Sexual Harassment and Gender Discrimination in Silicon Valley: Has There Been Any Real Change?

Several high-profile cases in the news in recent months seem to reflect attitudes about the treatment of women changing for the better in Silicon Valley. These are the most notable examples:

  • Dave McClure, the founder of the start-up incubator 500 Startups, resigned after admitting to sexual harassment. Later investigation revealed that the company had covered up an earlier sexual harassment charge against him by keeping the investigation confidential.
  • Binary Capital imploded after several women lodged sexual harassment charges against Justin Caldbeck.
  • Uber CEO Travis Kalanick resigned after former company engineer Susan Fowler published a blog detailing a history of sexual harassment at Uber.
  • Most recently, Mike Cagney, the CEO of online lending start-up Social Finance (SoFi), has been fired. For a long time, SoFi’s board of trustees turned a blind eye to complaints from employees about Cagney’s inappropriate behavior until multiple employees filed a lawsuit accusing him of sexual harassment and of “empowering other managers to engage in sexual conduct in the workplace.”
These public firings could reflect changing attitudes—but Ellen Pao cautions us against assuming that real change has happened yet. Who is Ellen Pao? Jessica Bennett, writing for the New York Times, explains that Pao forced the door open to reveal sexual harassment and gender discrimination in Silicon Valley technology and venture capital companies when she filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against her employer, the powerful venture firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, in 2012. Her lawsuit claimed that she had not been promoted because of gender discrimination and that she had experienced retaliation for complaining. She produced written performance evaluations and performance reviews that gave her high ratings. Nonetheless, she was passed over for a senior-level promotion because, she was told, she was both too passive and too pushy. She was also told that she was not promoted because she did not speak up enough in meetings and because she was too opinionated in those same meetings. Really? When she complained, she was attacked. While Pao did not win her lawsuit, she blazed a trail for other women who began to come forward and speak out about sexual harassment and gender discrimination in their workplaces. Pao writes that the real movement forward is that women are now speaking out and telling their stories and that women and their male allies are beginning to join together to file lawsuits to force boards to act. Pao cautions, however, that superficial public apologies and one-off public firings do not fix the company cultures that support bad behavior toward women and other underrepresented groups. Pao notes, “Most companies don’t address the great underlying problem: the exclusion of and biases against women, people of color, older employees, disabled people, L.G.B.T.Q. people and many other underrepresented groups.” She suggests that serious culture change will happen only when corporate leadership achieves these five goals:
  • Leaders make hard decisions to hold themselves and their teams accountable for their behavior across all activities in the organization.
  • Leaders are willing to have uncomfortable conversations.
  • Leaders are willing to fire those who are unwilling to be inclusive or respectful.
  • Organizations set measurable diversity and inclusion goals.
  • Leaders are willing to base compensation on hitting those diversity and inclusion goals.
Amber Tamblyn, writing for the New York Times, sums up the experience of many women who have recently spoken out about sexual harassment and gender discrimination: “We are learning that the more we open our mouths, the more we become a choir. And the more we are a choir, the more the tune is forced to change.” Changing biased, discriminatory, and abusive organizational cultures is going to take the whole village. Let’s stay vigilant and keep the pressure on for change.   Image courtesy of businessforward (CC BY 2.0)]]>

