Category: Women

Categories
Career Happiness Relationships Women

The Loosening of Ambition

I have a horrible memory, but I remember Ryan asking me to move to DC. Sitting next to each other knee to knee, looking away, biting my inner cheek while he explained why his company needed to relocate. I waited, re-forming his words in my brain while he talked, and then, he wants me to come with him, doesn’t think he can do it without me.

I remember Thank You. Relief. Finally. (And hooray big city!) Thank you for taking me away, letting me play big, taking me with you. 

The move, four years ago now, was supposed to be temporary. But it was also supposed to be permanent; you keep up a facade for the sake of transition. Uprooting it all is easier when you think you can come back. I moved to get out of the Midwest where I had lived my entire life, to do the next big thing, and to serve my ambition. Basically, I moved for me. But I also moved for love and for Ryan, more so than I knew at the time.

My job in Madison let me work remotely, which seemed like a good idea then. Who doesn’t want to work from home, especially in a place like DC? I imagined myself traipsing around the city, diving into museums, opening my laptop and leaning back, legs elongated and crossed at the ankles, surveying the people, twirling a pen between my fingers. But I didn’t do those things. And working from home sucked.

I spent most days in a dark apartment we found after viewing twelve places in twelve hours; it was the best out of a dozen, and we signed the lease to have an address for our U-Haul. After we moved in, we realized the windows faced a brick wall. The irony should have alerted me then. In Madison, I thought I was a big fish in a small pond (as much as a young twenty-something could be a big fish). In DC, I wasn’t a small fish in a big pond, it was more like I didn’t exist.

I didn’t get out and meet anyone as I was still tricking myself into thinking we might move back. There was no urgency for me to build a network as I still had my job. And I continued to hold onto the supposed heaven of working from home. Meanwhile, Ryan, whose company situation was precarious before the move (part of the “why” of relocation), was flourishing. You’re not supposed to be jealous of your partner but I was jealous. All of a sudden, everyone knew who he was and all about his company. But no one had heard of the startup I worked for. As time went on, I became increasingly isolated.

Life started to revolve around Ryan in ways I didn’t expect. He passed on speaking engagements he couldn’t or didn’t want to do. Told me about consulting opps from his network. A new job opening from someone he knew. What little career I strung together, I did under his wing. I never imagined myself as the girl who follows her boyfriend across the country, but that’s what I did. I never imagined myself defeated, not knowing what to do next, finding it difficult to get out of the house, intimidated and riddled with anxiety, but that’s what I was.

Sometimes our relationship felt like two bricks tied to my ankles, drowning me in a sea of opportunities. I kept this quiet of course; it wasn’t true, but the weight of my own responsibility was weighted even more with depression. I had the ability to create my future, my present, but chose not to day after day. I oscillated between stuffing down feelings of worthlessness to day-dreaming about starting over on my own alone.

One time I had a job opportunity in New York, something I was really excited about, and got to the final round of interviews. They said I didn’t get the job because the plan to work remotely and travel in between didn’t work. I offered to move to New York temporarily, say for three months, even six, but it didn’t work. And I couldn’t lie and say I would move there for real; we live in DC. And we live here for Ryan’s company.

After, when I told Ryan that I offered to move to New York, he was taken aback. You wouldn’t have really moved, would you? he asked. In my mind: YES. Then I shrugged. Maybe. In my mind: Maybe not.

My choice was largely unconscious over time, but I did prioritize the role of supportive girlfriend, fiancé, and now wife over ambition. And this is what women do. We have careers, we have ambitions, and then love, society, and a lack of vigilance gets in the way.

The ability to have it all, let alone do it all, rests on the supposition that we know what it “all” is, and succeeding in the idea presupposes that we have a choice in the matter, which we often don’t. A modern patriarchy leaves women subtle cues and not-so-subtle mixed messages that layer on top of each other to form a confused haze. We’re left fighting for personal clarity, for the knowledge of what one wants over expectations and transitions, for independence in the midst of love, for careers in the midst of relationships.

I am lucky to have a partner who, when I realized the tiny box I was in and of my own making, allowing myself to be pulled along by the gentle machinations of society, didn’t insist on professions of contentedness or ask, “Why aren’t you/can’t you be happy?” but rather opened up the world and said, this is for you. There is time.

But it’s hard to support your partner and take your own path. Especially when the path isn’t obvious or bumps up against invisible rules or biological clocks (shout-out to love, marriage and the baby carriage!). Unconditional love and support means the ability to fly and be rooted, to gamble and be protected. You get both freedom and security. And while ambition can be amplified in a relationship, a careful watch for its loosening and slipping, then settling, must be kept. Keep a lookout for your mind, worth just as much as his. Vow allegiance to love and independence. Guard your decisions with intention. The world needs the depths and dreams of a woman.

Categories
Knowing yourself Personal branding Relationships Self-management Women

What’s In a Name? Feminism After Marriage

I did not take the decision lightly to take my husband’s name. Many people were surprised (because here, here, here, here and here). But I have always known I would change my name, painful as it was to drop my maiden name Thorman, and its matriarchal lineage.

In my family, the women are the strong ones, and my mother is very strong. Thorman was my mother’s maiden name, which she came back to after divorcing her first husband, and she never married my father, who later died too early. I was first and foremost always my mother’s daughter and always had the name Thorman.

