopper Celebration, the annual conference for technical women from the Anita Borg Institute), my first speaking, and my first in my new post-corporate-job life. It’s been blocked on my calendar since last year, and there has been a long lead time, which means I made the transition from corporate job to independent knowing that GHC was going to be expensive as a result, but deciding that it was worthwhile and not worth delaying the rest of my life over.

    There are a few things that have irritated me about the process for speakers. Mostly, I think, around ensuring that people are prepared. You have to send your slides in advance, and use their slide template, etc. Speakers don’t get free, or even discounted, tickets. Which is fine when you work for Big Tech Company, but as an independent is pricey. Students speaking have loads of scholarships available to them, and universities to sponsor them.

    A common thread I hear from friends is that GHC is for students, or for really senior women (I managed to get into the Senior Women’s forum once, and the women I met were amazing). What if you’re in between? And it’s aimed at companies, because it’s a recruiting machine for women and most tech companies throw money at recruiting more women to the pipeline full of acid rather than actually doing anything about the acid.

    I’ve sympathised, and defended, explained my approach to being pickier about what talks I attend, and making the most of the women that I meet up with every year. I quit corporate feminism over a year ago, so last year I went incognito – I wore nothing branded with the company I worked for, I did not interview, I did not spend time at the booth. This was a different experience than previous years and one that I needed, but I know women at other tech companies where recruiting and being constantly branded is the price you pay for the ticket.

    It’s become harder and harder to defend. And now, there’s going to be a male allies panel, this is the last thing – it is about companies, not about the women who suffer in them. And I’ve been tweeting about this, so here’s my long form take.

    There’s a lot of discussion about women in tech, and there’s this constant refrain of “what about the men” and I am tired of hearing it. It’s not about the men. It’s about women, and other minorities (who have it far worse). The fact that (some) men have made this, like everything, about them is illustrative of the problem.

    The men who get it need to talk to the ones that don’t, and you don’t find many that don’t get it at at a conference of 99% women. Last year, as part of “the Australian contingent”, there were 3 guys with us. They came to listen. And for once, they were the minority.

    I actually agree with Shanley, (I paraphrase), the system is broken and what we need to do is burn the system down.

    But if we’re not ready to burn yet (and with men in charge, will that ever come?) maybe we can keep pushing on the system to make it a little less broken, but this is how we survive, and stay – for now. Within this, there are two separate things: how do we make the line between being a bitch and a pushover wider, and how do we walk it more effectively. Lean In (Amazon) is mostly about walking that line more effectively. There’s space for that, and people who may find it useful, but it’s not the whole story.

    There are different classes of problems in Diversity. Easy is fixing your marketing materials. Easy is throwing money at recruiting.

    Moderate is throwing money internally (training, minority groups), because (some) men will complain “it’s not fair”. Moderate is handling egregiously gendered interactions, sexual harassment, words use to and about women, and only women. The more blatant versions of “get back in the kitchen”, usually served with a side of poor understanding of biology.

    Hard is promoting the qualified woman when there is also a qualified man. Hard is dealing with the more subtle gendered interactions – when he repeats everything she says in a meeting, for example. When she doesn’t get to say anything in the meeting, because he answers everything for her. When he publicly undermines her. Gendered performance feedback.

    Extra hard is taking the woman whose belief in herself has been stamped out of her by all the things that were never dealt with, because they were too hard, finding her a good manager, a good project, and helping her rebuild her self-confidence. Extra hard is being a sponsor, believing in someone who The System has told so loudly she doesn’t belong that she has come to believe it.

    Within this, there are different levels. It’s easy to deal with egregiously gendered things, but do you have to have them pointed out to you or do you notice? The same within the subtle ones.

    Some people are still stuck on the easy problems, but at GHC I’d like to think that we could focus on the hard problems. And the thing about the companies represented on the male allies panel, is there is little evidence to suggest they have moved past the easy ones, and one of them only managed that in the last year.

    Two of them have not released diversity data (although I did get some info in response to this tweet). The other two have 15 and 17% women in tech roles respectively, and do not clarify the definition of tech so it may well be broader than the Eng/UX/PM that has been decried elsewhere.

    Alan Eustace is from Google, and I used to work there so I know that he is a fantastic ally. He’s the only man who I have ever taken advice from on dealing with the emotional toll of women in tech stuff, which is because he is the only man who has ever offered advice on the topic that wasn’t just telling me how to feel.

    But. Even with that, the numbers are terrible. If the experience for women was better, the numbers would be.

    So what is this panel going to be? Is it going to be discussing how you can care so much, and work so hard, and achieve so very little because the entrenched problems are too great?

    Or is it just going to be a celebration of managing the easy things. Of crawling over that exceptionally low bar of sexist marketing materials. Of focusing on the pipeline rather than the women who are already here. Or I should say, at the expense of the women who are already here, because it takes up their time, and corporate feminism takes it’s toll.

    GHC could do better. GHC could do the hard things.

     

    Edited October 2nd to clarify what GHC is.