Inspiring Women in Baseball

When my cousin’s daughter was five or six years old, she was obsessed with becoming a professional baseball player. She would only wear a baseball uniform, including a baseball cap for her favorite team, and was rarely without her catcher’s mitt. It broke my heart to know that she would never be able to realize her dream because she was female. That was a long time ago, but not much has changed for women in professional baseball. For this reason, I found it inspiring to read about two women who are pioneers in the sport: Jessica Mendoza and Claire Smith. They are ESPN baseball analysts and journalists who are battling sexism in the sport to have their talents recognized. My niece never had a chance to see women in these roles when she was young. While not in center field, sports analysts and journalists are still important roles. Almost as inspiring to me is their male ally, Doug Glanville, who wrote the story about these women in the New York Times to acknowledge them and urge others to appreciate and support them. Glanville is an ally in the true sense of the word because he understands and is willing to give voice to the unfair challenges that women face in professional sports. He also appreciates the importance of role models for young girls and boys who have dreams that are blocked by stereotypes. Glanville begins by telling us about Jessica Mendoza, ESPN’s first and only Major League Baseball (MLB) analyst. Even though Mendoza is an Olympic gold and silver medalist in softball, a trusted insider, and a highly competent commentator, she is routinely disparaged by sports fans on social media and told she does not belong in baseball. Yet she persists as trailblazers must. Glanville also writes of Claire Smith, an African American baseball reporter for the New York Times, who just became the first woman ever recognized in the Baseball Hall of Fame with the highest honor in baseball journalism. Hers will be the first female face on the wall of journalistic award recipients. Both Mendoza and Smith have faced enormous challenges that men do not face. Glanville identifies some of these challenges as double standards based on gender. For example, men are allowed to be both competent and likable, unlike women. Glanville argues that “sports, on and off the field, should set an example for fairness, decency and humanity for all of our children, not just the legacy of boys already in the boys club.” Our children need to see that they can break barriers and be whatever they aspire to become. My niece would still not be a professional player in center field, but today, at least, she would have role models for other ways to be seriously involved in the sport she loves. Thank you to Jessica Mendoza and Claire Smith for being pioneers.   Photo courtesy of greg westfall (CC BY 2.0)]]>

Good News: Three Strategies That Are Changing Attitudes toward Women

There is good news on the horizon about gender stereotypes in the media. I wrote in my book New Rules for Women: Revolutionizing the Way Women Work Together about the power media images have to reinforce negative stereotypes of women as sex objects. These images communicate that the only thing that matters about women and girls is their appearance. There are still too many images of women as sex objects in advertising, but Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times reports on an exciting new study from Getty Images, a major supplier of stock photos that appear in ads, on billboards, and in blogs. Stock photos are important, Miller explains, because they “reflect the culture at a moment in time.” Miller reports that Getty Images found that over the past decade, from 2007 to 2017, the most sold images for the search term “women” have evolved from photos of naked, or nearly naked, models to photos of women demonstrating physical or professional prowess where their appearance isn’t the point. According to Miller, Pam Grossman, director of visual trends at Getty Images, explains that the top selling image in 2017 for the search term “woman” was of a woman hiking a rocky trail in Banff National Park, alone, on the edge of a cliff. Grossman notes that this is an image about power, freedom, and trusting yourself. The woman in this image is wearing a down jacket and a wool cap, and her face isn’t visible. The message of this image is what’s important is not what you look like but what you are doing. This is an empowering message for women and girls. We should also note that the most downloaded images, though, are of young Caucasian women. “You cannot be what you cannot see” is the unofficial tagline of the collection of stock photos called the Lean In collection at Getty Images. Miller explains that a large collection of fourteen thousand stock photos was developed in 2014 by Getty Images in collaboration with Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In nonprofit organization. Their goal was “to seed media with more modern, diverse and empowering images of women.” Miller notes that of the fifteen most downloaded images in the Lean In collection,

  • four are of fathers playing with children
  • four are of girls and women involved in science and engineering
  • four are of women in business or school settings
  • three are of women athletes
Having these more diverse images available to the public has helped shift cultural attitudes about gender in the media. In addition, social media pressure on large corporations to include empowering messages about women in their advertising, rather than showing women as sex objects to sell products, is starting to have an impact. My heart soars every time I see the General Electric (GE) ads on television showing women and girls being celebrated as scientists and engineers. Government regulations can help, too. Miller explains that in 2017, “Britain’s advertising regulator announced rules banning ads that promote gender stereotypes, sexually objectify women or promote unhealthy body images.” We could do this in the United States, too. We can all positively change attitudes about women. Here are some easy strategies:
  • Pressure companies to promote healthy and empowering images of women and girls using social media. You can start a campaign on social media.
  • Demand that legislators support laws and regulations that promote healthy and empowering messages about girls and women. You can organize this kind of pressure at the local or state level, and you can run for office yourself to accomplish these goals.
  • Volunteer with a nonprofit that is working to advance the empowerment of women and girls.
If we all get involved, we can make a difference. What are you doing to make a difference? Photo courtesy of WOCinTech Chat (CC BY 2.0)]]>

