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Equality

Equality

Is 2019 a turning point for women executives?

March 8, 2019

On International Women’s Day today I find myself asking could it be that the momentum is finally building to escape velocity? Escape from a world where the majority of corporate power is held by white men? It feels like it.

The new California legislation requiring the boards of companies who have their headquarters in California to have women on their boards may or may not be constitutional but for the first time it is absolutely forcing the conversation. I’ve been raising this issue for many years now and for the first time I feel the wind at my back. I am now getting frequent inbound inquiries asking for suggestions of women I know who would be qualified as board directors, sometimes even from men who have been die hard opposers to the need or benefit of adding a woman (or one woman more than me) to their boards.

As any recruiter who has been working on getting women onto boards for a while now will tell you this is not a supply problem. There are plenty of highly qualified CxOs who are female and interested. It’s been a demand problem, especially when the easiest objection to put up is the director must have prior public company board experience which perpetuates the bias to older men. Now it’s finally changing.

We are also seeing, on the heels of the #MeToo movement, that executives who sexually harass their employees, or have affairs within their company, are no longer tolerated. Even a couple of years ago this was not the case as I saw to my dismay but it’s clear now the objectification of women in the highest corridors of power holds them down. Some of the most senior executives are now being brought down by their failure to respect the women around them. It’s about time.

We have the largest number of women in the Senate and in the House of Representatives in history – potentially energized by our current political environment – but maybe also because women are finally coming into their own politically.

And maybe, just maybe, the toxic conversation towards women that we see at the highest level of our government is the dark just before the dawn. Are women finally reaching into enough levels of power that the resistance to us sharing power is having its last, blustering hurrah?

I choose to believe so.

The movement to put women onto boards is profoundly important. In no way will this lower the quality of directors (as several men have told me) but will instead improve the quality of the conversation and the financial results of the companies. Less group think, less clubby agreeing. More diverse input and, I often see, less of the old and tired conventional input. Women who have made it to the top of their game in 2019 have had to work harder and be smarter to get there – they are often over qualified before they come to the table. If a woman graduated in the 1980s or 1990s I guarantee she has at some point had to out-work and out-smart the men around her to get ahead. The unconscious bias has been powerful and unrelenting but when you meet women directors and CxOs today they are impressive because they have had to be to get to where they are.

I believe, more strongly than ever, that we need to create a world where women have equal opportunity with men. As today’s campaign theme says #BalanceforBetter. Balance so women have equal economic opportunity to make money and lead enterprises. Equal opportunity for political power. This is how we create stronger societies and lasting peace.

And I believe the tide has turned, the momentum is building, and we are entering a world where power can be shared across genders.

Photo: Herculaneum © 2011 Penny Herscher

Equality

Equality as an ingredient for peace: from Gaza to Ramallah to Tel Aviv

February 7, 2018

It’s hard to know if you can make a difference. Small actions, personal actions, can they in some small way change the path to peace? Who knows, but why not do them anyway just in case? Here’s the story of our efforts; the story of WE2, women for economic equality, and our mentoring mission in January 2018.

Early this year I led a delegation of Silicon Valley executive women to Israel, Gaza and the West Bank to mentor women entrepreneurs. As I posted before we left:  “I am more deeply convinced now in 2018, than ever before, that the long-term path to a more sane, peaceful world is equality for women. The research is conclusive. Investing in girls and women transforms economies, and healthy, growing economies are more peaceful.” We were six women from Silicon Valley with a broad set of experiences between us as entrepreneurs, leaders, engineers, lawyers, recruiters and product designers and plenty of experiences, good and bad, to share. Together we believe women achieving economic equality is essential for sustainable peace.

It was an extraordinary experience.

Tel Aviv is one of the great startup success stories with energy and intellect oozing out of every crack in the pavement and second only to Silicon Valley. But even in Tel Aviv startups need help and their statistics for women are bad as ours. Low numbers of female founders, crazy low percentages of venture capital going to women. Frustrating for Israeli women, but the norm in tech, and something we can actively change by mentoring and investing in women. I had done some business plan coaching for female Israeli founders a year earlier and so knew of the hunger for women mentors – and this time I reached out to the non-profit Startup Nation Central for help to put the delegation together – asking first if they thought there was demand.

