by Lucie Greene
Still, much of this is all too revealing. Like Google’s infamous company mantra “Don’t Be Evil” (since dropped), none of this is mal-intended, but some of the limitations in Silicon Valley’s approaches and endeavors are indelibly linked to the rarified enclave in which they perch and the socioeconomic pools from which their team members are drawn.
Despite its global stance, Airbnb, like many Silicon Valley companies, is predominantly white and affluent. The company’s 2016 diversity report records a 57 percent white workforce (in 2015 this was 63 percent white); it has a 43 percent female workforce—down 3 percent from last year. Airbnb’s workforce is 6.5 percent Hispanic and 2.9 percent black. The company’s 2017 goal was to increase its overall percentage of employees from underrepresented minority groups from 10 to 11 percent.
It’s a similar story when it comes to its hosts. According to a 2017 study by Inside Airbnb, an independent research platform examining the impact of Airbnb on communities, there are already distortions occurring within key Airbnb markets thanks to its disproportionately white host makeup. The study, “The Face of Airbnb, New York City. Airbnb as a Racial Gentrification Tool,” states, “across all seventy-two predominantly black New York city neighborhoods, Airbnb hosts are five times more likely to be white. In those neighborhoods, the Airbnb host population is 74 percent white, while the white resident population is only 13.9 percent.
“When we look at economic disparities, we see that in black neighborhoods, not only do whites make up the majority of Airbnb hosts, but we also see that white hosts benefit the most economically,” it says. “White Airbnb hosts in black neighborhoods earned in total an estimated $159.7 million accumulating with a group representing only 13.9 percent of the population is a 530 percent economic disparity.”
Prejudices among the Airbnb host community have also manifested in the counterpoint hashtag #AirBnBWhileBlack, highlighting instances of host discrimination. Reports have also surfaced about Asian and trans guests being denied bookings.
In 2018, Airbnb announced the appointment of prominent African American businessman (and outgoing CEO of American Express) Ken Chenault as a board member. Next, it says, it is looking to add a woman to its board.
And Airbnb’s lack of internal diversity is not unique to the company, particularly. It’s a similar case at many Silicon Valley companies—and indeed, industries, including mine. Its founders’ messaging is doubtlessly progressive, and outspoken on political issues. But it’s still, ultimately, emanating through the lens of a privileged, often neoliberal, twenty-something. It’s an elite form of progressivism, too. What rarely gets mentioned about Big Tech companies, beyond their lack of racial and gender diversity, is the skew toward economically privileged and educated staff.
“We still live in a world today where a vast majority of programmers and engineers working inside Silicon Valley companies are white males of a certain age bracket. This inevitably leads to algorithmic bias embedded across the systems that are seamlessly taking over some of our most intimate activities: communication, discovery, security,” says Puneet Kaur Ahira. “I think we grossly underestimate just how pervasive this algorithmic bias extends—it’s hard because every day you lose more yardage.”
“It is an argument for diversity in the workforce; not just race or gender, but background experience, economic experience,” says Macon Phillips. “You’re seeing a big pipeline of students that go from Stanford into Silicon Valley and have a sort of crazy sense of entitlement. It affects their approach to innovation . . . Silicon Valley companies are focused on problems that they think that they can solve. They think these are problems they can solve more easily than government can, which is probably true. But while they’ve been solving their problems about how they can get their dry-cleaning done, people are being displaced from houses in San Francisco because it’s not affordable; the schools continue to get worse in the public school system; and there’s an inequality. It’s happening right in that city and no one in Silicon Valley seems that preoccupied by it. So it’s an unequal approach to innovation.”
But the biases are important to address, especially as this group expands. Airbnb Open of course was not openly biased, but there were scant black attendees. Doubtless the founders would hate to think of themselves as anything but champions of freedom (complete with Maroon 5 soundtracks). And with noble ambitions to boot. They are champions of empathy, after all (even as they are stepping past the large homeless population of downtown Los Angeles). All of this gets caught up in the murky area of tone and invisible barriers, though, and subtle choices that radiate through decisions in policy, product, designs, and systems if not addressed.
It’s telling, for example, that Airbnb’s founders didn’t do something more meaningful in relation to the homeless issue of the downtown L.A. situ they were co-opting for a week. Their focus is on philanthropy that is desirable, which is also part of a wider trend in how Silicon Valley companies focus their attentions, particularly when it comes to problem solving.
It would have been less glamorous to help local homeless, and less PR-worthy than the blossom-bedecked community center in Yoshino, for sure. But it would alleviate a real problem on their doorsteps, and one that Airbnb and other Silicon Valley companies are both driving and ignoring. But this is another example of the chasmic gap between Silicon Valley’s messaging and hard-nosed reality. And one in which the problems it tackles are driven by PR and marketing, and therefore inherently skewed toward the concerns of its affluent audience and aspirational causes. And they are PR platforms alone, they are not oriented toward real change, or real progress. Its refugee housing platform is just that, a platform, reliant on others’ participation.
