{"id":1552,"date":"2010-08-29T10:13:16","date_gmt":"2010-08-29T17:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.talesfromthe.net\/jon\/?p=1552"},"modified":"2010-08-29T10:13:16","modified_gmt":"2010-08-29T17:13:16","slug":"oh-please-arrington-whines-about-gender-equity-privileged-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/2010\/08\/29\/oh-please-arrington-whines-about-gender-equity-privileged-much\/","title":{"rendered":"Fretting, asking, and begging isn’t a plan: the Arrington kerfuffle and women in tech"},"content":{"rendered":"

also cross-posted on Feminism 2.0<\/em><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\"WWII<\/p>\n

Success in Silicon Valley, most would agree, is more merit driven than almost any other place in the world. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter how old you are, what sex you are, what politics you support or what color you are….\u00c2\u00a0 Statistically speaking women have a huge advantage as entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n

— Michael Arrington in TechCrunch<\/em><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Privileged much? *<\/p>\n

The lastest firestorm about women and entrepeneurship got kicked off by Shira Ovide\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s excellent Wall Street Journal<\/em> article Addressing the Lack of Women Running Tech Startups<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Shira’s article has some fine quotes from Dina Kaplan, Yuli Ziv, and Fred Wilson, and this from Rachel Sklar of Change the Ratio<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Part of changing the ratio is just changing awareness, so that the next time Techcrunch is planning a Techcrunch Disrupt, they won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be able to not see the overwhelming maleness of it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I thought it was a great read.\u00c2\u00a0 But not everybody agreed.<\/p>\n

\"TechCrunch:<\/a><\/p>\n

Every damn time we have a conference we fret over how we can find women to fill speaking slots. We ask our friends and contacts for suggestions. We beg women to come and speak. Where do we end up? With about 10% of our speakers as women.
\n<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh please.\u00c2\u00a0 Fretting, asking, and begging isn’t a plan.<\/p>\n

Yes, it’s hard.\u00c2\u00a0 Stop whining.\u00c2\u00a0 Take some responsibility.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Allyson Kapin’s Stop Playing the Blame Game<\/a>, Ja-Na\u00c3\u00a9 Duane’s 5 Simple Ways to Help Women as Tech Leaders<\/a>, and Jessica Wakeman’s 18 Reasons Your Company Might Be a Sausagefest<\/a> all have some specific suggestions for Michael and TechCrunch — or anybody else who’s working on diversity.\u00c2\u00a0 Here’s my perspective.<\/p>\n

If you really want to make progress, treat it the way you would any other business problem you take seriously. Set goals, put a plan together, hire good people to help you, and do some real outreach.\u00c2\u00a0 Work with organizations like Change The Ratio, Women Who Tech, Anita Borg Institute, GeekFeminism, BlogHer, Fem2pt0, TechMavens, Women 2.0, ASTIA and so on.\u00c2\u00a0 Invite them to guest post regularly on TechCrunch.\u00c2\u00a0 Go to their events.\u00c2\u00a0 Pay a diversity consultant and invest in their recommendations.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Oh and while you’re at it please work on race, age, and other biases in TechCrunch <\/em>and your other enterprises.<\/p>\n

Or not.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s up to you, of course.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you ignore all this input and keep acting defensive, don’t expect people to see you as taking diversity seriously.<\/p>\n

There’s plenty more privilege (along with some sexism and misogyny) in the comment thread.\u00c2\u00a0 More positively there’s some good stuff as well, including perspectives from Michelle Lee of Mamabread<\/a>, Michelle Greer, LToTheWolf, Cindy Gallop of If We Ran the World<\/a>, and many others. \u00c2\u00a0 Women and allies are underrepresented in the thread but more than holding their own \ud83d\ude42 \u00c2\u00a0 There’s also a brief appearance from Fred Wilson, and a great riposte by self-described angry feminist Millercan, who responds to a clueless comment about meritocracy with:<\/p>\n

have been in tech (my guess) since before you were in kindergarten. i’ve been rewarded based on merit. but never as well as men who actually shipped shitty products, or took out 16 million organizations with narcissistic behavior.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There have been some excellent followup posts as well, including from\u00c2\u00a0 Cindy Gallop<\/a>, Michelle Greer<\/a>,\u00c2\u00a0 Jamelle Bouie<\/a>, K. Tempest Bradford<\/a> and Terri<\/a> on Geek Feminism<\/em>,\u00c2\u00a0 Eva Smith<\/a>, Ivan Boothe<\/a>, Laurie<\/a> on Seldo.com<\/em>, Alyson Shontel<\/a>, Kay<\/a> on Feministe<\/em>, clarely<\/a> on Mavenity, <\/em>Helena Stone<\/a>, Fred Wilson<\/a>, and Irin Carmon’s What Do “Where are the Women” Sh*tstorms Achieve?<\/a> in Jezebel.<\/em><\/p>\n

Update, Sept 3: <\/em>Two more excellent posts: Aliza Sherman’s We Aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Blaming Men<\/a> and Sasha Pasulka’s Stop Telling People How They Should Feel About It<\/a> (on Seattle 2.0!\u00c2\u00a0 Go Pacific Northwest!)
\nSept 6: <\/em>But wait there’s more!\u00c2\u00a0 Gayle Laakmann’s Blame Men — And Women<\/a>, Audrey Watters “Ambient Un-belonging”<\/a> Geoff Livingston’s Mindfulness is the Key to Finding Female Speakers<\/a> and Mackenzie’s Finding more women to speak at Ohio LinuxFest<\/a> are all well worth reading.
\nSept 20: <\/em> Links from the Arrington\/TechCrunch women in tech kerfuffle<\/a> has a lot more perspectives, as do the comments here<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
That said, Arrington’s position has gotten some support, too. Here’s what the all-male team at Charles River Ventures has to say on Twitter<\/p>\n

\"charles<\/a><\/td>\n

\"charles<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

I think of articles like this as a fascinating snapshot of how privilege, combined with the “guys talking to guys who talk about guys<\/a>” cliquing behavior, leads to a remarkably convenient blind spot for Arrington — as well as a lot of his readers, and so many other privileged white guys.<\/p>\n

At the same time, though, it’s also a great sign of the momentum that the women-in-technology networks and their allies are making.\u00c2\u00a0 The steady coverage in Fast Company, Mercury News, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other high profile sites, along with the overwhelming evidence, increases the pressure on the “objective” defenders of the status quo.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s getting harder and harder to deny there’s a problem, and that the advantages moving ahead will go to those who address it most quickly.<\/p>\n

So I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more “anxious masculinity under threat” blog posts.<\/p>\n

Something to look forward to!<\/p>\n

jon<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: See Links from the Arrington kerfuffle<\/a> for much more discussion<\/span><\/p>\n

* In fact, most don’t <\/em>agree. Michael presumably knows the data that’s been published in TechCrunch<\/em><\/a> and elsewhere about the superior performance of women-run startup. And yet less than 10% of the successes are by women. Unless you’re sexist enough to believe that women don’t want to run companies or are for some reason less qualified, there’s no way to reconcile this a belief that Silicon Valley is a meritocracy — let alone that women have systemic advantages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you really want to make progress, treat it the way you would any other business problem you take seriously. Set goals, put a plan together, hire good people to help you, and do some real outreach. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[113,182],"class_list":["post-1552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-diversity","tag-innovation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}