SNC more than exceeded our expectations of what we could accomplish in a handful of days! We met with hundreds of female entrepreneurs, executives and aspirers through panels, round table coaching sessions and one on ones. We talked about the “hard knocks” of our careers and shared the experiences that we had learned from – such as grasping opportunities before you feel ready, taking risk, becoming a CEO or realizing being fired is sometimes the best thing that happened to you. We met with women board directors of Israeli companies to compare notes on the challenges of being (often the only woman) on boards and with leaders of non-profits working on the role of women in Israeli society.

We learned how even hip and liberal Tel Aviv is patriarchal, of the challenges working in startups or technical jobs while holding to Orthodox rules and the lack of role models for successful female CEOs.  I had naively assumed that since young Israeli women serve in the Army alongside of men they’d both be tough (and I know a few stellar examples) and would have equality opportunity. But not the case. Everyone spoke to us about the elite intelligence Unit 8200 (famous for cyber security excellence and the best unit to be from if you want to do a startup). In 8200 we learned that while the initial numbers of boys and girls joining are equal the gender stats are that the more technical the departments and roles, the lower number of women. Is this because you sign up for more years if you join 8200? Or because the roles are more technical? I doubt it, and no one we spoke to could explain it, but the Israeli women seeking equality for the next generation of technical entrepreneurs are trying to understand the underlying reasons.

Startup Nation Central also made sure we got educated about the politics too, which we appreciated. We listened to, and learned from, community leaders – political, societal and peace makers. It is an understatement to say the politics and history is complex so we chose to listen carefully, not take a position and to simply try to understand better than we did before. Some of what we heard appalled me, some reassured me. We learned a powerful metaphor for the calamity of the peace negotiations which has stuck with me: The Israeli and Palestinian political bodies are like a traumatized divorcing couple who can chose one of two paths. They can try to mutually destroy each other, and destroy the future for their children, or they can acknowledge their trauma and work together to create a future for their children. The metaphor fits the current situation and it is unclear which path will prevail in our lifetimes.

Our experiences in Gaza and the West Bank had very different top-level issues, and yet many of the core issues of being women in business are the same. How to raise money, how to grow your career, how to balance family and work, how to challenge the traditional role of women in your society when you know you can do more!

In Gaza we were hosted by Gaza Sky Geeks which is a subsidiary of the Mercy Corps NGO who arranged our entry. The Gaza Strip is a desperate place where the borders are controlled by Israel and Egypt, you cannot enter and residents cannot leave without a permit, which often is not granted.  Unemployment is 42% in Gaza, the highest in the world and youth unemployment is close to 60%. Poverty rates are high and living conditions are bad. Little clean water, limited electrical power, issues with sanitation, medical care, infrastructure maintenance… you name it it’s hard. And yet, to the great credit of the GSG leadership, the GSG team has built a tech accelerator with its own power and a shared work space for more than 140 young people, men and women, to learn how to code and to start small businesses, taking advantage of the freedom the internet and digital skills can provide. The space is warm, light and full of optimism, like an incubator should be. Volunteers come through frequently (by far the most useful are full-stack developers or people who can teach design thinking) and, like entrepreneurs all over the world, the young people we met with wanted to tell us about their businesses and the challenges they are up against.

Here we mentored both women and men. Some of us taught small classes on early stage product design, some reviewed business plans and worked with the entrepreneurs to find ways around the unique product development and distribution challenges Gazans face (remember the borders of Gaza are closed to all but a very few). The amounts of funding in Gaza are very small, maybe $10,000 to start a business, so it impressive to see how far some entrepreneurs have come on less money than many Silicon Valley startups would spend on frivolities.

We met with young women to share our careers and while our lives in Silicon Valley are, without question, so much easier than those of the women in Gaza, we had plenty of laughter around our shared experiences. The feeling of being overwhelmed and learning how to simply survive every day while your husband, children and job compete for your time, or to survive the judgement by others as to whether you should be a leader or not. But for many of the young women at GSG they not only had all our challenges and more; they are also working two jobs. One is their startup, the other is a paying job to survive. They just do not have the luxury to only work on their startup.

