Ducks in a Row: the Cost of the So-Called Bro Culture
by Miki Saxon
There is far more to diversity than gender, but I’ll save my comments on that for another post, although everything I say here applies to the wider exclusions.
Last Friday, in polite language, KG commented on the ignorance/idiocy of not hiring women, since they have to be so much better to achieve the same opportunities/promotions as men.
For proof, you have only to consider GitHub’s treatment of contributors.
They found that when a woman programmer made a contribution to an open source project, that work was more likely to be accepted by their programming peers than contributions by men as long as those judging the work didn’t know the programmer was a woman.
If they did know the programmer was a woman, the work was more likely to be rejected.
For the unknowing, the bro culture refers to the culture found in most frat houses (although it exists in several other forms) and has become a hallmark of startups in Silicon Valley.
Jennifer Brandel, co-founder and CEO of Hearken, and Mara Zepeda, co-founder and CEO of Switchboard, wrote a terrific post that starts by depicting the startup ecosystem in sexual terms that perfectly drive the point home with the same class and light touch as Tootsie used to drive its point home back in 1982. (It’s a great read with serious analysis and suggestions for change.)
Startups, like the male anatomy, are designed for liquidity events. Consider the metaphors: “seed” funding, “up and to the right” trajectories, “acceleration,” “exit.” Paul Graham’s seminal essay “Startup = Growth” argues that explosive growth is the only measure of success. “Making it” means one of two things: go public or sell.
The bro culture also manages to turn a blind eye to just how much of their vaunted tech is the result of women.
Hilariously, it was not only a woman who the technology that paved the way for everything from Wi-Fi to GPS, it was film goddess Heddy Lamarr. She invented a secret communications system during World War II for radio-controlling torpedoes.
Dr Grace Murray Hopper invented COBOL, the first business-friendly programming language, in the 1940s. She was a computer scientist, a rear admiral in the U.S. navy and the first person to use the term “bug” in reference to a glitch in a computer system when she literally found a bug (moth) causing problems with her computer.
Then there is Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer who wrote the first algorithm and dreamed up the concept of artificial intelligence; her notes were an essential key to helping Alan Turing’s work on the first modern computers in the 1940s.
Not to forget Dr Shirley Jackson include portable fax, touch tone telephone, solar cells, fibre optic cables, and the technology behind caller ID and call waiting.
Most of male culture runs on pizza and beer, which, according to Beer Historian Jane Peyton was developed, sold and drunk but Mesopotamian women centuries ago.
A few more that guys should be aware of,
- Nancy Johnson invented and patented the ice cream maker in 1843 and is still in use today.
- Margaret A Wilcox invented the car heater in 1893, as well as a combined clothes and dishwasher.
- Elizabeth Magie invented Monopoly in 1904.
- Anna Connelly invented the fire escape in 1887.
- Maria Beasely invented life rafts in 1882, as well as a machine that makes barrels.
- Dr Maria Telkes, a psychiatrist, invented residential solar heating.
- Letitia Geer invented a one-handed medical syringe in 1899.
- Florence Parpart invented the electric refrigerator in 1914, along with improving street cleaning machines.
- Josephine Cochrane invented the dishwasher (where would guys be without it?) in 1887
- Marie Van Brittan Brown invented CCTV in 1969.
- Margaret Knight invented a machine that makes square bottomed paper bags in 1871, although Charles Anan tried to steal her work claiming that it wasn’t possible for a woman to create this brilliant invention. She also invented a safety device for cotton mills when she was 12 that is still being used today.
- Alice Parker invented a natural gas powered central heater in 1919 that inspired the central heating systems used today.
- Stephanie Kwolek invented Kevlar 1965, to which thousands of guys, and more recently gals, owe their lives.
Unwelcoming/disparaging culture goes far beyond the startup world and the pro/con about women is a minefield for companies, as witnessed by the Lands’ End contretemps currently playing itself out on social media.
The catalog had the temerity to feature Gloria Steinem, which brought a strong reaction from a customer.
“This family will not buy one single thing from Lands End ever again unless this drive highlighted by Gloria Steinem is fully retracted. (…) Lauding Gloria Steinem is beyond what I can understand from a company that ‘appears’ to celebrate family.” (Posted to the company’s Facebook page.)
Lands’ End apologized and scrubbed all mentions of Steinem, along with references to the ERA.
This, of course, brought enormous reaction from the other side.
As of midmorning Friday, close to 4,000 people had commented on the company’s Facebook post that addresses the flap.
Oops. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Lands’ End and other companies may lose customers when they end up in the middle of this no-win situation, but the bro culture has a much higher cost.
Talent.
And that can cost them the very breakthroughs that would put them on the road to an IPO.
Then again, with that attitude they don’t deserve great talent.
Which leaves KG and kindred spirits to scoop them up.
Flickr image credit: Duck Lover
March 17th, 2016 at 1:15 am
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