I didn’t always like it, of course. What I had learned to say in the most least offensive manner on my tongue would come out the opposite of sonorous from others. No, it’s not THUR-man. And I would always cringe when -MAN was emphasized. Or THOR-. Or anything that wasn’t a quick passing of two syllables on a person’s lips.

But who likes their name when they’re young anyway? Even my first name became Becca or Becka or Bex and I tried to see if I could be Samantha too. Ah, the eighties. When every young girl wanted to be the beautiful and elegant Samantha, and the fun and friendly Sam for short. Even back then we tried to have it all.

As I grew older, my name meant more to me. Thorman came to represent my mother, and our shared history together.  To lose Thorman wasn’t to just shed a name I grew up with, but a name that stood for strength and unconditional love. Many women keep their maiden name for similar familial meaning. Names are part of our identity, however you cut it.

So I could have kept Thorman and taken “a stand against the family’s historical swallowing up of women’s identity.” Or I could have hyphenated. I could have become Thorman-Healy, or even dropped my middle name and moved Thorman up to make room for Healy at the end. The number of naming conventions is many, if not impractical and confusing.

Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow argues in the New York Times that “the inconveniences [of a hyphenated name] — blank stares, egregious misspellings — are outweighed by the blessing of never having to worry about a Google doppelgänger…. [but] the problem, of course, is that this naming practice is unsustainable.” Growing up, Tuhus-Dubrow constantly fielded the questions, “What will you do if you marry someone else with two last names? Will your kids have four names?”

On Slate’s podcast Mom & Dad Are Fighting (yes, I listen to a parenting podcast; no, we don’t have kids yet), Dan Kois and guest host Hanna Rosin talk about their kid’s last names. Rosin decided to use the combined surname Rosin Plotz for her kids, a non-hyphenated homage to both her and her husband’s name (“Now you can ask me if I regret that decision,” she says. “Yeah! Who wants to be named Rosin Plotz?”), while Kois argues that hyphenated names “feel like a generational Jenga, like somewhere six generations down the line it’s all going to collapse as everything gets piled on top of itself.” Still, he expresses regret that he and his wife decided not to hyphenate their kid’s names at all. “I think that would have been cool,” he says.

And honestly, what’s cool and sounds good often wins out. The path of least resistance is often the most practical, because no one wants to get stuck with the ugly name or a surname seventeen letters long.  

My own decision was a little of that, and a lot about family. I wanted to be known as “The Healys,” I wanted to write “The Healys” on envelopes and I wanted to be secure that our future kids would always know we are “The Healy Family.” I changed my name to create our family identity.

It isn’t about joining Ryan’s family or discarding mine; it’s about creating our own. Some feel the best way to do that is to combine or hyphenate names, to keep their maiden name, to take the woman’s name, or to create an amalgam, while I felt the best way to do it was to take Ryan’s name. There are parts of me that feels pangs for the Thorman name. A name change is never as simple as a few different letters; identity runs deep. And what Thorman represents is still there.

Like I can’t help but cringe when mail arrives addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. Ryan Healy” or “Mrs. Ryan Healy.” I do remain my own person, and I would much prefer to be addressed as “Mr. and Mrs. Healy,” or “The Healys,” or “Ryan & Rebecca Healy,” and certainly “Rebecca Healy” if you’re referring to just me. But I am happy we are a unit.

Together, we’ll create belonging and meaning and tradition. You can create that with all sorts of manners of names, but our identity will be under just one. After two hours at the Social Security office, a twenty-four hour hold, another two hours at the DMV, and fifteen days later, it became official.

I’m still Rebecca, and now we’re The Healys.

Did you decide to keep, hyphenate or drop your surname? How did you and your partner decide? What will you or did you name your kids?

Categories
Notebook Poverty Privilege Women Work/life balance

Why Women are Poor and Jobless

Why_the_Poor_Dont_Work_Census_Gender

The Atlantic wonders why the poor don’t go to work, and shows overwhelmingly that women don’t work for home or family reasons versus any other reason. “Are women staying home because they prefer to be mothers, or because they can’t find jobs that pay enough to make working a financially viable choice, once the cost of family care is factored in?” asks columnist Jordan Weissmann.

This is not a question. Overwhelmingly, we know it’s the latter. In 2011, the average cost for center-based infant care exceeded $10,000 a year in nineteen states and DC. That’s the average. Quality child care is exceedingly difficult to find – the New Republic calls American day care hell – and of course, more expensive.

One new mom I know plans to rent out her rowhouse condo and move back in with her parents. The father isn’t in the picture, but I can’t imagine it would be any different if he was. “Day care is around $1900 a month around here and a nanny is more,” she told me. Child care is only the beginning, however. The total cost of raising a child born in 2012 is an estimated $241,080, and that’s before you send little Jane to college. It’s no wonder that children are now a sign of status.

Got doldrums and dread? Here’s what to do:

  1. Get behind affordable child care.
  2. Women should stop acting like they can do it all. It takes a village.
  3. Everyone else, remember that too; act accordingly.

Women are poor and jobless because they are forced to make crappy decisions. Men too. Let’s stop that.

Categories
Notebook Start-ups Technology Women

Another VC toes the line on meritocracy and innovation

There’s a reason I write a lot about women and tech. And it’s because if women do not take part  in creating our future, we will never be equal. It doesn’t matter if we have parity in every other industry, if we do not have parity at the level of innovation, we will never be equal. We need to have just as much contribution on what technologies and software and industries define our world as white men. 