One example is Amal AbuMoailqe, a young woman who is a degreed, qualified mechanical engineer and who is CEO of a Gazan product and consulting company solving engineering problems she and her team sees in Gaza. Here is her product, the Sketch wheel, designed to help get heavy loads up stairs when you have no power. It is said “necessity is the mother of invention.” It is certainly true in Gaza.

We stayed overnight in Gaza City and, unlike when I visited a year ago, we were very limited in what we could do outside the office or the hotel. Tensions are high after America’s stated intention to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and so we were not able to walk around and explore. There isn’t money for maintenance for most properties (water came in under the window and flooded my hotel room floor when there was a heavy storm overnight) but food for special occasions, even in Gaza, is delicious and our hosts took pity on us before we left and took us out for kanafeh – the heavenly Palestinian dessert made of honey and cheese. Sharing the pleasure of food with friends is important, no matter what the situation.

And while in Ramallah there is more physical freedom than in Gaza, life is still very hard for entrepreneurial young women. There we met with students studying computer science and young women in technical and product roles who had so many questions about how to grow their careers. It’s so much harder for women to take risk with their careers in a society with high unemployment. They simply cannot put their current job at risk by applying for a new job, even in the same company. Low unemployment such as we have in tech in the US is a luxury which allows a young engineer to move around and try different roles to see what she most enjoys.

But high unemployment in the West Bank is also unleashing female business creativity. Because it can be hard to get a job, young women are building their own businesses in creative ways. We were also hosted by the Palestinian Business Women Forum where we met, and listened to, a remarkable group of young, female business owners. Traditionally women are not bakers in Palestinian society, and yet we met with three who are breaking with tradition and building bakery businesses. One is even now being hosted in London because of the quality of her desserts. One 28 year old woman had built a food distribution business to get local products from farm to store efficiently and determinedly shared her samples with us to show us the quality of the cheese. Women are organizing travel, designing clothes, using the internet and social media to get their message and products out.

It’s impossible to visit the West Bank and speak with Palestinians living there without feeling the pain of the ordinary people living with check points and restricted movement. As is so often the case the individual Israelis and Palestinians we met want peace. They hold no ill will at the individual level, but politics gets in the way. The emotion is intense and I was deeply moved by a Palestinian friend who, after a dinner we hosted, said to me in shock “I have never hugged an Israeli before” – yes women hug when they are talking about intense subjects.  I do not presume to take a position on the political crisis in the Palestinian territories – I say again this is complicated – but whatever the reasons the human pain and suffering being felt on both sides, for different reasons, is real. We felt honored and humbled to listen to young women’s stories and share, in some small way, our experiences with them. The trip also confirmed for me that I can read all the books in the world, and watch films and documentaries, but I cannot begin to understand until I go on the ground, experience and listen.

So was it helpful to the women we met? We hope so but from two very different perspectives.

First, the closer an entrepreneur was to having her business plan under way, and some level of product in development the more helpful we could be at a practical level. I met with an entrepreneur with a terrific voice analytics technology to diagnose the progression of dementia who needed business presentation advice, and one who has a brilliant idea (and patent) for stroke treatment who needs to talk with VCs with FDA and medical device experience. Advice, brainstorming and connections are things we can provide. Several of us are in follow up sessions on Skype and in person now; on the ground, sharing our practical experience and Silicon Valley resources.

But the second, which we did not fully appreciate beforehand, is that we are existence proofs that women can lead. We prove, consciously or not, that it’s possible and young women told us over and over how exciting it was to hear our stories – which we did our best to make funny and self-effacing. We talked about anger, and fatigue, and lack of confidence – we did not hold back on the reality of being women in the minority swimming against the current. We appreciate, and do not take for granted, how privileged our starting points were and yet the six of us also shared how hard we had to work, how much crap we took from some men around us and how much personal and professional risk we had to be willing to take to get ahead.

