“In one review session, one male partner said of a female employee, ‘We don’t have to worry about her bonus or promotion because she just got married. So she’ll probably have a baby and quit soon.'”
That’s an account from one of the participants in a new survey on gender discrimination in tech. Stanford University researchers interviewed more than 200 women, mostly in the Bay Area. The respondents, who “hold positions of power and influence” were asked questions about promotion, inclusion, unconscious biases, motherhood, and harassment and safety.
The results were troubling. Sixty percent of women in tech reported unwanted sexual advances. Forty percent felt the need to speak less about their family to be taken seriously and 75 percent were asked about marital status and children during interviews. Eighty-seven percent received demeaning comments from male co-workers. Ninety percent witnessed sexist behavior at company off-sites.
Those are just some of the statistics laid out. The full study is available here.
“The inspiration for this survey came out of the incredible conversation from the Ellen Pao & KPCB trial,” writes Elephant in the Valley, the organization behind the survey. “What we realized is that while many women shared similar workplace stories, most men were simply shocked and unaware of the issues facing women in the workplace. In an effort to correct the massive information disparity, we decided to get the data and the stories.”