It’s difficult, of course, when white men are still funding innovation, mostly because they refuse to recognize there is a problem. Nilofer Merchant reports how VC Ted Schlein, general partner at Kleiner Perkins, was recently invited to discuss race and investment in technology:

… all ears were tuned in when well-known VC Ted Schlein of Kleiner Perkins started talking… but Ted denied there was a problem. Despite the story the numbers tell — women receive less than three percent of all venture capital funding, and blacks even less than that — Ted said that the venture capital community was ‘color-blind’ and ‘operates fully on a meritocracy.’ This continued argument disregards the astounding facts that essentially 100 percent of funded founders are white or Asian, and 89 percent of founding teams are all-male.

But we know the technology industry, the current American Dream, is nowhere near a meritocracy. The industry itself is hollowing out the middle class and as one of Schlein’s peers, Sequoia Capital’s Sir Michael Moritz, said just last week, “If you’re not like us, it’s tough.” 

 

Categories
Leadership Podcasts Technology Women Workplace

Does Marissa Mayer have an Ambition Gap?

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has a vision for the company, and we have a vision for her. Does Marissa Mayer have an ambition gap? Listen to the podcast here:

[audio:https://kontrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/MarissaMayerpodcast.mp3|titles=Does Marissa Mayer have an Ambition Gap?]

Transcript of this podcast:

Earlier this month, Comscore released numbers that showed, for the first time since 2011, Yahoo beat Google in traffic; Yahoo’s unique visitors were up by roughly 20% compared to July of last year, when the company came in third behind Google and Microsoft. For Marissa Mayer, it’s a success as one of the most scrutinized CEOs in America.

Hello and welcome to Kontrary, a different take on work and life. I’m Rebecca Thorman. Today, we’re going to talk about Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and vision – first, her vision for Yahoo, and second, our vision for Mayer.

Let’s start with the recent profile in Business Insider, which they describe as an unauthorized biography. You can basically skip over the beginning which is really boring and not well-written at all, and start paying attention once you get to the lower bits about the transition from interim Yahoo CEO Ross Levinsohn to Mayer, and the dichotomy between their two strategies, which is essentially the decision between whether Yahoo is a technology company or a media company.

Marissa Mayer is a product visionary vs. Ross Levinsohn who is a businessman. Levinsohn was the interim CEO from May of 2012 until July 16, when Mayer took over, and was lead to believe he had the job. The strategy he presented to the Yahoo board was this:

Eliminate the majority of Yahoo’s products, increase Yahoo’s EBITDA (a fancy accounting phrase for income) by 50%, cut the workforce down to 4000 employees, and turn Yahoo into a media company. So essentially Levinsohn would be laying off 11,000 employees in order to make Yahoo profitable. From a purely economic standpoint this may makes sense, but it’s really devoid of any heart or inspiration.

Now remember, he’s been told to run Yahoo as if he will be and already is the full-time CEO. So he sends an email to all employees, and it’s this very typical rah-rah email, telling people, “I’m fired up and I hope you are too. I believe in the power of what we’re doing. We have an incredibly talented team, unparalleled strengths in key areas and most importantly, I see the purple pride building everywhere. Let’s move forward quickly with conviction and confidence.” Now, if I were a Yahoo employee, I can’t imagine getting that email one month, and then, if Levinsohn had been installed as the permanent CEO, being laid off the next month, or hanging around as one of the few remaining employees left.

The morale would have totally tanked. The purple pride would have turned black.

Levinsohn’s plan is very similar to the course of action that AOL took as well. AOL was founded in DC, I worked on their campus as part of a startup incubator for nine months in the past year. And I want to describe the campus. When you near the headquarters, there are all these identical buildings in a typical corporate park, and what you come to realize is that they all used to be owned by AOL, but now have the Raytheon logo emboldened on their side, which is a defense contractor. And there’s just one building left for AOL.

And it’s a beautiful building and workplace, to give it credit, and while the lunches aren’t free, the food is great with a lot of healthy options, there’s tons of natural light and so on and so forth. But the feeling at AOL and in the building is very dead. There are whole sections that are essentially abandoned. They’re not even blocked off, just abandoned and anyone can walk through and see the rows upon rows of empty cubicles under a set of dim lights. It’s depressing. And it’s this constant reminder that the company used to be something else entirely.

And I can imagine that Yahoo would have experienced a very similar downturn, and rather than Levinsohn’s plan bucking the system and reinvigorating the company, it would have taken a very long time to recover, because that’s just what happens with change, especially with something as drastic as that.

Levinsohn is a businessman, he’s about the content, and the bottom line.

Now, in contrast, the beauty of Mayer’s plan is that she believes. She believes in Yahoo and she believes in Yahoo products. She wants Yahoo to be a technology company. In the Business Insider piece, they describe how Yahoo employees created posters in the style of the first Obama campaign election, but instead of Obama’s face, Mayer’s face appears with the word Hope inscribed across the bottom.  Think about that. Mayer’s plan is just as drastic as Levinsohn; there will be just as much change, but it’s centered around creating something, instead of tearing something down. Mayer’s vision is about lifting up, instead of giving up.

While some people thought Mayer came off negatively in the Business Insider piece, I really thought she came off as a bit of a hero, or at the very least a compelling leader; her vision has heart and stays true to this notion of innovation, that of going after something larger than yourself or the shareholder’s bottom line.