Finally, on a personal note, it is so clear to me that it’s time for women to take an equal role in business. It’s unacceptable that company after company, in Israel, in the West Bank, in the United States has all male leadership or maybe one token female executive or female board member. Women are half the population, they are highly educated in many cases, and we now know that when economically empowered they create a more peaceful society. It’s time for women to have economic power, economic opportunity, economic equality. And no more so than in places where peace is so elusive.

Thank you to the Startup National Central, to Gaza Sky Geeks, to the Palestinian Business Women Forum and the Ramallah executives (you know who you are) for organizing and hosting us, and to Indagare for arranging our travel. We self-funded our trip. If you’d like to help the women on the ground come with us next time and/or invest in women led startups in the region.

Here’s my TV interview on our delegation on i24 while in Tel Aviv:

A delegation of female Silicon Valley tech executives & entrepreneurs are helping empower their Israeli & Palestinian counterparts; Penny Herscher & Start-Up Nation Central's Ayelet Tako on i24NEWS English's #TheRundown, with Calev Ben-David & Nurit Ben

Posted by Calev Ben-David on Tuesday, January 16, 2018

 

Our delegation with Israeli community leaders who are advocating for equal opportunities for women

Three of us on a panel in Tel Aviv sharing “hard knocks”

With young women who are building their own businesses in Ramallah

Selfies are a big deal in Gaza Sky Geeks

Two types (Gaza and Nablus styles) of amazing kanafeh. We were hooked!

Photos: Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Gaza City © 2018 Penny Herscher

Equality, Leadership

It’s time for economic equality for women: WE2

January 4, 2018

Sometimes it’s just time. I am more deeply convinced now in 2018, than ever before, that the long-term path to a more sane, peaceful world is equality for women in society. The research is conclusive. Investing in girls and women transforms economies, and healthy, growing economies are more peaceful. But I am not a politician, I am not a Sociologist, I am a tech executive and so I need to practice what I know in order to do my part.

Women, and men, need to invest in women. Invest in education, opportunity, and advice. Put the time, focus and effort in to help women build businesses and careers that give them independence and equality so they can themselves invest in their society. And no more so than in the places where peace and hope and dignity are a daily challenge. Even in Israel, second only to Silicon Valley in startup funding, the statistics for women entrepreneurs are crushingly low.

I held a Salon at our home in the heart of Silicon Valley last Summer on Women Led Startups in Israel and Palestine (I choose different topics of interest to my  network of  SV women 3-4 times a year). The evening was a panel of four women in our garden: two entrepreneurs from Israel, one from Gaza and a Mercy Corps board member who has been focused on Palestine – followed by a discussion and Q&A. It was dramatic, inspiring and very thought provoking. The challenges of building a business as a woman in Silicon Valley have nothing on doing it in the Near East!

WE2 – Women for Economic Equality – was born from that evening. In a moment of passion I asked for volunteers to come with me to mentor women in Palestine and Israel and as a result we now have a delegation of Silicon Valley executive women visiting Tel Aviv, Gaza, Jerusalem and Ramallah in January.

It’s a mentoring delegation. We have a broad set of experiences between us as entrepreneurs, leaders, engineers, lawyers, recruiters and product designers and plenty of experiences, good and bad, to share. Together we believe women achieving economic equality is essential for sustainable peace. We’ll be meeting with female entrepreneurs, executives, VCs, board directors and business leaders, and supported by partners on the ground in each location. We’ll hold panels and small group mentoring sessions, one-on-one coaching and business plan reviews; we’ll share our career learnings and listen to the experiences and resource needs of the women we meet. And we’ll do it in the three, very different, regions of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. We are not political, we just want to invest in women.

Hopefully this is the first of many to different parts of the world where women want to build economic independence (so ping me if you want to participate in the future). And if you want to follow us you’ll find updates on this blog, and on my social media.