Five Reasons Why You Should Hire an Older Woman

As a member of the hiring committee of a nonprofit’s board of trustees, I recently worked with an executive search firm to fill a CEO vacancy in the organization. The search firm representative asked us if we wanted to screen out women over fifty from the candidate pool. We were surprised and asked, “Why would we?” The reply was, “Most of our clients won’t consider hiring women over fifty, and we don’t want to waste your time or ours by including them if you want us to screen them out.” Wow! This question was asked quietly, since it is illegal to discriminate based on age, but it was asked because this dynamic is so prevalent. Men are considered to be viable employees at older ages than women. Ashton Applewhite of the New York Times cites a 2016 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research that “found ‘robust’ evidence that age discrimination in the workplace starts earlier for women and never relents.” Applewhite explains that ageism, or discrimination based on age, “is the result of a network of attitudes and institutional practices.” In other words, it is baked into our social and workplace cultures that women over fifty are not valued. Sally Koslow, writing for the New York Times, cites a study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that nearly half—48.8 percent—of women aged fifty-five to sixty-four are among the long-term unemployed. These numbers reflect the desire of older women to work but their difficulty in getting hired. Many older women want to work not only because they enjoy it but also because they often need to work. Koslow reports that, according to the National Institute on Retirement Security, “women are 80 percent more likely than men to be impoverished at age sixty-five and older.” Why should you hire a woman over fifty? Applewhite suggests the following considerations:

  • Older workers can bring deep knowledge, well-honed interpersonal skills, better judgment, and a more balanced perspective to the workplace.
  • Older workers represent a wealth of productive and creative potential that is a source of social capital that should not be wasted.
  • Not one negative stereotype about older workers holds up under examination. Research shows that older workers are reliable, handle stress well, master new skills, and are the most engaged workers when offered the chance to grow and advance.
  • Older workers might take longer to do a task, but they make fewer mistakes.
  • It is a myth that older workers crowd out younger ones. Economists have debunked this “lump of labor” fallacy many times.
What changes can we make to open more employment opportunities for older women? Let’s be clear that ageism and an overemphasis on youth culture in our country are deeply engrained. Nonetheless, we can bring about change by not buying into the myth that some women are too old to do certain jobs or learn new skills. We can make friends of all ages and point out age bias when we see it. Most importantly, though, we need to join forces and speak up about the issue of ageism. We need to challenge the assumptions about older women as workers and hire older women when we are managers. Our board of trustees hired a woman over fifty for our vacant CEO position, and she brought a wide range of experience and contacts to our organization that proved to be quite valuable. What ways can you influence the hiring of an older woman worker?  What successes have you experienced with older workers?  Let us hear from you. Photo courtesy of shooterple.    ]]>

How Technology Companies Can Hire and Retain More Women

For some time now, technology companies have acknowledged that women are underrepresented in their companies in technology and leadership positions. Both large and small companies in Silicon Valley have publicly announced their intentions to increase the representation of women and minorities in their ranks, yet not much progress has been made. Katharine Zaleski, the cofounder of a company that helps clients diversify their workforces, writes in the New York Times that a big part of the solution could come from making changes in the interview process. She maintains that often well-intentioned, but clueless, men send clear messages to women during the interview process that they are not welcome or valued. But sometimes these interviewers are not well-intentioned. In one example, Zaleski set up an interview with a tech company for an African American woman software engineer. Zaleski recounts, “after meeting with the hiring panel, she [the applicant] withdrew her application, telling us she felt demeaned by the all-white male group that failed to ask her any questions about her coding skills.” In fact, one of the men told her that because she wasn’t a “cultural fit,” there was no need to proceed with technical questions. But what does it mean to be a “cultural fit?” Zaleski suggests that the template for “fit” is based on young white men. What can companies do to be successful in hiring diverse candidates? Zaleski offers these tips:

  • Include women in the hiring process by intentionally forming diverse interview panels.
  • Make current female employees available to speak to candidates about their experience in the company.
  • Make themselves appealing to female candidates by telling them not only about their ping pong tables and retreats but also about their parental leave policies, childcare programs, and breast-pumping rooms. Emphasizing these policies demonstrates that the company has a culture that values and includes women.
  • Hold webinars for potential candidates led by female employees who talk about how the organization is working to become more inclusive. There is a lot of negative press about tech companies that makes women skeptical about whether they will be valued, and companies need to address these concerns directly.
Let’s be clear: while these steps will help with hiring, retention is another matter. My niece recently returned to work in a technology company after giving birth to her first child, and her manager is unsupportive. The first thing her manager said to her upon returning to work was, “How many more are you planning to have and how soon?” He did not even welcome her back and he is unhappy that she needs breaks to pump. She no longer wants to work there and is actively looking for another job. Does your company make it clear that they value women? Please share with us what efforts your organization makes to be inclusive of women. Photo courtesy of MDGovpics (CC BY 2.0)    ]]>