One of the featured comments at the end of the BI piece actually says:

Yahoo is lucky to have Marissa as CEO. She has done what none of the previous CEOs could do. She has inspired Yahoo employees and [gave] them confidence…

And another:

My high school senior is devouring the article, and hopefully she draws inspiration from a talented and driven Marissa.

And I think that’s how a lot of women feel. We’ve created our own vision of Mayer, and are all looking up or at least over at Mayer to see what she does. She’s become a role model, and that brings responsibility, whether you like it or not.

And with responsibility, comes a lot of pressure. In an article on Time, Charlotte Alter writes:

Mayer still describes her success as almost effortless. ‘It’s not like I had a grand plan where I weighed all the pros and cons of what I wanted to do,’ she told Weisberg, ‘It just sort of happened.’

It’s a misguided attempt at modesty, but it’s the same ‘little ol’ me’ rhetoric that Mayer’s friend Sheryl Sandberg is trying so hard to stamp out. And it’s the same fairy tale reasoning that girls have internalized for generations; girls don’t ‘do’ things, things ‘just happen’ to them.

Pando Daily’s Sarah Lacy responds, first by defending Mayer a bit:

Marissa Mayer isn’t actually allowed to make decisions for herself, her company and her family– somehow we all read those to be decisions she is making for the world.

and then draws a line in the sand:

We’re seriously supposed to believe Mayer just accidentally landed in a top CEO job? … Not owning up to a certain level of ambition is not only disingenuous, but it perpetuates the idea to the young ambitious women reading Vogue that ambition is somehow bad.

Leaders, regardless of their position, are always role models. It is part of the gig, inescapable, just by assuming such a position. While I find it hard to believe that Mayer doesn’t realize this, I also wonder, how far can we go in deciding and assigning responsibility? Our institutional leaders are only human, but man, if we don’t wish them to be more.

While I agree with both Pando Daily and Time, I don’t agree with the people who criticized Mayer’s recent Vogue profile and photo shoot. Is it disingenuous to make judgement on one message and not the other?

To answer that, let me share what Jezebel founder Anna Holmes has to say:

Ms. Mayer’s Vogue profile make me yearn for a time when female competence in one area is not undermined by enthusiasm for another, in which women in positions of power are so commonplace that we do not feel compelled to divine motive or find symbolism in every remark they make, corporate policy they enact or fashion spread they pose for.

I’ll end there. We’ve been talking about Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, the most scrutinized CEO in America, and her vision for Yahoo, and our vision for her. I’m Rebecca Thorman, and this is Kontrary, a different take on work and life, broadcasting from Washington, DC. Talk to you soon.

What do you think? Is Marissa Mayer’s vision for Yahoo the right one? And is our vision for Marissa Mayer fair? Should she try harder or is she doing well?

Categories
Women Work/life balance

Women: Change Motherhood, Not Just the Workplace

In her cover story in the Atlantic, “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All,” Anne-Marie Slaughter proposes workplace changes in an effort to balance the impossible juggle of career, life, and motherhood.

The problem is, there’s still a lot more up in the air.

Slaughter argues women can have it all – assuming that America’s economy, society, and men just get their heads on straight. She proposes we change the culture of face-time in business, integrate family values into the workplace, and regain work/life balance. Such policies, she says, would enable women to find some sanity.

And she’s right, women can have it all, but we can’t do it all. And that’s where Slaughter and other advice from high-powered women executives falls short.

We need to rethink the workplace, but more importantly, we need to rethink motherhood. Women in the workplace is a relatively new phenomenon, and as such, we assess the system’s flaws freely. We safely point out all sorts of places where workplace culture can help us, but no one goes as far to say that we should request help with motherhood. While work woes are considered modern and new, and thus, up for debate and change, motherhood is considered old and sacred, and despite the context of modern times, we still believe motherhood should be practiced in a singular and specific way – alone.

Presumably, we’ve got motherhood down pat if only we could find enough time to do it. But motherhood does not live in a bubble and as work changes, it pushes the definitions of family life. Instead of responding and changing our views of motherhood, we insist on holding onto impossible Madonna-like ideals. Case in point, Slaughter poo-poos rich, career women who rely on round-the-clock nannies, implying that those who use nannies have failed in combining “professional success and satisfaction with a real commitment to family.”

My own mother didn’t have a choice. As a single mom, she worked full-time outside the home to pay the mortgage, put food on the table and provide me an upbringing that wasn’t rooted in poverty. While I do consider my mom a superwoman, she too had her own set of nannies in the form of daycare, after-school activities, and my babysitter Peggy, the neighbor across the street. In contrast, Ryan was raised by two loving parents, dual-incomes, and a bevy of nannies. Incidentally, we both grew up to be pretty amazing people.

The simple fact is that no matter how much you make, what you marry into or the level of your career success, you cannot do it all. Every woman, regardless of class or choices, needs help. The old adage, “it takes a village” often gets paid lip service, but unfortunately we live in an increasingly insular and disconnected society that holds onto the notion that women shouldn’t just have it all, but should do it all as well.

Women are not superhumans, however, and despite trying to do everything ourselves, it’s just not possible. We’re human. Not superhuman, but prone to make mistakes, imperfect, devoid of energy, even love at times. We have feelings and our sole purpose in life is not always to take care of everybody else. Sometimes we need to take care of ourselves.