Equality

Why, what and really? Yet another surreal week of sexual harassment in Silicon Valley

June 27, 2017 2 Comments

Yet another scandal of sexual harassment is unfolding in Silicon Valley this week, and after several nights lying awake, angry, thinking about the last 30 years, and expressing my ongoing frustration to a group of friends over dinner I was asked by a friend to answer 3 questions:

1. Why this still happens?
2. Are we really surprised that it does?
3. What does speaking up accomplish any more?

First to the news. As has happened thousands of times before a venture capitalist, Justin Calbeck of Binary Capital, sexually harassed women entrepreneurs attempting to raise money from him. But in an extraordinarily brave move 6 women spoke out, and 3 spoke out by name. The allegations were specific enough that despite an initial denial Justin Calbeck has now resigned and the firm no longer has strong support from its LPs. Its days are numbered.

Given that even the most egregious sexual predators don’t want to be publicly outed by the women they hit on, and we live in such a public online world, why does this still happen?

The reason is the incredible imbalance of power that exists in the venture fundraising world. Most VCs are clean cut white men. Most have been very successful financially…. and they think it is because they are smart. Some truly are. Company founders, old school VCs who have bankrolled winner after winner, VCs who are true company builders, but with the huge increase in capital coming into the venture market there are many VCs who got where they are by being in the right place at the right time. They were just lucky to be at a company that did well, they know the right people, they talk a good game and next thing you know they are raising a small fund from LPs who are desperate to find enough places to put their money and share in the phenomenon.

Venture partners get paid a lot of money to administer a fund, and entrepreneurs beat a path to their door to try to impress them. The entrepreneurs struggle to get their deck looked at, struggle to get a meeting, work hard to make an impact and as a result many VCs develop a sense of hubris and superiority. Rude, abrasive… and blend that sense of superiority with sex and you get some men who think it’s OK to proposition young women who are raising money.

The extraordinary generation of wealth going on in Silicon Valley now (and over the last 20+ years) will lead some people to behave badly. Behave badly to get access to that wealth (Uber being today’s poster child) and behave badly abusing their positions of power. Twas ever so when money is being made.

So why are we surprised? I am not. In fact I think in some ways the issue is worse and more pervasive now than it was 20 years ago. The objectification of women in media (see Miss Representation or https://seejane.org if you want to gather statistics on this) continues unabated and so some people forget that the young woman in front of them is not to be sexually objectified.

The prevalence of the bias against funding women should lead to a huge competitive advantage to the partners and firms that DO fund women and ARE gender blind. I get asked so often for a list of VCs who would be truly unbiased I think I need to create the list! If you have a fund that is actively looking for women founders, or have had a great experience with one, send me an email!

But the really tough question here is does speaking out accomplish anything?

I chose not to speak out in the 80s and 90s (and if that makes you angry stop reading here). I became very practiced at simply ignoring the sexual actions – the hand on my knee all through a coffee meeting – the hand on the back of my neck under my hair while talking with me – the stroking of my shoulder – all while I was clearly married. In my head I was made of stone, the action did not touch me, I believed if I simply ignored it and pretended it was not happening it would stop. Most of the time it did. Sometimes I would have to lift the hand off my body. And then sometimes the action would be so aggressive I would get upset and not be able to turn off my anger and I would need to remove myself from the situation before I blew up.

I did not believe speaking up would change anything, and was sure to backfire. Unwanted male attention was my responsibility, and shameful (perchance the influence of the nuns in my middle school). So I was not surprised when the one time I did go to HR for help with the unwanted attention of an executive I was told that if I made a fuss and sued I could get a settlement but my career would be over. Instead they gave me the words to say to get him to back off – turns out he had been warned before (but he was a valuable guy) and they were confident the right language would get the message across. I did, and it worked, but their words “you’ll never work in this business again” stuck with me.

No question the very brave women who have spoken up recently, including Susan Fowler who wrote the blog post Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber, will make local change happen. The situations they call out will change for the better in the short term. I do believe the tactic of brushing the complaint under the rug won’t work now so that is good.

But to get to systemic change in the long run we need to get away from the boys club, to get away from situation after situation being dominated by men, often with no peer-level women in the room. For most of my career I have been the only woman in the room, and often treated as an honorary male. I’ve heard my share of locker room talk, even now, and every time I choose my reaction – usually a blend of humor and outrage – just enough to get the message across without damaging my relationship with the speaker.