Maxine Waters: A Strong Black Woman Who Is a Role Model for Us All

United States Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California has become a heroine to many of us, especially millennials, since she stood up for her principles and refused to attend President Trump’s inauguration or his first speech to Congress. Her willingness to speak honestly about her values and beliefs has won the respect of people in all age groups. As Sarah D. Wire reports for the Los Angeles Times, Waters explained that she doesn’t honor this president because of “his insulting comments about former presidential rivals Carly Fiorina and Hillary Clinton, the lewd ‘Access Hollywood’ video in which he bragged about grabbing women and his mocking imitation of a disabled reporter.” In addition, Lottie L. Joiner of Crisis Magazine reports that Waters is determined to do what she can to stop Trump’s agenda of undermining African American contributions to our democracy. According to Wire, Waters was born one of thirteen children raised by a single mother in St. Louis and began working at the age of thirteen. After high school, she moved with her family to California, began a career in public service as a teacher in the Head Start program, and earned a bachelor’s degree. She was elected to the California State Assembly in 1977, where she became a very effective legislator. In 1991, she was elected to Congress. Maxine Waters is my heroine because she has consistently fought for social and economic justice on the local, state, federal, and international levels. For example:

  • While serving in the California state legislature, she led a drive to force the state pension system to divest billions of dollars in shares of companies that did business in South Africa in order to help end the oppressive system of apartheid.
  • In her congressional district, she helped found organizations that promote black women and provide job training to young people.
  • She helped write the Dodd-Frank Act, which instituted broad oversight of the banking industry after the 2008 market collapse.
  • She helped create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
  • Waters created legislation to put money back into minority communities devastated by the crash of the housing market to produce housing for low-income people.
  • Waters worked hard to draft legislation that funded HIV/AIDS research among minority populations.
  • Currently Waters is working on closing the enormous wealth gap between blacks (and other minorities) and whites in the United States.
Waters provides inspiration to the rest of us, encouraging us to step forward and make a difference in our communities and in our country as volunteers, as activists, or by running for office. What steps are you taking to make a difference?   Photo courtesy of mark6mauno for a Creative Commons photo with the Share-Alike 2.0 license.]]>

Attitudes about Women in Economics: New Research by a Rising Star

An important new study of online conversations among economists by Alice H. Wu quantifies “outright hostility toward women in parts of the economics profession,” reports Justin Wolfers of the New York Times. Wu reported the findings from her award-winning senior thesis research paper at the University of California, Berkeley. Her paper is prompting urgent conversations among leading economists around the country. Wolfers notes that, while the underrepresentation of women in the economics departments of top universities is well known, claims about workplace culture as the culprit have been hard to measure. People are guarded about publicly revealing their attitudes toward female economists. Wu developed new uses of technology to reveal hidden misogyny. How did she do it? Wolfers explains that Wu used technology to research computerized archives by mining “more than a million posts from an anonymous online message board frequented by many economists . . . [including] economics faculty members and graduate students.” She adopted machine learning techniques on her computer to identify whether the subject of each post was a man or a woman. She then applied machine learning techniques to identify the terms “most uniquely associated with posts about men and about women.” The words pertaining to women included hotter, sexy, sexism, tits, anal, marrying, feminazi, slut, etc. You get the idea. Wolfers notes that the terms most associated with discussions of men reveal “no similarly singular or hostile theme.” Many words associated with discussions about men are positive, such as goals, greatest, and Nobel. Wolfers goes on to note that Janet Currie, a leading economist at Princeton, said Wu’s findings resonated because they’re “systematically quantifying something most female economists already know.” She went on to tell Wolfers that this analysis “speaks volumes about attitudes that persist in the dark corners of the profession.” These attitudes can create a subtle but hostile work environment for women. Thank you, Alice H. Wu, for shining a light into the dark corners and opening a pathway to change. We need more young female economists like you to join the field.   Photo courtesy of Business Forward for a Creative Commons photo with the Share-Alike 2.0 license.]]>