The struggles of Silicon Valley don’t stop with racial diversity in its businesses and practices, either. There is another growing chasm, and it’s a problem that’s going to get much louder as the apparent forces that ignited the #MeToo movement sweep through all male-dominated industries, exposing sexual harassment and more, and move on to its most powerful, most male industry ever: Big Tech.
Silicon Valley has a woman problem.
9
Women and Silicon Valley
The cover profiles of technology magazines (actually, let’s just make that magazines generally) are illustrative of the bias. When it comes to the rapid rise of technology, and its subsequent mass festishization and global cultural influence, women have largely remained absent from the popular narrative and heroism associated with its success. Oh, OK, Whitney Wolfe, founder of Bumble, the feminist dating app, has been featured on the cover of Wired UK (she’s also model-pretty, blond, and thin, which may not be a coincidence). For every ten, twenty, thirty, forty cover features venerating male tech heroes, there are scant equivalents celebrating women. Megan J. Smith, the first female CTO to the president of the United States, made it to the cover of Wired. Sheryl Sandberg has made the cover of Time magazine. But taken amid the torrent of press featuring male leaders, it’s like a bucket of water in a tsunami. Consider such infamous examples as Newsweek’s clanger of a special issue dubbed “The Founding Fathers of Silicon Valley: Exploring 60 Years of Innovation.” Or Walter Isaacson’s book The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, which is dominated by men. There is a sea of other examples. Tech giants have become part of a huge narrative of success and leadership, and women are largely missing from the story.
The sad thing is that this dearth of press kind of reflects reality. Or, at least, reality now. Historically, women—not that you’d know it—were a key part of Silicon Valley. Integral to Apple’s growth. Integral to technological ingenuity at NASA. And have been pioneers behind a string of firsts in technological advancements.
Smith, when she took the government role in 2014, made unearthing these invisible stories a key mission. She’s spoken frequently about Ada Lovelace, the English woman born in 1812 who was the first computer programmer, or Katherine G. John
son, the African American woman featured in the Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures who helped put NASA astronauts on the moon and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. She’s also highlighted Grace Hopper, who invented coding itself.
In fact, look back even fifteen years and a considerable number of women were involved in Silicon Valley’s ascent. Judy Estrin, part of a research group, is credited with developing the internet in the 1970s. Sandra Kurtzig sold her software to Hewlett-Packard in the 1970s and became the first software multimillionaire. Donna Dubinsky was the founding CEO of PalmPilot, the precursor to the BlackBerry. The list goes on.
Prior to Big Tech’s explosion, Silicon Valley generally seemed to have been more gender friendly. “Myspace was really diverse in terms of gender and race,” says Debra Cleaver, founder and CEO of Vote.org. “I don’t know if this is just a Silicon Valley thing but straight white men are over-represented up here now. Myspace was not like that. If you saw a woman at Myspace on the tech side of the building, there was a really good chance she was in charge of her team. We all knew this. Most of the best people in engineering are women.” She adds: “Silicon Valley has diversity problems, but the problems are that they create a hostile work environment for people who aren’t white and people who aren’t male, generally. I tell people that it’s like men have found a way to automatically be on top and have the best-paid jobs.”
There have been high-profile female leaders such as Marissa Mayer, former Google then Yahoo executive (news coverage of her has largely been highly gendered, centering on her role as leader and mom, with controversy over her short maternity leave). And of course Sandberg, whose book Lean In, about women taking a seat at the table in leadership, was hugely influential on a global scale (but which has been criticized for elitism and what has been dubbed “Trickle Down” feminism). Sandberg has collaborated with Getty Images to curate new pictures of women leaders. More recently, she has launched a new initiative, #MentorHer, in the wake of the #MeToo movement and a survey commissioned by Sandberg’s LeanIn.Org that found half of male managers are now uncomfortable participating in work activities with women.
#MentorHer, as reports go, has the backing of more than thirty-eight prominent leaders and CEOs, including Disney’s Bob Iger, General Motors’ Mary Barra, and Netflix’s Reed Hastings, who are all committed to mentoring women at their own companies.
The public figureheads are one thing, but it feels like a high-profile excuse for a reality that, despite overtures to correcting its lack of diversity, shows women and minorities still barely represented. Facebook’s 2017 diversity numbers reveal that female employees make up 35 percent of their workforce. Overall, women hold 19 percent of tech jobs, and 27 percent of new-graduate hires are now women. Twenty-eight percent of leadership roles are held by women. Google said in 2017 that 69 percent of its employees are men, while 31 percent are women; 20 percent of Google’s technical roles are held by women. Women hold 25 percent of leadership positions in the company, up from 24 percent the previous year. Such numbers are replicated pretty much throughout the publicly issued status reports of these companies. In Airbnb’s 2017 diversity report, it was found to have a 49.8 percent white workforce (in 2016 this was 56.6 percent white). It has a 41 percent female workforce; 30 percent of its leaders, as of 2017, are female.