I frequently raise the need to have more women on management teams and in the board room, although it often falls on deaf ears, and I have to be careful not to be “difficult” (and I am sure some think I am). But I know for certain that once there are 2 or 3 women in a partnership, or in a management team, or on a board not only do the decisions improve (lots of research coming out about this now) but also the locker room talk and unconscious bias decreases.

I have great confidence that most of the men I have worked with are not sexual harassers, and do not wish to be biased. But we all have unconscious bias and gender bias is one that we are only now really starting to grapple with in the technology industry. The industry is big enough and the bro culture prevalent enough, particularly with many of the new economy companies, that we must deal with it. To do that we need to attract women into tech, help them stay in tech, coach them, promote them and get them into leadership positions in venture partnerships and companies so we can build a better culture in the industry.

So does speaking up accomplish anything? The answer is maybe. Depending on your role sometimes you can make more difference working from the inside. But huge credit to the women that do, and to the men that are outspoken about the need for change.

Equality

Stop talking over me – or Living in the world of Mansplaining

May 13, 2016 Leave a comment

I am not a shrinking violet. I am confident and speak my mind. And yet there is a behavior that, unless I am really determined, makes me go quiet: men aggressively, deliberately talking over me.

I’m in a meeting making a point the prospect does not like. He raises his hand (shows me the palm) and starts to talk in a loud, dominant fashion. He mansplains to me. I listen for a while, then try to politely interrupt, but it’s useless. He’s aggressive, determined to dominate, and rude. The bully in the workplace.

I’m at dinner with a friend. He’s mad about something and is determined to speak over me to prevent me making my case. As I speak he puts his hand out onto my wrist, holds it down and as every time I try to speak he speaks over me. Again and again until I give up. I can’t think of a way to be heard without being downright rude. I get mad. I go quiet (for a moment).

I’m in a board meeting and we’re discussing the need for diversity. And one member insists on mansplaining to me that diversity is not an issue at the company. I’m the only woman in the room, meeting after meeting, but I get explained to me why we don’t need another diverse board member. And when I speak I’m not listened to because he assumes I have an agenda. I do, but it’s the agenda of good governance.

I’m fed up of it, but I know I am going to keep experiencing the behavior. (Some) men trying to dominate women by talking very aggressively isn’t going to stop in my lifetime. So I have to deal. I talk a tough game. 3 years ago I was so mad I wrote a short, cryptic post on a day when only I knew why I was so mad. Titled Enough. But it’s never over. So I just have to put my big boys pants on and stride back out to change the world a little bit every day.

Equality

Do I need to look nice for you?

December 17, 2015 Leave a comment
 I’ve been conditioned from an early age that what I look like to men matters. My mother was one who would put on lipstick at the time she knew my father was coming home from work and, based on 50+ years of conditioning, I have a part of my brain which worries all the time about what men think of how I look.

I had a chance a few days ago to remind myself of just how ridiculous this brainwashing is. It was Sunday and I had spent the whole day in sweats. I’d been to meet my best friend for coffee (she was also in sweats), I’d been to visit Bret’s mom (her Alzheimer’s is so advanced now she is just pleased to see me and doesn’t comment on my looks any more), I’d decorated the house for Christmas with my family and cooked dinner. A typical busy Sunday.

In the late afternoon my husband Bret had been watching the weather and decided to drive to Tahoe after dinner to snowboard; he coordinated with a friend to meet at the house and drive up together. We had roast chickens in the oven and lots of food and so I invited the friend to dinner.

And this is where my brainwashing kicked in. I found myself standing in the kitchen worrying and wondering if I should go and change. I did look like crap, I confess, but I was reasonably clean. Why did I care? Why such a concern that a man is coming to dinner and I am worried what I look like. If it had been a female friend it would not have even occurred to me. And I know for certain the friend did not care.