How You Can Take Steps to Close the Gender Pay Gap in Your Company

Research indicates that pay transparency does result in smaller pay gaps. At the very least, if employees are aware of pay discrepancies in the company, women and people of color can confidently negotiate for higher salaries than those offered. But most companies keep salary information secret and are not transparent. That is why the step taken by employees at Google is so important—they took matters into their own hands to create transparency. Daisuke Wakabayashi of the New York Times reports that in 2015, a female engineer at Google created a self-reported salary spreadsheet that employees are still using. In 2017, twelve hundred United States Google employees posted their salary and bonus information to this spreadsheet, which shows that female employees are paid less than male staff members in comparable jobs at most levels. The spreadsheet does not cover all levels and is admittedly incomplete. Nonetheless, since Google’s board voted against making pay transparent for women’s and men’s salaries, and Google is in a court battle with the United States Department of Labor because it is refusing to hand over data as part of a routine audit of its pay practices, the self-reported data is the only source of transparency for Google employees. Without the spreadsheet, Google would not be held accountable at all. Now, more than ever, employees need to self-organize to collect salary data and make it transparent to expose pay gaps. Why? Because, as Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times reports, the Trump administration just reversed a regulation that the Obama administration put into place to address the pay gap. Miller explains that the Obama administration regulation, which was about to take effect, would have “required companies to report how much they paid people, along with their sex and race.” Europe and Britain require companies to report this information, but now, under the Trump administration, we do not. Without this pressure from the Federal government, companies have no incentive to close the pay gaps and will continue to keep salary information secret and, accordingly, to hide discrimination and avoid accountability. Miller reports that, according to an analysis of the Bureau of Labor Statistics data by the Pew Research Center, we know the following general statistics about the pay gap in the United States:

  • White women’s median hourly earnings are 82 percent of those of white men
  • Asian women earn 87 percent of what white men earn
  • Black women earn 65 percent of what white men earn
  • Hispanic women earn 58 percent of what white men earn
  • Black and Hispanic men earn less than white men, while Asian men outearn them
An example of the importance of transparency recently occurred in Britain at the BBC. Britain only recently implemented a new regulation requiring that companies report salary data. Steven Erlanger of the New York Times explains that when the government forced the BBC to publish the salary ranges of its highest paid employees, the resulting report showed significant disparities. An open letter signed by forty-two employees stated that the report confirmed a long-held suspicion that “women at the BBC are being paid less than men for the same work.” Until the data was made public, no confirmation of those suspicions was possible. Employees and the government are now pressuring the BBC to close this gender pay gap. If your company does not make salary data public, you could consider following the example of the Google employees and organizing a way for employees to self-report so that people have some information available to them when it is time for them to negotiate for salary increases. I recommend that a group of people, including both women and men, get together to organize this collection of information. If the company finds out and is unhappy, a group is at less risk than an individual when taking steps that the company may find threatening. The gender and race pay gaps will never close if we don’t take some steps to bring disparities to light. Let us know if you have been successful at creating pay transparency in your company. Photo courtesy of businessforward (CC by 2.0)]]>

6 Steps That Can Help Women Advance in Law Firms

Progress has been very slow for women’s advancement in law firms. Why is this the case? As Elizabeth Olson of the New York Times reports, women are

