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| Freezing women’s eggs? The tech industry isn’t modern, it’s Neanderthal | Freezing women’s eggs? The tech industry isn’t modern, it’s Neanderthal |
| (about 21 hours later) | |
| Apple and Facebook have just announced an egg-freezing programme for female employees: £12,500 ($20,000) to get your eggs frozen, plus £300 ($480) a year to store them (“How hard can that be?” was one of my first thoughts. I reckon I could undercut the egg-freezing market). | |
| The immediate response, from all the people I respect, is that this is creepy corporatism gone even creepier – nasty and essentialist, breaking employees down to discrete biological functions, trying to control each one that we might work better, harder, more consistently. | The immediate response, from all the people I respect, is that this is creepy corporatism gone even creepier – nasty and essentialist, breaking employees down to discrete biological functions, trying to control each one that we might work better, harder, more consistently. |
| While I have sympathy with the dystopian view, I’d also take a moment to congratulate these companies on doing something that, in the current climate, seems very 1990s: seeing their staff as valuable, irreplaceable assets. This might lead them down some intrusive alleys, as they seek to find innovative, “techie” ways to retain their people, but at least they discuss them as people they want to retain, rather than hunks of interchangeable meat to be screwed down to the lowest possible price, or a semi-rebel army only controllable by punishment and phony oath. | While I have sympathy with the dystopian view, I’d also take a moment to congratulate these companies on doing something that, in the current climate, seems very 1990s: seeing their staff as valuable, irreplaceable assets. This might lead them down some intrusive alleys, as they seek to find innovative, “techie” ways to retain their people, but at least they discuss them as people they want to retain, rather than hunks of interchangeable meat to be screwed down to the lowest possible price, or a semi-rebel army only controllable by punishment and phony oath. |
| Contrast that with the way Jeremy Hunt talks about doctors, or Michael Gove talked about teachers, or countless other sectors refer to undervalued employees, male and female. I like the existence of companies that can still say “human capital” without smirking over the word “human”. | Contrast that with the way Jeremy Hunt talks about doctors, or Michael Gove talked about teachers, or countless other sectors refer to undervalued employees, male and female. I like the existence of companies that can still say “human capital” without smirking over the word “human”. |
| But they are making two major mistakes, and that’s putting aside the fact that the whole thing sounds like a discarded plotline from sci-fi movie Gattaca. | But they are making two major mistakes, and that’s putting aside the fact that the whole thing sounds like a discarded plotline from sci-fi movie Gattaca. |
| The first is a general error, not specific or limited to the tech industry: if you want to persuade a woman that her work is compatible with having a family, the first thing you must accept is that it’s none of your business whether she wants a family or not. A company that could take a woman as they would a man – someone who may have people they care about more than their job, and who will have to be accommodated, but may also bring benefits to the employer – would illustrate that by not referencing her ovaries at all. | The first is a general error, not specific or limited to the tech industry: if you want to persuade a woman that her work is compatible with having a family, the first thing you must accept is that it’s none of your business whether she wants a family or not. A company that could take a woman as they would a man – someone who may have people they care about more than their job, and who will have to be accommodated, but may also bring benefits to the employer – would illustrate that by not referencing her ovaries at all. |
| Then, if a woman announces a pregnancy to her employer, they should throw maternity leave, money and flexibility at her, because this is not a problem, it is great “continuing professional development” and an investment in the future – and not seeing it as a problem would solve almost all of the problem. If you’d told me in the 90s that we would still be having to point this stuff out, I would have gone back to bed and just slept through the intervening two decades. | Then, if a woman announces a pregnancy to her employer, they should throw maternity leave, money and flexibility at her, because this is not a problem, it is great “continuing professional development” and an investment in the future – and not seeing it as a problem would solve almost all of the problem. If you’d told me in the 90s that we would still be having to point this stuff out, I would have gone back to bed and just slept through the intervening two decades. |
| Particular to the tech industry, though, is a bald sexism that would make your eyes pop out. I first heard this from two seismically impressive young women: Anne-Marie Imafidon, who runs Stemettes, which champions women in science, technology, engineering and maths; and Cate Huston, who used to work for a large tech company and now co-runs her own business. Huston remarked dryly on Twitter, “spending day surrounded by tech dudes annihilated my desire/ability to date. If I wanted kids that would have worried me”. | Particular to the tech industry, though, is a bald sexism that would make your eyes pop out. I first heard this from two seismically impressive young women: Anne-Marie Imafidon, who runs Stemettes, which champions women in science, technology, engineering and maths; and Cate Huston, who used to work for a large tech company and now co-runs her own business. Huston remarked dryly on Twitter, “spending day surrounded by tech dudes annihilated my desire/ability to date. If I wanted kids that would have worried me”. |