This sense of the need for women to please men and to worry about what they think is drilled into my brain and even though I am conscious of it now it frustrates me. The continuous voice in my head is perfectly captured in this powerful short video of the things women hear, over and over, throughout their lives that diminish them. Worth a watch whether you are male or female.

I know most of my male friends simply don’t have the same toxic voices in their head – and many of them, my dear husband included, don’t care what they look like 99% of the time. I’m determined to learn a new way of thinking about myself through my own eyes, not the eyes of the men around me.

Equality

Do stereotypes keep women out of tech?

October 12, 2015 Leave a comment

A friend sent me a NY Times article this weekend titled “What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech” and I was struck by how different the current experience of young women is from when I read Maths at Cambridge in 1979.

Yes, then it was unusual. Less than 5% of the Maths class were women in my year. But beyond that it never felt hostile. I never felt like I didn’t belong, or Maths was too hard for girls, or I shouldn’t be doing it. And when I graduated I needed a job and Texas Instruments was willing to teach me how to program so I leapt in with both feet, learned how to touch type, and then learned how to write code. I admit, I was the only girl on the team, and I looked in envy at the TI Dallas software team that had plenty of women in it, and in leadership, but I never felt I did not belong.

The big difference between then, when girls majoring in CS in college was at it’s peak and now, whenthe number has dropped precipitously, is captured in the article:

“The researchers also found that cultural stereotypes about computer scientists strongly influenced young women’s desire to take classes in
the field. At a young age, girls already hold stereotypes of computer scientists as socially isolated young men whose genius is the result of genetics rather than hard work. Given that many girls are indoctrinated to believe that they should be feminine and modest about their abilities, as well as brought up to assume that girls are not innately gifted at science or math, it is not surprising that so few can see themselves as successful computer scientists.”

I simply don’t remember the stereotype of the nerdy young man when I was coming up. CS was not cool, it was not a way to make money back then. To make money you’d go into finance and investment banking. I was the only one of my peer group who went into industry or, as one person said to me at the time in an attempt to put me down, “trade”.

But I can see it now. From Big Bang Theory to HBO’s Silicon Valley (which is so true I simply don’t find it funny) the young, white, male, nerdy, non-showering, stereotype is alive and strong. And we have to change that. Another reason the new film The Martian is so good. It is gender balanced, in both technology and leadership roles; and it follows Gravity which was of similar balance and quality. Something aspiring young female nerds can look up to.

Equality

5 Practical Ways You Can Keep More Women On Your Team

October 9, 2015 Leave a comment
Published in Inc on Oct 5, 2015

At long last, the world is paying attention to the issue of gender
diversity. In May 2014, top tech companies started reporting the dismal
numbers of women in their workforces. When these statistics were
released to the public, a spotlight shone on this disparity, sparking a
conversation on the need for gender equality amongst corporate America.

While
this conversation has been discussed at length in the media and
exhausted by panels at conferences all over the world, the fact remains
that little change has actually occurred. We have a long way to go. As a
new report from Lean In and McKinsey shows, we are more than 100 years away from gender equality in the C-Suite. To top it off, NY Times reports,
the modern workplace is “toxic” and “the ranks of those women still
thin significantly as they rise toward the top, from more than 50
percent at entry level to 10 to 20 percent in senior management.”

It
might have taken 100 years for women to be able to vote in the U.S.,
but it shouldn’t take 100 more years before we achieve gender equality
at the office. If you want your company to benefit from the economic advantage of a diverse team,
there are five actions you can implement at your own company to grow
the number of women on your team. Here are some actions you can take now
to act locally and change the number of women on your team.

1. Women attract other women.

Do
you have at least one, preferably two, of your operational leaders who
are women? “Operational” is an important distinction. There are plenty
of teams where the HR person is a woman, or the communications person
(occupying the pink ghetto), but when you start looking for R&D leaders or P&L managers, the number of women thins out drastically.

What
few people realize is, if you have women in technology and operational
leadership they will attract other women. Women want to see other women
ahead of them in the company they are joining so they have positive
proof that they can get ahead in that company. Likewise, if there are no
women for your younger employees to look up to, you will lose them over
time. Before you say you can’t find them, determine going in that you
will interview both women and men for your open positions. In your
interview process you will find highly qualified women and you will hire
them. These highly skilled women will be magnets for other women
considering your team and open your talent pool up significantly.