While we openly discuss the policies that need to happen at a government and career level, we need to openly discuss the changes that need to happen in our family lives as well. We no longer live in a society that allows you to go-it-alone, despite the strongly independent roots of the American Dream, if you want to have any semblance of sanity.

We need to talk about the realities of motherhood, our changing relationships with our partners, and the fact that it’s completely okay to have help – from your nanny or your neighbor, husband or daycare, cleaning person or assistant. Modern life cannot support private nuclear families or picture-perfect lives. Let’s return to our real roots of kinship and community while we advocate for flexible work hours.

You need help, no matter who you are. And the sooner we let go of the ridiculous Madonna-like ideals and notions of motherhood, the better off all women will be, those who want to have it all and those who just want to put dinner on the table.

A Note on Men

Men don’t often get a lot of respect in these conversations, and that sucks. Slaughter begins her piece in the Atlantic with a successful career and an unhappy adolescent son, along with a husband who has a career and the flexibility to be at home with their son as needed. She closes the article with a less successful career (by her standards) and a happy adolescent son, along with a husband that presumably has more free time now that she’s home more.

The insidious conclusion, albeit unconscious I’m sure, is that a woman needs to be home for the full-growth and success of her child. A man with a less demanding career is not enough.

If women are going to successfully change the notions of motherhood, we need to accept that men can help us and that they will be really good at it. Fair’s fair.

Categories
Women

Women in Tech Need to Stop Segregating Themselves

   I don’t particularly like writing about women and tech. It’s uncomfortable. And it makes me uncomfortable. It means sometimes critiquing people that have been nice to me. It also means critiquing an industry that people like. It’s companies like Facebook, after all, not BP.

It also means that because I know and have experienced exactly how the tech industry is covert – and not in a Chuck Bartowski kind of way – that I should somehow know how to navigate the mines. That I should somehow be farther ahead than I am. But I don’t. And I’m not.

I don’t think it’s just me. It’s other women too. They feel uncomfortable. The simple act of writing about women in tech means I’m asking them to define their relationship with tech as more than their roles in PR, human resources, marketing and community management. It’s insinuating that those roles aren’t good enough. That women need to code. That they need to be the founders and visionaries and C-level execs. There is a sense that women don’t want these roles, but really, there is not even an inch – not even a centimeter! – of a clear path to get there.

So, women in tech are stuck on a career roundabout when men logically take the next exits to code, found, and invest. Pseudo-equality exists, but only to satiate the cries for respect and inclusion, not to actually address or eliminate sexism. For instance, the typical response to the lack of women in tech is to form pockets of women, which just adds more turbulence to the discussion: tech blogs publish posts from women about a woman’s role in tech; a tech meet-up features presentations from female-only founders; women form mailing lists for other women to discuss the problem of more women in tech.

In reality, guest posts from women on tech blogs need to be about topics other than themselves. When women are invited to blog on Tech Crunch, they write about women. They don’t write about tech. Last time I checked, however, our knowledge extends far beyond that of ourselves. And, just because a woman is speaking doesn’t mean she speaks for me. I don’t particularly like talking about shoes and I certainly don’t believe that because women love to shop that we control the Internet. And yet, that’s the message so far, twice-over this year, when women take the pen on Tech Crunch.

Without a voice in these places and without access to leadership in others, it seems women are keen to start women-only groups and mailing lists to promote new leadership and get ourselves heard. But while that’s an easy route, it’s not the most effective. Particularly because existing leaders and power-brokers will never attend your meetups and will never join your conversations. We all just end up talking to people like ourselves.

Too many women-only groups exist now to stop them, but really, I don’t disagree with them in theory, just in execution. So here’s a simple solution now: co-plan and co-sponsor your next event. Bring both audiences and decisions-makers together. Invite a man to your Google Group in exchange for a seat at his CEO breakfast. Separate interests are well and good, but not when you silo dialogue and interaction.

And that’s doubly and triply true at tech events. The segregation of women and men on stage needs to stop. So, if you organize an event an like the DC Tech Meetup and you get complaints about the persistence of your all-male panels, your response should not be to create an all-female panel.

There are no make-up tests for equality. You can’t just show up with all the available women in one room and expect a gold star. It is far less important to see all the women in tech at once than it is to see all the women in tech as speakers over time consistently and often. There are a minority of women in tech (for reasons we’ve talked so far about here and here), but that doesn’t beget special gloves. Such an event is unavoidably condescending, and it also means you won’t have any women for your next event; the cycle of men on stage continues.

(Case in point, of the seventeen speakers and panelists scheduled at yesterday’s DC Tech Meetup, the event following their all-female panel, only one was a woman. That’s not good enough.)

I don’t think that the majority of men, or women for that matter, are intentionally holding women back and fencing them out of the tech industry. But no one is being particularly smart about the issue either. It seems everyone is throwing spaghetti on the cupboard to see what sticks. But we can do better. This is start-up land, after all. We know how to test and evaluate, to solve problems and find solutions. And we already know, the only way to have enough people working on the big problems, is to solve this little one.

Categories
Women

The Buck Stops With Generation Z

Gender inequality exists, but only in the workplace. Young women grow up believing in equality, but when she enters the workplace, she hits a brick wall.  That will stop when Generation Z joins the workforce. Not because gendered roles will somehow evolve in the next decade, but because technology will.

Generation Z is the most technologically immersed and advanced generation ever. They are known as “digital natives”  because they have never known a world without iPhones, laptops, video games, chat windows, tabs and texts. On airplanes, toddlers are abated with digital shows and video games instead of stuffed animals and paper coloring books.

