Is Silicon Valley Sexist?!
Why does this it matter?
Social injustice: Tech is probably the strongest growth engine in the world economy. And if any social group is systematically left behind this train, not only do they miss out on key decision-making, but also the economic benefits of such a system.
Staying ahead of the curve, or in other words, accelerating the rate of growth: We are in a very competitive world. And the only way the US can be competitive is if we assure that every individual is fully achieving his or her full potential.
That being said, when we hear that women only represent between 10% to 20% of the tech workforce in most Silicon Valley companies, we should be horrified.
Such excessively skewed statistics always indicate that there are fundamental social problems that should be identified and addressed. Otherwise, this problem will not only become chronic but also will foster a variety of secondary problems. As entrepreneurs and active participants in the phenomenal human achievement known as Silicon Valley, we have an obligation to uncover and address the root cause of this social injustice in our backyard.
Like all problems, the first step in solving it is identifying the true reason. Of course, if the answer were obvious it have been resolved decades ago instead of getting worse year after year.
The common narrative is that the Silicon Valley tech giants are utilizing systematic discriminatory hiring and promoting practices against female engineers, and the public should hold them responsible for their misconduct to force them to change course.
The problem is that this narrative does not have any supporting evidence, and if it were true it would be one of the world largest and longest lasting conspiracies. We are not saying that there are no bad apples here and there, but a few scattered bad actors couldn’t yield such a massive gender imbalance in the workforce for such a long time.
As for why such a narrative persists, we have a few hypotheses. One, it is easy to make and believe conspiracy theories, and two, believing such theories absolve the rest of us from any responsibility.
Another contributing factor is the school pipeline; looking at CS and EE departments across the country, we realize that women represent around 30% of all undergraduate students in most schools and universities. This explains part of the problem, but not all of it. The gender ratios in Silicon Valley are significantly under 20% for most companies. And that where the conspiracy theory comes back swinging, suggesting that the hiring and retention practices in tech companies result in a large percentage of female engineers choosing not to join the companies, or leaving at some point along the way. But why is this true only for their tech departments, while other departments such as finance, marketing, and HR have much higher female-to-male ratios? This observation is what prompts the true sexist to make the false argument that males somehow are biologically more adept at problem-solving, making them more likely to pursue tech career paths versus female colleagues. The problem with this claim, other than being offensive, is there is an enormous volume of statistical and empirical evidence to refute this preposterous idea. And we would not dignify such a concept by discussing it.
So far we have pointed out two problems: that in universities across the US, women represent only around 30% in EE and CS and this ratio drops to only around 10% in Silicon Valley tech companies.
How does this drop from 30% to under 20% happen? To understand, we need to look deeper and see where the Silicon Valley workforce comes from. A study based on 2016 census data indicates that more than 71% of Silicon Valley tech employees are foreign-born, predominantly from East and South Asia. At this point, someone might say “mystery solved: foreigners are the source of the problem, as they don't give women to same education opportunities.” The problem with this false statement is that the ratio of female to male engineers in China for instance is higher than the US.
This indicates the channel from engineering schools to the Silicon Valley workforce is the problem. But what is this channel? From personal observation it’s easy to see that the most popular channel is graduate schools. Most foreign-born individuals working Silicon Valley have come to the US as graduate students. This simple observation indicates that there is a need to look into the engineering graduate school system and find a way to make it more inviting for foreign female engineers, or somehow attract engineers directly after undergrad (or into US undergraduate programs). How exactly to go about that process is less clear, as there are remarkably few statistics on the subject, much less a study of the factors that go into international students deciding to apply to engineering graduate programs in the U.S.
If we succeed on this front, this will have the fastest and most significant impact on this gender imbalance problem. But this still does not excuse the fact that we have a deep social problem turning the majority of female high school students away from tech education. And this has to be addressed. We think part of the problem is a branding issue. Engineers and scientists have a long history of being portrayed as boring, socially outcast individuals. Luckily, with the advent of social media, the power of communicating alternative narratives and to rebrand ourselves is wide open. And we can see some phenomenon emerging such as what we refer to as “reality tv science.”
That all being said, we would be disingenuous if we pretended that the work environment in the tech industry is not disenfranchising for female engineers. The long work hours and general expectations around work-life balance can be tough for any engineer. However, like it or not, the stereotypical distribution of household chores and childcare often mean women have additional duties at home. This is especially true for women with young children, as the rising cost of child care services in the valley forces them to shoulder much of the burden alone. These problems should be looked into carefully on the corporate and even city-wide regulatory levels. Moreover, this need is calling for the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial spirit to kick into gear to find solutions to address some of these issues.
In a following article we will discuss some social and technological developments that might help in empowering women to achieve their full potentials by giving them more tools to balance their family and professional lives. Stay tuned!
