Lynne's Take on Tech

Wired today laments the lack of women at C-level in Silicon Valley tech companies. After Carly’s ouster lask week, there are only seven women at Fortune 500 companies and none of them are SV companies. Wired printed my response today.

It’s not surprising that Silicon Valley is particularly difficult for women to move up in ranks – the “cowboy” company style isn’t known for consensus management, team players, or progressive initiatives. The thing to remember is that many of the founders and investors in these cowboy companies (e.g. National Semiconductor, Fairchild, Intel, …) are still going strong in Silicon Valley, and the independent gun-slinger executive who they identify with most strongly is also most likely male. Not always though – Carly’s go-it-alone style fits more with cowboys than the older HP way of Hewlett and Packard. Perhaps Carly would have been better shaking up things at Intel or National Semi? She’d fit right in.

If you want to see Silicon Valley change, watch the obits. The fewer cowboys, the less fascination with the old cowboy style and the more interest in global strategy and fast execution. And women will most certainly do well in this new Internet age.

Ed Frauenheim of cnet put together an article on why women have trouble with IT. So I start talking, and before I know it I’m sitting in CNET’s letters section next to one of RMS’s rants. Good show!

It’s a good article, and I’m pleased to see this subject is starting to be discussed more. When I wrote about this serious loss of women in computing (SF Chronicle, Sept2003, Paving the Way for Systers reflecting on the passing of Anita Borg and the impact of women on technology, I found a real dearth of discussion of this issue in the mainstream and technical press – it was viewed solely as a “woman’s issue” relegated to the margins. Yet I received a great deal of email, both from women and men who have lived with this problem when the article appeared – much more than usually is received. And what they shared with quite striking.

Sue Hutchinson wrote a nice article that discusses the closing of the gender gap in longevity. But I’m hopefull for a followup. Seems that there’s serious talk in the social security reform set of taking into account women’s “longer” lifespans by reducing benefits (e.g. Meet the Press last month) right when we don’t seem to have that edge anymore:

“MR. RUSSERT: Do you think Congress, Mr. Chairman, would accept any formula that said that people would be treated differently because of their gender or their race?
REP. THOMAS: If we discuss it and the will is not to do it, fine. At least we discussed it. To simply raise the age and find out that you’ve got gender, race and occupational problems later, I would not be doing the kind of service that I think I have to do. You and I have been around quite a while. We went through the ’80s. We went into the ’90s. And now we’re in the 21st century. We saw the choices that were made in the past. We went to the well over and over again with the same old solutions which really aren’t solutions. We’ve reached the point where we have to fundamentally examine it in my opinion. The president has given us that opportunity. We ought to take it.”

So what if there is no “longer” lifespan for women within the next 30 years if these factors Sue described continue? The reset for social security is then based on an outdated premise? Coupled with lower lifetime earnings by women, looks like the reforms in social security could create a new subclass of permanently improverished women.