Such tech-ubiquity means Gen Z holds the following traits above and beyond any other generation, all of which will eliminate gender inequality:

1. Multi-tasking. Gen Z are innate multi-taskers, and are primed to want instant and immediate outcomes. It also means that Gen Z wants clarity and simplicity – some say they tend to oversimplify – but this is good for inequality. Gen Z won’t have the time or patience to engage in the nuances of gender, and thus, will simply allow people to just be “who they are.”

In the “Becoming Chaz” documentary, Chaz Bono remarked it was the youngest members of his family that took his transition from female to male the easiest. In fact, these youngsters said it wasn’t a big deal at all. That’s just “who he is,” they said.

2. Globalized empathy. Part of their ease with gender is that Gen Z is well-educated. “They are much more connected to the outside world than previous generations,” says Alec Mackenzie, an eighth-grade Spanish, language arts and film teacher. “They know what is hanging in the Louvre because they’ve seen it on the Internet. They know more about the world because they visit it on the computer.”

As such, they are much more empathetic and knowledgeable to the plights of their peers. Generally known to be wise beyond their years (“12 has become the new 22,” says one Gen Zer) and living in a fully postmodern era, they are especially aware that everything is a social construct, particularly gender. They shy away from sharp classifications such as male versus female, straight versus gay, white versus black.

3. Lack of ambition. Their elders are already bemoaning Gen Z’s lack of ambition, but that is really their dis-enthrallment with traditional power structures and control. Gen Z is growing up in a world where the old power structures have already fallen apart (marriage: divorce, wealth: financial meltdown, security: terrorism), so there is nothing left to put on a pedestal.

Climbing the ladder will become less important as a result. Gen Z will job-hop in their careers to find satisfaction, just like they multi-task in their daily lives. They’re expected to have at least five careers and more than 20 employers in positions that don’t even exist today. It’s hard to be ambitious when you don’t know what the future will hold.

“They are very collaborative and creative. They will change the workplace dramatically in terms of work style and expectations,” argues technology professor Larry Rosen. While Gen Y strived for team-oriented work approaches and collaborative environments, it will be Gen Z who really reaps the benefit. As old power structures melt away, and the status quo becomes working together instead of in competition, women and men will find themselves on an even-playing field.

4. Pleasure-seeking. Those power structures will shift from the workplace to personal lives. Previous generations have paved the way for a workplace that was first live to work (Boomers), then work to live or work/life balance (Gen X), and is now live with work or work/life blur (Gen Y). Taking this to it’s natural conclusion, Gen Z will live. Work will take a backseat to Gen Z’s hedonism.

Already Gen Z has a reputation as pleasure-seeking and consumerist. Not to mention anyone can be a star now and have their own following due to the decentralized web. Consumerism used to confer status (which was traditionally wrapped up in a man’s success and career), but Gen Z will buy things simply to feel something. When that happens, when men and women care less about power and more about pleasure, equality will be easier.

5. Remote workers. “Computers have blurred the line between the workplace and home for adults, and the same is true for today’s students,” argues Duane Mendoza, a technology resource teacher. Via web-based lessons, students in Mendoza’s yearbook class are able to work from anywhere.

Gen Y blurred work and life to work remotely because they wanted flexibility and fulfillment. But Gen Z will work remotely because they know no other way. They prefer to communicate via email and text. While replacing side-by-side and eye-to-eye human connections with quick, disembodied e-exchanges may seem counter-intuitive, it will allow sexual innuendo to stop. Not being in the same physical location alone will decrease harassment. And when Gen Z isn’t working in person, they won’t be able to see the perpetuity of men in power that keeps men in power.

Gen Y believes in equality, but can’t have it because they’re stuck in a workplace with outdated paradigms. Gen Z won’t be stuck there though. They’ll be at the coffee shop with their friends on their laptops. As a result, Gen Z will be the first generation where women and men are mutually respected not just in their personal lives and relationships, but also at work.

In the comments below, let me know me know the single biggest insight you gained from today’s post. Of course, if you have additional ideas or resources about Gen Z, technology, and the future of equality, share them below as well.

Categories
Women

Women Struggle With New Literacy: Programming Your Life

The web makes it easier than ever to test and execute on your ideas, at least for those who know how to code: Mark, Aaron, Ev and Biz – you know, the ones running the show. These guys along with other young lads are defining, controlling and programming your life.

“Only an elite gains the ability to fully exploit the new medium on offer,” writes Douglas Rushkoff in Program or Be Programmed. “The rest learn to be satisfied with gaining the ability offered by the last new medium. The people hear while the rabbis read; the people read while those with access to the printing press write; today we write, while our techno-elite programs. As a result, most of society remains one full dimensional leap of awareness and capability behind the few who manage to monopolize access to the real power of any media age.”

Young white males are still in charge just as they have always been. If you want real equality, everyone needs to build the revolution. Women need to learn how to code.

“Female users are the unsung heroines behind the most engaging, fastest growing, and most valuable consumer internet and e-commerce companies.  Especially when it comes to social and shopping, women rule the Internet,” argues Aileen Lee on Tech Crunch. She goes on to reveal that 77% of Groupon’s customers are female and that women oversee over 80% of consumer spending, or about $5 trillion dollars annually.