  • Slightly over 50 percent of current law school graduates (and have been for a long time)
  • Under 35 percent of lawyers at law firms
  • Only 20 percent of equity partners, where the highest compensation and best opportunities for leadership exist
Olson cites a recent study by Anne Urda of Law360 that found that “only nine of 300 firms surveyed had a lawyer work force that was 50 percent or more female.” Olson notes that a number of recent gender bias lawsuits have been filed against law firms alleging substantial gender pay disparities and discrimination for either associates or partners, reflecting
  • Substantially lower starting salaries for female associates compared to their male counterparts
  • Promotions for female associates without commensurate pay increases
  • Female partners being excluded from meetings about client matters, not being allowed to pitch to firm clients, and being thwarted in their efforts to assume greater leadership
  • Company tolerance for female partners being targeted for harassment and humiliation by firm leaders and peers
  • Being made nonequity partners rather than equity partners, where the compensation levels are higher and the opportunities for leadership available
Shira A. Scheindlin, a recently retired federal district court judge writes that in her courtroom, it was rare for female lawyers to have a lead role or to speak at all. The talking was done primarily by white men, with women sitting at the counsel table, usually junior and silent, although they were clearly the ones most familiar with the details of the case. In a study that she recently conducted with the New York Bar Association, the gender of the lawyers who primarily spoke in court in 2,800 cases over four months was recorded. Scheindlin found that
  • Women were the lead lawyers for private parties barely 20 percent of the time.
  • Overall, women were lead counsel for only 25 percent of criminal and commercial cases in courtrooms across New York.
Without the opportunity to be in the lead counsel role, women find it hard to advance in law firms. What can be done?  Scheindlin suggests the following:
  1. Clients can demand that their legal teams be diverse.
  2. Law firms can take concrete steps to pay women and men at the same rate for the same work.
  3. Firms can ensure that junior female lawyers participate in the same number of depositions as their male counterparts.
  4. Firms can ensure that every trial team has at least one woman.
  5. Firms can ensure that women are meeting clients at the same rate as men.
  6. Law firms can make sure that bright, aggressive women are given the same opportunities for leadership positions as their equally qualified male colleagues.
These are serious and concrete steps that can remove the barriers to success for women in law firms. Isn’t it about time?   Photo courtesy of Cal Injury Lawyer (CC Public Domain Mark 1.0)]]>

How Class-action Lawsuits against Silicon Valley Can Benefit All of Us

Anita Hill, an attorney and professor at Brandeis University, is one of my heroines. She had the courage in the early 1990s to accuse her ex-boss Clarence Thomas of inappropriate sexual behavior toward her when he was her supervisor. When she learned that he was nominated for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, she felt she had to testify to his lack of moral character during his confirmation hearings. She came forward and spoke the truth of her experience. While she was not able to stop his confirmation, she did give a voice and a name to the abusive behavior that women have always been subjected to by powerful men—sexual harassment. Her testimony opened a door for women to work together with male allies to make the workplace safer and more inclusive for all women. Recently, Professor Hill weighed in on the revelations from Silicon Valley about gender discrimination and harassment in the technology industry. She suggests that the industry will benefit from the interventions into sexism experienced by Wall Street in the 1990s—massively expensive and successful class-action lawsuits that brought about industrywide change. Hill notes that “while pay and promotion discrimination still exists [at Wall Street firms], more women on Wall Street are advancing in their careers to managing directorships and other leadership roles.” Hill points out that the letter released by a young male Google employee that claimed biological differences make women poorly suited to engineering revealed deep-seated sexist attitudes mirrored by recent incidents at Uber and other technology organizations. When a former female Uber employee wrote a blog about her experiences with Uber’s toxic, male-dominated culture, other female coders and engineers came forward with allegations of sexism at Google, Tesla, Twitter, Microsoft, and Oracle, to name a few. Hill cites the following statistics as further evidence of widespread gender discrimination in the tech industry:

  • Women under twenty-five earn, on average, 29 percent less than their male counterparts.
  • For the same job at the same company, women of all ages receive lower salary offers than men 63 percent of the time.
  • Women hold only 11 percent of executive positions at Silicon Valley companies.
  • Women own only 5 percent of tech start-ups.
  • Only 7 percent of partners at the top one hundred venture capital firms are women.
  • Women quit tech jobs at more than twice the rate of men.
According to Hill, while some tech companies have given lip service to improving conditions for women, there is not much genuine action other than offering diversity training, which has limited impact without systemic efforts to change the company culture. For example, in response to a suit alleging wage discrimination against women, Google lawyers said in May that it would be too burdensome for the company to collect data on salaries. In other words, they are not serious about eliminating gender discrimination. Hill suggests that “women in the industry should collectively consider class-action discrimination cases against employers.” She notes that the existence of confidentiality clauses and arbitration agreements, put into place after the 1990s to preempt class-action suits, do not mean that suits cannot be brought. Now that women in technology are speaking out and refusing to be silenced, they can band together and file suits to bring change to the technology industry. It won’t happen otherwise. It’s in everyone’s best interests that women in technology file lawsuits. As Hill notes, “The economic benefits could be remarkable. Advancing women’s equality, which includes minimizing the gender gap in labor force participation, holds the potential to add $12 trillion to global G.D.P. by 2025.” Let’s encourage women to step forward.   Photo in the public domain courtesy of StartupStockPhotos.]]>