2. True, not fake, flexibility.

Many
teams talk flexibility and yet the subtle competition and mindset of
one-upping each other that some teams exhibit can make working flexible
hours feel unsafe for many women. True flexibility means actively
respecting every employee’s wish to get their job done where and when it
works for them. If you can establish a culture where it’s completely
acceptable to call into a meeting if you need to be home or use video to
hold one-on-ones to support a teammate that needs to leave early
(rather than look down on it), you can keep women (and men) on your team
who have to juggle their home responsibilities with their job. But you
have to be proactive and out spoken about your support for flexibility
(provided people get their jobs done of course). Passive support is not
enough.

3. Talk about diversity openly.

It
takes courage to talk openly about your belief on diversity. Many of
your team will agree with you, but some will not, and not everyone will
tell you. I have found that a few men will complain to each other and be
passive aggressive on the issue, but you still need to speak out so the
women and other minorities on your team hear you. There is enough
evidence now that diversity creates better financial results and better
products. It makes no sense to omit 50% or more of the potential talent
from your workforce. By having the courage to speak out, be consistent
and be fair you will keep more women on your team and improve your
company in the process.

4. Invest in your women.

Many
fields are hostile to women, especially technology. Facebook’s Mary Lou
Jepson is just the latest in the long line of women to speak out about it.
Knowing that the workplace can be toxic or hostile, one way you can be
better than your competition at keeping and growing women is your
willingness to invest. Send women to female career oriented conferences
like the Grace Hopper Conference or the 3% Conference. Support them forming Lean In circles.
Speak openly about your wish to see them invest in staying with their
chosen field and find ways to grow within their field rather than
dropping out or moving to a more female friendly industry.

5. Hire a few good men.

There
are many men today who believe strongly in the need for gender
diversity. Their motivations are varied. Sometimes they have daughters
and want their daughters to have every opportunity. Sometimes it’s “just
right.” Other times it is understanding the need to hire the best and
the brightest and not wanting to miss out on half the talent. Whatever
the reason, these male allies are important in the quest for gender
diversity.

Bring men into your team who want to work on a diverse
team. Find men who don’t tolerate prejudice towards women and will
support the advancement of the women on your team. Make a conscious
effort to support these men when they work hard to bring women onto the
team and identify unconscious bias in the people around them.

It’s
time. The dearth of women at the top of companies is not just a
pipeline problem that stems from companies not proactively working to
improve their culture for women. We need to address the culture that
causes 50% of women to drop out of tech within 10 years of graduation
because it’s hostile. They don’t stop working, they just leave tech.
However, you can change the outcome for your team if you work hard to
bring women in and to keep them; your company will be stronger for it.

Equality

Is this the “Ultimate CMO” – or poor research on your target?

June 23, 2015 Leave a comment

See the Ken doll? He was sent to me as the  “Ultimate CMO” – “Every CEO’s dream come true” in a fancy box designed to get me to take a meeting and learn about a marketing service.

Blue eyes, blond hair and khakis – what a silicon valley stereotype! He is male and so he wears “winged oxfords” and an “untucked dress shirt” and his box says “all CMOs contain nuts”. He came in a box from a marketing agency who claim they are category
creators. A small firm run by three men with excellent marketing
pedigree. But they named the agency Play Bigger – focusing on size  perhaps? (my team checked, Ken is actually anatomically androgynous)

Of course this was the joke of the office when it came in given who we are and the gender diversity we have at the top of the company (and we suspect they sent the doll as a lead generation gag without looking us up first). But they achieved their goal with me which was to get me to react. I sent Play Bigger an email sharing my lack of appreciation for the male stereotyping and they asked me for a meeting which I accepted, much to the infuriation of my head of marketing.

But in the end they failed. They booked a time to call me on Friday – and did not call. Even clever, and tasteless marketing campaigns need to follow through with the warm lead or they were just a waste of money.