| I was astonished, after the last time I wrote about these women, to get complaints from feminists saying “how am I supposed to get my daughters interested in tech if you keep pedalling these stories?” – as if the best way to attract women were to misinform them by omission. | I was astonished, after the last time I wrote about these women, to get complaints from feminists saying “how am I supposed to get my daughters interested in tech if you keep pedalling these stories?” – as if the best way to attract women were to misinform them by omission. |
| Huston had told me about casual sexual harassment; kneejerk assumptions about the inferiority of female engineers and coders; workplace exclusion; attitudes that I think, even in the financial sector, would land you in a tribunal. | Huston had told me about casual sexual harassment; kneejerk assumptions about the inferiority of female engineers and coders; workplace exclusion; attitudes that I think, even in the financial sector, would land you in a tribunal. |
| It looks to me like a classic diversity paradox: just as giving the police the power to stop and search indiscriminately results in discriminatory behaviour, so the “new frontier, new rules” atmosphere around tech leads to behaviour that is not new at all, but that is absolutely Neanderthal. | It looks to me like a classic diversity paradox: just as giving the police the power to stop and search indiscriminately results in discriminatory behaviour, so the “new frontier, new rules” atmosphere around tech leads to behaviour that is not new at all, but that is absolutely Neanderthal. |
| The results range from casual insult to death threat, from things you can count to an atmosphere to which you must pretend to be oblivious. | The results range from casual insult to death threat, from things you can count to an atmosphere to which you must pretend to be oblivious. |
| Last week was the Grace Hopper Celebration, an annual conference of women in computing. The backdrop to this year’s event was “gamergate” – in which Zoe Quinn, having designed a game in August that some men thought had displaced a man-created game, had to leave her house in fear for her life. She has been unable to return. For women in this industry, visibility is accompanied by the spectre of violence, which hovers until they take steps to make themselves invisible. | Last week was the Grace Hopper Celebration, an annual conference of women in computing. The backdrop to this year’s event was “gamergate” – in which Zoe Quinn, having designed a game in August that some men thought had displaced a man-created game, had to leave her house in fear for her life. She has been unable to return. For women in this industry, visibility is accompanied by the spectre of violence, which hovers until they take steps to make themselves invisible. |
| In quotidian computing work, women are few – 31% of Facebook’s workforce, but only 15% of its technical workforce. More than 50% of women in technical positions drop out within 10 years, but not down the great drain of motherhood, as is often portrayed. Many leave for a career where they are not treated as second class by default. | In quotidian computing work, women are few – 31% of Facebook’s workforce, but only 15% of its technical workforce. More than 50% of women in technical positions drop out within 10 years, but not down the great drain of motherhood, as is often portrayed. Many leave for a career where they are not treated as second class by default. |
| At GHC14 – a conference to celebrate women, remember – the keynote speaker was Satya Nadella, chief executive of Microsoft, who stood up and told women not to ask for a pay rise because if they were any good, the money would be delivered to them by “karma”. A “male allies” panel comprised Alan Eustace, a senior vice president at Google, whose line was “the best thing you can do is excel”. | At GHC14 – a conference to celebrate women, remember – the keynote speaker was Satya Nadella, chief executive of Microsoft, who stood up and told women not to ask for a pay rise because if they were any good, the money would be delivered to them by “karma”. A “male allies” panel comprised Alan Eustace, a senior vice president at Google, whose line was “the best thing you can do is excel”. |
| This is known as the “Lean In” canard, pace Sheryl Sandberg, whose notion of smashing the patriarchy is to flash enough leg so that it doesn’t realise you’ve outstripped it until you’re at the finish line. | This is known as the “Lean In” canard, pace Sheryl Sandberg, whose notion of smashing the patriarchy is to flash enough leg so that it doesn’t realise you’ve outstripped it until you’re at the finish line. |
| Female attendees tweeted openly that they had been driven to despair by all this; the sheer lack of acknowledgment that there was any systemic bias that a plucky young lady couldn’t solve with her own go-getcha. (Huston’s account gave credit where it was due, however: Nadella’s speech had also included the open-hearted admission that he had failed an interview on the empathy question, once. And the question? “You see a baby fall in the street. What do you do?” Who fails that?) | Female attendees tweeted openly that they had been driven to despair by all this; the sheer lack of acknowledgment that there was any systemic bias that a plucky young lady couldn’t solve with her own go-getcha. (Huston’s account gave credit where it was due, however: Nadella’s speech had also included the open-hearted admission that he had failed an interview on the empathy question, once. And the question? “You see a baby fall in the street. What do you do?” Who fails that?) |
| These thickets of misogyny, the walls of failure to recognise the problem, are the bits of planet tech that you can see from space. Egg-freezing isn’t the half of it, but if it gives a window on to the way women are perceived – valuable as brains, but also instrumental, inconvenient, biddable, lesser – then all to the good. | These thickets of misogyny, the walls of failure to recognise the problem, are the bits of planet tech that you can see from space. Egg-freezing isn’t the half of it, but if it gives a window on to the way women are perceived – valuable as brains, but also instrumental, inconvenient, biddable, lesser – then all to the good. |