Category / business

by Diane Tate

One Large Step Back For Womankind

We’ve Come A Long Way, Baby. But certainly not all the way

We’ve of course moved forward … in the past 100 years, women can now vote for the U.S. President. We can go to the same colleges as men. And we can even work after a newborn with the advent of “parental” vs. “maternity” leave. And now – after years of evolving from being mere property and sexual objects with no power, to the “do it all” woman, we are at last have the courage to assert that maybe women shouldn’t be pressured to “have it all” but can at last celebrate that we have choices to have what we want.

But lest you think we’ve arrived, take a peek at salary statistics. Or see what happens when a prominent woman executive uses loads of academic data to encourage women to have discussions about asserting themselves. Observe what happens when a few women advocate holding on to just a small female presence in the UK currency.

So no, we haven’t arrived and as such, we must remain vigilant. We need to raise the bar to get the standards we want to allow us the freedoms to choose as men do.

No wonder my heart sank when I read about the cover of this month’s Vogue magazine:

1376627932000-marissa

In case you missed it: an opportunity to feature one of the brightest, youngest, successful female executives in Silicon Valley is reduced to an airbrushed, glamor shot. While the story itself (eventually) goes into the business details (you know, ostensibly the reason we should all care about this executive), a picture says a thousand words. This one evokes countless messages that women have been painfully trying to counter for themselves and the girls of the next generation for over the past 100+ years.

Though I knew intuitively that this did not bode well for women, even I didn’t realize all the subconscious messages that it brings. In addition to all of the messages around body image, being perfect, and so on, the pose has her upside down: “a powerless stance” someone sadly needed to call out explicitly to me. Yes, time to awaken from the stupor of being lulled back into the false promises of false, unattainable glamor indeed.

Sadly I heard some women react by saying, “I really don’t get it. What’s the big deal?” This reminds me of white men objecting to affirmative action policies with indignation that employers cannot simply hire how they “choose” – naively assuming that the playing field is equal and everyone should just go on doing what they want, unhindered by unconscious biases or societal considerations. Alas, as the above data demonstrates, the playing field is far from equal, and acting obliviously to that is at best shocking, at worst highly negligent, from someone leading one of the world’s largest tech properties. It doesn’t take a PhD in computer science (let alone a CEO title) to understand that this kind of imagery is – and has been – extremely damaging to women on a number of levels.

Don’t get me wrong: I want women to embrace their fashionista sense…or feel free not to if they don’t have one. But given the world is not run by us, I’m really not fine with women in leadership roles – with great potential for positive influence and change – disregarding the wake they leave when their personal preferences set women (and girls) back.

by Diane Tate

Ya Say You Wanna What?

The gracious organizers at the increasingly-popular and relevant HTML5DevConference invited me back this year after I finagled my way into a hands-on dev event last year. Luckily the markets have changed enough where I could still speak non-geek and hold some interest to this audience of over 1,000 web developers (not all attended my talk, fear not ;).

Today was perfect timing as my talk discussed why Mozilla is the perfect fomenter of the revolution that needs to happen in mobile. Why today? Because it is also Mozilla’s 15-year anniversary. And it’s our history that really illustrates how revolutionary our DNA is, and just why this is so important for our mobile world.

Here’s a glimpse at the slides. Hit me up at @tbiz with any questions or simply leave a comment here. Viva la revolucion!

by Diane Tate

Progress or Compliance?

The Internet exploded this week when Adria Richards chose to use her social media audience as the first channel to air her offense at some comments made at Pycon. Much has been written about this, including further offense that people have actually questioned Adria’s response to her own offense. Everyone’s offended.

To be clear: offense and even outrage is justified considering the vitriol that ensued (including real, disturbing threats and job losses). It’s worrisome and harkens of regressive tendencies in tech and the job security and safety of many in this industry.

However, the bigger picture so eloquently outlined by Amanda Blum is very important. Blum calls out a pattern of social media dysfunction where Richards has reacted to multiple instances of offense through public channels, which invariably (if you use social media, it’s not surprising) led to incendiary exchanges and a general degradation of relations.

Blum says it so well:

All she had to consider was “what outcome am I looking for?”. If the outcome is “change the way these men are speaking” she’d have taken a different route. If “make as big a deal of this as humanly possible with no thought to consequence” was her outcome, she chose right.

When I look at this big picture – what do we want things to be vs. how do we feel about specific incidents – I have little sympathy for the “if someone is offended they are off-limits to criticism” approach others (whom I love dearly) have put forth. There are SO many reasons why putting a quarantine on any critique of an offended person’s reaction is counter-productive and leads to horrid consequences…here are just a few:

  • It confines the situation to feelings rather than uses those feelings constructively. Not to belittle feelings; if I suspend disbelief (and had not read the very salient context provided by Blum) and posit that she has for reasons of pure fate encountered a large backlog of awkward sexist situations, certainly frustration, insecurity, awkwardness, and fear are all rational reactions. But acting on them vs. weighing out what the desired outcome should be led to lots of disservices. Disservices to her, for assuming that is all she is capable of is reacting (or cyber-bullying, in this case). To the offenders, for not allowing them a chance to explain themselves before the world knew. And to the Internet, for escalating a series of reactions about an offense rather than healthier, more constructive conversations about what can be done to prevent them. Regardless of what Matt Lemay says about the conversation being good, it would have been *way* better had it not been launched by a shitstorm of threats and polemics. Easily avoidable.
  • It absolves the offended of any responsibility to think bigger and act in a way that actually helps others. In this sad case, giving Richards a self-centered carte blanche to do whatever she feels is ok wasn’t just therapy. It led to some real, horrid and significant backlash. Social media tends to do that. If she truly wanted a healthier environment in tech, her passive-aggressive “I will only Tweet and out them en masse” manner would not have happened. She could have followed Jolie O’Dell’s script. If she was too afraid or timid to do that, she could have addressed it with the conference officials who had already made it clear they care about this stuff – clearly a supportive audience. But she chose vendetta, not activism.
  • It leads to an environment of fear and compliance rather than freedom and enlightenment. Again, play it out: say some company hires her for PR purposes (it’s a leap to think someone would hire her for her commmunity-building skills; SendGrid’s explanation makes perfect sense). She joins the team. Do you think anyone would feel free to say _anything_ in her presence given her passive-aggressive terrorist approach to conflict? All ingredients to an environment of compliance, fear and resentment rather than an enlightened, educated workplace.

In short, when you choose to involve social media as the key channel for your conflict, you go beyond your personal therapy. You affect lives. Think before you point, shoot and post.