In the last few months, the infamous “Google Memo” -- reeking of sexism -- has garnered a lot of attention. A lot has been written and said about the young engineer at Google who had posted an essay on one of Google’s internal forums explaining how it should stop its campaign to increase gender diversity, and instead focus on ‘ideological diversity’.
Recently, Melinda Gates, the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation talked to CNN's Poppy Harlow about sexism in Silicon Valley. Incidentally, this was her first public remark on the topic and she had some significant points to make.
Melinda recalls that she first heard about the incident from her husband Bill Gates. She said, "When I read that Google memo, I didn't know whether to be sad or whether to be outraged. And I think the sadness came first. The sadness to see that kind of point of view."
Further, she points out the industry's gender disparity. When she was in college, 37% of computer science graduates were female. Now it's 18%, she said.
" ll the sudden, when games started to become very genderized, you started to see the downtick. This huge falling off of women wanted to go into computer science," she said.
She asserted that it is the venture capital community, which, "needs to clean up its act".
“Today, they know male, white, Caucasian, in a hoodie, looks like a geek, comes from an Ivy League or equivalent school. That's their funding criteria."
Gates added, that a mere 3% of companies led by women get VC funding. Also, only 6% of VC partners today are women
According to her, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki’s Open Letter is an exemplary response to the matter.
Wojcicki, a former Google employee, had said, “Though I’ve been lucky to work at a company where I’ve received a lot of support — from leaders like Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, and Jonathan Rosenberg to mentors like Bill Campbell — my experience in the tech industry has shown me just how pervasive that question is.”
Moreover, Gates says she experienced gender discrimination "all the way through" her career. Even today, for her foundation she has to deal with hidden biases. The situation has only turned so bad because of the fact that gender biases are so rarely addressed.
Also read: Women in Tech: Challenges they Face in a Male-dominated Industry
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