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Tech Crunch founder Michael Arrington argued in “Too Few Women in Tech? Stop Blaming Men” that he and other men already do plenty for women: he has a female CEO, two out of four of his senior editors are women, and he begs and pleads for women to speak at his conferences.
Arrington’s counter-point, an article in the Wall Street Journal, is equally insidious. The Journal reports that Mediaite founder Rachel Skylar “co-founded a group called ‘Change the Ratio’ to shine a light on women in entrepreneurial roles, and to address the dearth of women at start-ups” and goes on to report that technology investor Fred Wilson said “the industry needs catalysts to spark a virtuous circle of more successful women-led tech start-ups leading to more women in tech start-ups.”
Wilson pledges to “write about successful women entrepreneurs and prod conference hosts to include women on panels. ‘Little things like that will make a big difference,’” he says.
Arrington, Skylar, Wilson, and the many, many other opinions in an uproar about this are really arguing the same thing: we need more exposure and awareness around women and tech. Their points of differentiation center on how much exposure will actually move the needle and create an acceptable number of women in tech. But how much or how little is irrelevant.
Women don’t need exposure. We need strategy. We need equality.
Interviewing women and inviting women to conferences and reporting on women-founded start-ups and creating women-focused events and so on and so forth might make everyone feel a bit better and be politically correct, but does little to actually support women. These obvious proof points make it easy for Arrington and Wilson and Skylar to say, “Look! I’m doing my part!”
But women are less likely to advance in their careers despite all this “support.” And that’s because they’re not actively sponsored the way men are, the Harvard Business Review reports. “Many women explain how mentoring relationships have helped them understand themselves, their preferred styles of operating, and ways they might need to change as they move up the leadership pipeline.”
Arrington’s ideas are a good example of such “encouragement”; he argues that women may be too nurturing and risk averse for tech and alludes that changing that behavior is the key to more start-up companies founded by women.
“By contrast, men tell stories about how their bosses and informal mentors have helped them plan their moves and take charge in new roles, in addition to endorsing their authority publicly,” the study says. Men develop a special kind of relationship with other men that goes “beyond giving feedback and advice” and instead has men using their influence to advocate and ensure the success of male friends.
The rules of the old boys club have already been passed down to the young boys and without the key, women have somehow garnered special attention and kid glove treatment. But we need more than well-meaning supporters and intentions.
Just let us play the game on the same field.
To Michael Arrington’s credit, his walk seems to outpace the talk of Fred Wilson and Rachel Skylar. But watching the pendulum swing between who to blame neglects the obvious: equality isn’t about keeping score. That’s what business is for.
See you in the club.
Start-Up Games.
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Comments
09.01.10
Great article. Already commented, but thought you'd want to know I "re-tweeted" this on Facebook and got a ton of response there. Still trying to get my visitors to comment directly on your post though!
09.01.10
Thanks, Sean, that's awesome :)
09.02.10
Thank you for this article. I agree wholeheartedly that what we need is more gutsy (or "ballsy" if you will) action by women to confidently take the lead rather than point the blame at men. As with all things, this is easier said than done. It's counterproductive to blame influential men like Arrington for the lack of women in tech, because we need men to be our allies, to advise us, and promote us, since they are the majority holder.
09.02.10
@ Jamie - I like your comment because is shows just how much it's crucial that women play the game and get involved in the politics of it all. We can't expect to just have things magically happen just because we talk about it. Men play the game, women need to as well.
09.02.10
You know, I always wondered how to get a "mentor." Thanks to Twitter, I have a few individuals I know I can look to for advice, but, guess what? They're men. I think that what women need is an "Old Girls Club." This isn't a women's networking event. It's exactly what the men have, a network of informal mentors. If women could have that informal support, I bet they would climb higher, faster.
I think what prevents us from having that is the awareness that culturally, we are still supposed to be taking care of the family. Women that have decided to put their career on the front burner, at least for now, feel a little outcast, even though we are not. It's a self-imposed stigma.
09.02.10
There are two issues. Why is success defined on numerical terms?
1) Women define success for themselves differently. When you have children, focus for women changes and that's their right. We have perfectly capable and competent women who have changed their priorities so they no longer come up on the radar because they have moved themselves off the screen. This will affect the numbers. Not all women want to continue working after having children.
Realistically how many women are still working with young children because they have to and their lifestyle needs two income. I think a lot.
2) Women don't take actions. Think of all the conferences that you've been to and all the ones organized by women. I get frustrated when I see the large number of jewelry and clothing vendors at a business conference organized by women groups. In fact, if you look at the attendees, they're clustering around those vendors. The vendors are there because it's popular. Women choose their priorities and business is not necessarily one of them. Are they committed or just interested?
Advancing a career or a business to the next level requires work. It doesn't just happen because you believe. You have to actually do something and do it well.
I recently agreed to mentor and help several women. One never got back to me on the day that she was supposed to start with us. We had two executive from other corporations on the conference call that we wanted to introduce her to so she can eventually get the job she wanted with them. That was egg on my face after I had spoke glowingly about her in advance. Needless to say, I will never do anything for her again. In fact, there are about 30 professionals who now know she's a flake because we had to tell people sorry, Ellen won't be handling your relationship.
I have another group of young women that I am helping to build their blog and community. Their commitment in writing to me when they reached out was 3 articles to start.
I had to email them weekly to remind them to send me the articles so I can promote them. So far, only 1 article has materialized out of 8 people in 2 months. Credibility about commitment? Sinking fast.
The article is still horrible after 2 rewrites and I will now have to take time to spend 2 hrs on the phone and explain why it is critical to make an effort to write well when you are guest blogging. It will probably take me 3-4 total months to get ONE acceptable article from 8 women who are working as a group.
Frankly, at this point, I'm about to ask, how much do you really want to succeed?
Are there bias against women? Absolutely in some situations. I'm a female minority and I've had people tell me to my face that they don't want to work with me.
Just get over it and focus on forging ahead. There are plenty of people who are supporting women but they're not going to tow and carry women along. I will say that I've had to do way more work over the years to support women than for the men.
09.02.10
I think individual women in the workplace would do themselves a favor to act in their own best interest, and not assume doing so involves hurting someone else. That is false. What I see with women at work is an uneven focus that centers around relationship building and lacks, as you say in the article, strategy. I think there is a false definition amongst many women about what 'nice' is in the context of business. They think 'nice' means going with the group, being liked, keeping one's mouth shut. In reality, being honest would accomplish what being 'nice' is mistakenly thought to accomplish.
Great article! Thanks for posting.
09.02.10
This is a great post. I started to write a really long comment and then realized I was grandstanding. So I will leave it at that and make sure to credit you when I write a blog post.... :)
09.03.10
@Maren--in the defense of us who like to post long comments, for starters, it's a compliment. Also, the post is linked to a social media site, which runs on discussion. I don't understand your point here. If you want to support this site, you should state your opinion. Am I just arrogant to think this?
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