In the past two weeks I’ve had a series of conversations with friends and colleagues about women in the technology workforce, provoked by of all things, water pollution. The commonality being we’ve moved past the point where the problem is what is visible, and where we’re now facing the challenge of what you can’t see.
Here’s the water pollution angle: A week or so ago I heard an interview with Charles Duhigg of the NY Times about how the cleanliness of the nation’s water supply is perhaps at greater risk than it’s ever been. More so than back in the ‘70s, where the pollution was severe: rivers that caught fire, bore multi-colored hues of industrial waste, had detritus floating in them.
Today’s water pollution is microscopic, requiring sophisticated filtering that’s too expensive for water utilities to install. Charles suggested the most practicable solution is for people to filter their own water, and take personal responsibility to ensure it’s clean and safe.
So here’s where women in the technology workforce comes in. Much visible change has happened. Women are in the workforce, and are increasingly taking leadership positions. Just not enough. And what is the right number? I have no idea, I’d like to think it’s the number that exists when everyone selected for a job is done so on the basis of merit. The whole point is that it’s the product of an ongoing balancing act.
I have faith that women’s pay will increase as more and more compensation and performance review processes are made transparent. But unless they are listened to as equals, then all the process in the world still won’t address this fundamental form of discrimination, affecting the information that feeds performance reviews. Will women ever get to parity unless their ideas are considered on an equal basis as men’s?
In the technology sector, ideas are what fuels business, so unless women’s ideas are given the same consideration as men’s, they will suffer when it comes time for reviews, and that will affect their compensation. It won’t address why the women make $0.77 compared to every $1 their male counterparts make, but it won’t hurt.
So, who’s responsible to fix this? We all are, and we fix it in the moment, calling it out and challenging it in the moment, when it happens.
I was involved as a member of the board of a public-private entity where we were trying to determine the site of a new facility. We’d spent weeks and weeks trying to figure out how to secure a really great site, and were running into all sorts of problems. It was getting frustrating, and I made a suggestion about putting it in a less attractive, but more pragmatic location, which we quickly agreed to do.
A female staff member pulled me aside after the meeting to thank me, saying she’d been making the same suggestion for weeks, but her superiors hadn’t listened to her. I can tell you my suggestion was not all that insightful or magnificently made, but I was the male and it was listened to.
Rather than call this out, I spoke to her separately. I was concerned about creating conflict between her and her superior. So I let her know I realized how frustrated she must have been to not be listened to, and that at least I saw this. How will the other male members of this board know how to listen differently if they aren’t shown where they haven’t done so? I didn’t correct this in the moment, and in doing so I failed the woman who thanked me.
And this is where the water analogy comes back. The way to deal with this is to take personal responsibility, and to make what is invisible, visible.
It is as much women’s responsibility to be louder and less convenient as it is men’s responsibilities to listen more actively. In either case, everyone has an obligation to call out inequality when they see it. And it won’t be convenient.
That’s where I screwed up, and won’t do that again.
A sizable share of the readers of my blog are women. What’s your experience?
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