Advancing Equality is Boring AF

The work of advancing equality and making meaningful progress toward the liberation of women isn't simple. In fact, I often find it deeply, mind-numbingly boring.

Do I have your attention yet?

For the last six weeks, I've been looking into claims of gender discrimination at Carta Inc., a cap table management software and fintech darling that is universally considered a unicorn and a "done deal" for its category. The suit was brought by their former VP of Marketing, Emily Kramer, after she discovered that the company was paying women less than men and not providing equal compensation grants. You can read the full details of the suit here, but if you read only one section, I encourage you to read this one:

Many times in my career, I have said that the difference between leadership and great leadership is doing what you say you are going to do. The fact that Carta and its founder are being sued by a former employee is not what caused me to start down my latest investigation. It wasn't even the fact that more employees have come forward with stories vetted by credible media sources. It was the Founder and CEO Henry Ward's own blog post that ultimately sent me into action:

In a public statement in 2018, Ward admitted the company was part of the problem in Silicon Valley. As part of his commitment to move forward with solutions, he said the company would add a female board member by the end of 2018. As of my writing this, a female board member has still not been added. And the lawsuit is still pending.

Writing blog posts is one of the many actions Silicon Valley types take to appear that they are part of the solution. It's an easy band-aid that doesn't require them to do any real work. Add tweets, pledges, mentorship hours, "feedback sessions" and conference sponsorships to the list. Who is going back and counting the receipts, right?

And this is where I tell you my company, soona is a Carta customer. Last week, I held a vote of the majority of the preferred stockholders at soona to endorse my decision to leave Carta for our Cap Table Management. They voted 100% in favor.

This move wasn't hasty. I read the lawsuit in full. I had a conversation with the Chief People Officer at Carta. You can read about that conversation here. It quickly became evident to me that Carta wasn't interested in improving their stance on gender equity. And that's why we are firing Carta.

When news spread that Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18th, her Notorious dissent collar quickly went viral again. The nation Instagrammed and the virtually mourned the larger-than-life justice immediately. Her presence was evident nearly everywhere you went online for days. It got me thinking a lot about her role in America's history and why I so admired her. It wasn't because of the collar.

In re-reading the Notorious RBG book by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik, one of the things that strikes me most about Ruth Bader Ginsburg's early legal fights with the ACLU is that she sought not to just liberate women. She also saw her work as a liberation of men. What is often so misunderstood about my efforts, whether it's through the Candor Clause or otherwise, is that I'm somehow trying to punish men. Rather, I see my purpose as a celebration of the humanity of those who have taken up equality not as a cause, but as a principled view through which they see the world. If women are not free to pursue their lives fully, neither are men. So long as the traits of the feminine are devalued and ostracized, then the boundaries for men will continue to strangle them into a masculinity which prevents them from breathing in the fullness of the human experience.

"It's not women's liberation, it is women's AND men's liberation." - Ruth Bader Ginsburg

But let me be clear. Her work was tedious and frustratingly blasé at times. Whether it was hiding her own pregnancy while working at Rutgers University or arguing the very first cases in the Supreme Court about pregnancy-based discrimination, her work was equal parts principle and doing the damn work. Today, we have the Pregnancy Discrimination Act in large part because of the her work. Her insistence that women should not have to choose between professional aspirations and a family may have very well led to the birth of countless men reading this. Whose life was she really protecting?

Nearly half of fathers report dissatisfaction with the amount of time that they are able to spend with their children. The gender-equality debate too often ignores this half of the equation.

- This article in The Atlantic always gets me.

Many of us are frustrated with politics in this moment. We celebrate so publicly the epicness of a singular person whilst simultaneously failing to take meaningful action that would progressively move us in the direction that said idol imagined. If you are one of the leaders who wake up every day and wonder: "What can I do?" Good news, I have some really boring work for you.

If you also care about equity, then the work is not tweeting.

The work is not signing a petition online.

The work is not buying an "I Dissent" pin.

The work is leaving Carta.

The work is using the Candor Clause.

The work is gathering the ten women in your organization who have been harassed and using your power to make change.

The work is publishing the fucking article.

The work is building a new hiring pipeline that represents your community.

The work is writing the check.

My intent here isn't to shame those that chose to participate in a public display of mourning and praise. This is what we these digital communities are designed for - to feel connected to likeminded folks - and I understand that.

My intent is to call out the business leadership in my community and many others who use tweets about equality like a key card to "thoughtfulness" and then fail to take meaningful action that would improve their organizations and set a better standard for us all.

That's right: all of us. Not just women. This is not rocket science. The problem is that the work is boring. And we don't want to do it.

Leadership is a strange journey. There is no such thing as being a "principled" leader. Sometimes you actually do have to pick your battles or make a decision you don't want to make. However, it is entirely possible to be a "leader with principles." And the impact you can make if you wake up tomorrow and decide to apply those principles to your decisions is profound.

But even more importantly, failure to lead in the work of equality and justice, be it gender, race or LGBTQ+ issues, will result in your ultimate retirement from the public dialogue. It might not happen today or tomorrow or next week -- but I promise you -- it will.

Women are quickly becoming the educated class. We will backfill the roles that the boomers leave behind. Women of color are starting businesses at three times the rate of any other group in many American cities. And yet they are the most under-banked and under-invested. Working moms are educating their children in their homes while keeping our economy running.

And yet our lives are still consistently treated as lesser.

RBG once said: “All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.”

Here's what I would say: Start marching with us before it's too late.