Interestingly, the advertising industry may—by necessity—be moving faster on this. General Mills and Hewlett-Packard are among the major companies insisting that their advertising agencies meet diversity quotas. (Which is ironic given their own makeup.) As such, advertising agencies, including my own, are putting diversity—not just of gender and ethnicity, but also of background—at the core of future strategies. The Brexit referendum and the 2016 U.S. presidential election have also created a major shake-up in the normally affluent, liberal, creative confines of advertising agencies, which are recognizing a disconnect with a growing consumer segment.
There are other efforts to change. Tech, ever the lover of buzzwords, has started to embrace the emerging popular term “intersectionality.” In 2017, Twitter hired Candi Castleberry Singleton as vice president of intersectionality, culture, and diversity. Lawyer and feminist Kimberle´ Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” in the late 1980s to capture the premise that when it comes to identity, the overlap of race, gender, sexuality, and class can contribute to a specific type of experience in the world—and create unique overlaps in discrimination or bias. Now, as dialogue around the importance of diversity reaches a fever pitch, intersectionality is resurging in popular discourse, conference panels, and think pieces, embraced by diversity chiefs. It’s also extending to consideration of neurodiversity and disability inclusion.
There have been very public new hires. Uber has hired two senior women following a series of controversies about its misogynist culture, management practices, and scandals. They have appointed marketing executive Bozoma Saint John as head of brand. Saint John is a prominent African American leader from Apple (and a single mother). They have also hired Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei as senior vice president for leadership and strategy.
But it’s all flying in the face of a bigger picture in which the women of Silicon Valley struggle to get funding, endure sexism, and face an entirely different experience from their male counterparts. These recent hires are generally reactionary, responding to public shaming rather than being part of a concerted, proactive attempt to create a fair, inclusive, and empowering industry culture. Many of the much-purported diversity chiefs feel like conference panel talking heads rather than people focused on decisive change.
Diversity chiefs have been one tool in Silicon Valley’s PR battle, but the numbers only shift at a glacial pace from year to year. And some of the chiefs themselves have shown a staggering lack of self-awareness. Apple’s diversity chief Denise Young Smith, herself an African American, was forced to step down after only six months after making controversial comments at a summit in Bogotá, Colombia. “There can be twelve white, blue-eyed, blond men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation,” she is reported to have said at the summit. “Diversity is the human experience. I get a little bit frustrated when diversity or the term diversity is tagged to the people of color, or the women, or the LGBT.” She was slammed for appearing to defend Apple’s overwhelmingly white and male leadership at a time when the company’s makeup is so markedly uneven.
“There are huge issues with the power structure,” says VR pioneer Jacquelyn Ford Morie. “Certainly, as a woman, I have not been able to get funding for any of my companies, while my male colleagues are being thrown millions of dollars. The second thing, that’s even worse, is ageism. As an older woman, the chances of my getting money are 2 percent. The chances of my colleagues who are men, who haven’t done half as much as I have, of getting $500 million in the next six months are about 90 percent.”
She’s right, of course. According to PitchBook, in 2017, 2.2 percent of all venture capital in the U.S. went to companies founded solely by women. When it comes to deal count, roughly 4.4 percent of venture-capital transactions last year were for women-founded companies. Just 11 percent of partners at VC firms are female. This despite numerous studies by Harvard Business Review and First Round Capital showing that women-founded companies often outperform men’s. (In 2015, First Round measured the outperformance at 63 percent.)
“It’s a boys’ club, and it’s not just a boys’ club that’s making things—it’s the boys’ club financing the things to be made. We need to add seats to the room, in every kind of room where catalytic decisions are being made,” says Puneet Kaur Ahira.
People are quick to point out, rightly, that this is not just a Silicon Valley issue, but a wider problem endemic to Hollywood, government, and all our power structures today. There are “too many instances where women are underrepresented,” says Margit Wennmachers.
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br /> There are some hopeful signs. For the first time, computer science is the most popular major for female students at Stanford University. “Maria Klawe at Harvey Mudd College in Southern California has done outstanding work getting women into coding, and it’s just how she changed the initial process to get women into coding,” says Wennmachers. “I don’t want to say the pipeline is an acceptable excuse at all, but I think it’s true for every industry. That doesn’t mean we get a pass, none of us should get a pass.” (The macro picture, far from the confines of Silicon Valley training ground Stanford University, shows slower progress. According to a 2018 study, while numbers are growing, only 27 percent of all students taking the AP computer science exam in the United States are girls, and just 18 percent of American computer science college degrees go to women.)
Wennmachers also concedes that “with clients you’re often the only female in the room, and there have been thousands of times where I say something and, three men later, it gets repeated, and all of a sudden, it’s a thing. It’s beyond infuriating. I think it’s good that tech gets beaten up, just as I think that it’s good that every industry that deserves to get beaten up does get beaten up.”
She also tells me: “I think the conversation around getting a female board member is a little bit annoying—to me, it’s a nasty bit of tokenism, because it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, we have a woman on the board, so now, our problem is solved.’ The woman on the board doesn’t actually hire people or create careers. The woman who is the VP of sales can mentor a lot of women and can actually make several careers. It’s not just about the board.”