All well and good, but women do not rule the Internet. We are not deciding how these experiences are being developed, built or regulated. We are not deciding how products are displayed, inventoried, or marketed. We are not creating the user interfaces or user experience.

While more than 50% of the US population are female, 92% of founders are male and 87% of founding teams are all-male, report several studies. Not to mention computer science is one of the last disciplines where there is a gender imbalance in the US: about 80% male, 20% female.

Arguing that women control the Internet because we love to shop only panders to and reinforces the social construct that will truly bring equality: being part of the revolution as it happens.

No longer is it enough to know how to put together a slide deck or write and publish a blog post. Instead of learning how to build the software, we learn how to use the software. And when you use programs that are made for us without understanding how they work, you allow the technology to teach you. But you can teach the technology. Programming decides the limitations, the possibilities. It’s all within the variables and commands behind the curtain.

Maybe you don’t mind all this. If you want to be directed by technology and those who have mastered it, that’s fine. But don’t expect any semblance of equality any time soon. If you want to direct technology however, if you want to be at the forefront of this revolution and define what life will look like, you need to code.

“Gender imbalance materially impacts innovation,” VC Brad Feld told me in a recent interview. “Over the next twenty years, the only way we’ll have enough software engineers working on hard problems is to get more women involved. In addition, I believe that mixed gender teams are more effective at driving innovation and, especially when you consider many of the products being created impact our every day lives, it’s clearly a major inhibitor not to have women involved in the creation of these products.”

No kidding. Why is innovation, that which influences everything else, still ruled by young white males? If the new literacy is programming, women are just as behind as ever. “We lose sight of the fact that the programming—the code itself—is the place from which the most significant innovations emerge,” argues Rushkoff.

Feminism has run stagnant with modern young women, but I have its rallying cry for the new century: program your life. Don’t let others do it for you. Women will not find equality by giving themselves credit or solving workplace flexibility. Even when we do everything right, we still fail women. But today, the web allows such low barriers to entry that anyone can control our future. Let’s hope anyone includes more than a few women.

Categories
Women

A Brief History of How We Fail Women

Women were raised with the idea that we have a choice – a choice to be single or not, to have kids or not, to delay marriage, to pursue a career or not, to have it all, to live our lives the way we want to… or not. Female empowerment by way of the pill, Sex in the City, and a steady backlash towards Marie Claire all created a compelling feminist march.

And choice sounded good until hitting the reality of biology.

Feminist back-tracking all the way to mainstream 60 Minutes and others inundated female consciousness with some alarming counsel:  career women risk infertility, miscarriage and general unhappiness. So don’t wait; there is a deadline for “having it all.”

It was a lose-lose situation. Choose a career and risk having a family, or choose a family and risk having a career. The biological clock guaranteed you couldn’t have both. Many women tried – and failed – to sneak marriage in at just the right moment to have a career without kids for a few years, but not too late that the fertility window closed. It turned out only women of privilege could pull that off, and only through the latest scientific advancements.

Despite reality, choice brought about certain expectations. Women were expected to fill the same categories as men. If men shot guns and went to war, women should not only be able to do the same, but with the same performance. Women could hold public office or play sports or fix houses just as well as men.

None of that happened in large numbers however. After 30 years, women today aren’t represented in positions where men have traditionally held power, and still can’t close the salary gap. Faced with such disheartening realities, scientists, journalists, and feminists decided the reason wasn’t because discrimination and difference are still rampant (apparently, society is too evolved for such a notion), but rather that men and women are different.

The differences extend far beyond having a penis or a vagina, and supposedly prove that women simply aren’t interested or wired to thrive in traditionally male-dominated areas like say, math.

Brain scans show that women aren’t good at math so women will never be engineers, technologists, or scientists. Women are too empathetic to be CEOs. Women aren’t competitive enough to be in start-ups. Career blogger Penelope Trunk exemplifies the prevailing attitude in a recent post: “It’s outdated to think there are no differences between men and women. And once we accept there are differences, we need to study them instead of downplay them.”

Trunk goes on to make the argument (with brain scan images and all) that “we can say, with a decent amount of certainty, that the average girl is as good at math as the average boy,” because of decades of data.

Author Cordelia Fine argues in her methodical and myth-busting book Delusions of Gender, that “[those] who argue that there are hardwired differences between the sexes that account for the gender status quo often like to position themselves as courageous knights of truth, who brave the stifling ideology of political correctness,” but these claims made by so-called experts are “simply coating old-fashioned stereotypes with a veneer of scientific credibility.”

And that veneer is easily cracked. The things that hold women back aren’t biologically wired, but socially and culturally ingrained. Fine methodically turns popular science on its head to punch a giant hole in neurosexism.

“Although it’s not yet clear what it is, exactly, about neuroscience that is so persuasive, it’s been found that people find scientific arguments more compelling when accompanied by an image showing brain activation rather than, say, a bar graph showing the same information,” reports Fine.

It turns out white versus gray matter in the brain is a relatively useless determination of what creates gender difference. The real cause is something that’s much easier to understand, but harder to accept – we create it, every day.

Gender is socially constructed to the point that simply asking a person to mark whether they are male or female, or having a person write their name, will prime their behavior and actions, and affect how they achieve on tests and in life.

Most data will show men test better than women in math. But when women are tested on their math ability and told that “despite testing on thousands of students, no gender difference has ever been found,” they “outperform every other group – including both groups of men. In other words, the standard presentation of a test seemed to suppress women’s ability, but when the same test was presented to women as equally hard for men and women, it ‘unleashed their mathematics potential,’” reports Fine.

Trunk isn’t alone in propagating neuro-falsehoods, however. We’re now told that to walk into a classroom or workplace without knowledge of how the brain works (and how certain abilities are biologically pre-determined) is actually detrimental in terms of treating both genders equally.

Well-loved VC Fred Wilson recently posted an interview with his wife Joanne Wilson in which she argued gender difference starts “from the time you come out of the womb. Boys gravitate towards blocks. Girls gravitate to the dolls. That’s a generalization but in general, its true. I look at my own kids – my son, gamer extraordinaire. My daughters used to play those games but then they lost interest.”

Wilson is wrong on both accounts – as a result of gender priming and salience, gender difference starts far before a child exits the womb.

“Women who knew the sex of their unborn baby described the movements of sons and daughters differently,” reports Fine. “All were ‘active,’ but male activity was more likely to be described as ‘vigorous’ and ‘strong.’ Female activity, by contrast, was described in gentler terms: ‘Not violent, not excessively energetic, not terribly active were used for females.’”

And the gravitation for young girls and boys towards certain types of toys is not because of a biologically ingrained or wired reason, but because children start learning the gender ropes early on. Fine reports: “As they approach their second birthday, children are already starting to pick up the rudiments of gender stereotyping.”

It is no mistake that having not achieved equality by choice, or through the impossible success of “having it all,” that women are now being told that they are just born that way (as women) with all the rules and limitations the gender entails.  It is no mistake these supposed biologically ingrained differences are too large to surmount. It is no mistake that while consciously reported beliefs are modern, progressive and indicative of an enlightened and evolved society that unconscious actions and behaviors are remarkably reactionary and indicative of the large discrimination, difference and inequality that still exist.

It is no mistake gender is one of the most salient social constructions. And it is no mistake the construct consistently fails women.

Categories
Entrepreneurship Start-ups Women

Women Don’t Need Exposure

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 Sklar “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 Sklar 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 Sklar. 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.

Categories
Knowing yourself Women

The Miseducation of a Woman

Florida at Christmastime isn’t particularly warm, but it’s near tropical for Wisconsinites (of which I am finally one), so it is not the light breeze that causes my arms to hover close to my core while sitting at the pool. In fact, it is something that exists entirely in my head, and I have to consciously and decidedly lift my elbows and hands away from my hips and stomach towards the armrests so as to appear confident.

The right to be a woman, in the finest sense, relies on such confidence.

My two-piece bathing suit beguiles a certain flirtatious composure (it’s got polka dots), and at 5’8” (okay, 5’7” and a half) and 130 lbs, I wear it well. According to my original Illinois driver’s license, that identifying information hasn’t changed for ten years. I still weigh the same as I did in high school, but there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think I feel fat.

When I look at pictures of myself, I can see rationally that I am skinny, that I look skinny. That I am healthy, and I look healthy. That I am beautiful, and I look beautiful. Rationally, these are all facts that can be written and entered into evidence.

Quite irrationally, I can tell you that the daily struggle of being a woman is that my stomach expands when I eat, my thighs are big and my hips are large. I also worry about the backs of my arms, the portion of my leg directly underneath my butt, and the meeting place of my neck to the space underneath my chin.

Necessary qualifiers: I have an active lifestyle, I love to cook, I love to eat, I don’t read so-called women’s magazines and I usually love my biggest “flaws” – my thin lips, pale skin, imperfect nose and uneven eyebrows, thin fingernails, fine hair, big feet, small breasts, large rear. I’ve been known to run errands without make-up.

But I am looking in the mirror more often lately. Ryan says this to me, over Christmas vacation, while we sit in a high-rise condo that has a mirror on every wall and round every corner. There are a lot of mirrors here, I reply, but I know what he is talking about. He is worried about me, he says.

I don’t wonder at air-brushed models but the pre-teen girl walking down the street in West Palm Beach, dressed with too many inches exposed on her sapling thighs. Or the girls at the Philly wedding whose legs are the size of my arms and whose arms are the size of my wrists. Is this sickness? Disease? Good genes?

A couple mornings later, I spend too much time getting dressed considering I work for a start-up with a casual dress code. I dress up because I like to. I try not to stand out too much from my colleagues who wear jeans and sweatshirts by wearing a cotton t-shirt fabric scarf, or nice boots over leggings. I wear a lot of casual dresses with tights. I try to match the VPs (all men), but since there are no women executives, it’s difficult to know if I’ve got it right.

I could go on.

And then, on any given day, I read about why there are fewer women CEOs, that women are better CEOs, that women are less promising as candidates for promotion, that surgeons can now relocate fat from your thigh to your chest, that kids see housework as a women’s domain, just 4% of venture capital goes to women, wives earn more than their husbands, and just being a woman is a pre-existing condition in healthcare.

I find the truth somewhere, not in the piling up of research, like clothes discarded on my floor, but in accounts from real-life women, between the lines in their interviews, bluntly stated in their ethos, and shared and protected among friends.

“The truth is,” Joanne Lipman says, a former deputy managing editor at The Wall Street Journal and founding editor in chief of Condé Nast Portfolio magazine, “women haven’t come nearly as far as we would have predicted 25 years ago. Somewhere along the line, especially in recent years, progress for women has stalled. And attitudes have taken a giant leap backward.”