Boys will be stand-up guys

Okay, I’ll finish out the week with an article from the Canadian publication Maclean’s in which the writer lays out why he’ll no longer speak on all-male panels.

Scott Gilmore’s piece was published before the UN announced its conference on gender equality that was not to include women, and before the Grace Hopper Celebration, where the CEO of Microsoft told women in tech that they’ll get their monetary rewards by not asking for raises, and the all-male panel of tech company executives thought they’d simplify the process of discussing the systemic cultural failures within their organizations by not actually discussing them.

Clearly no one from the UN or any technology corporation read the piece, but they should. It’s not too late.

And if they are confused in any way about his point, I’m sure Gilmore would be happy to discuss it with them. Man to man.

We talk, you listen

Carrying on with this week’s theme of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), here’s something else that emerged from last week’s Grace Hopper Celebration in Phoenix. You know, the site of Microsoft’s Satya Nadella’s verbal suicide attempt.

There was a session on Male Allies for women in tech, billed as an opportunity to discuss how tech companies are making the effort to welcome women into their halls, and the ways men and women can change the testosterone-fueled culture in those very companies.. The “plenary” panel consisted of Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer; Google's SVP of search Alan Eustace; Blake Irving, CEO of GoDaddy; and Tayloe Stansbury, CTO of Intuit.

There was already pushback at the inclusion of Irving, as GoDaddy’s got a history of in-your-face sexism both internally and in the way they present their service through their advertising. And then, after delivering some anodyne claptrap, the panel declined to engage in a Q&A session.

Because “engagement” was clearly not their intention.

But—kind of like Nadella’s advice on how women should approach getting pay increases and promotions—while the high-tech hierarchs might have thought they were really earning karmic credits by issuing statements on how they really dig the chicks and so no problem, really, what they were actually doing was demonstrating how wide-spread the problem is, and how far everyone has to go just to get their heads around it.

Because these men clearly consider themselves in the vanguard of doing-the-right-thing for diversity; and their idea of doing the right thing does not include discussion.

It did, however, include such advice as “excel, and…push through whatever boundaries you see in front of you. Just continue to push and be great,” etc. (Continue to be great—super excellent and practical advice!) And also a statement by Eustace denying that tech companies are actively entrenched around their toxic cultures.

Which he clearly though he’d get away with because of no Q&A.

Well, their audience had come prepared. A group called “The Union of Concerned Feminists” handed out “Ally Bingo” cards, so that audience members could tick off all the usual empty phrases you hear when a man is trying to convince you (or VCs or congressional committees) of the sincerity of his commitment to diversity and to supporting women in technology.

About midway through the panel, one woman called out, “Bingo!”

Okay—it turns out that Eustace is somewhat more aware than Nadella, because not too long after the plenary débâcle, he tweeted that he wanted to hold a second, informal, session, where the audience could talk and the execs would listen.

And blow me if Eustace, Irving and Schroepfer didn’t sit down in a room full of women and take notes when individuals shared their experiences (amongst a sea of nodding heads).

It occurs to me that there still wasn’t an actual exchange there, what you could call a discussion, but getting those in power to shut the hell up for a minute and actually listen is a major step forward to getting some clarity about the problem, so you can begin to work on solving it.

I do hope the execs weren’t just doodling on their notepads, and that whatever attention they were paying lasted at least until they got back to the office.

I also hope they took some of the Ally Bingo cards with them and work to ban those condescending, moronic phrases. That would also be a start.

Boys will be idiots, Part Duh

It’s interesting that, in span of a few days, when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to a 17-year-old advocating for girls’ education, and just before Ada Lovelace day (the annual celebration of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM), the CEO of one of the über-tech companies of all time opened his mouth at a conference all about women in STEM…

And Microsoft’s Satya Nadella told his audience at the Grace Hopper Celebration last Thursday that women who do not ask for raises are showing their traditional superpowers and building up karmic credits that will pay out through the HR systems of whatever organization they work for.

No, I am not making that up. Here’s what he said when asked for advice on how women who are uncomfortable about asking for salary increases should approach the process:

“It’s not really about asking for the raise but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along. And that, I think, might be one of the additional superpowers that, quite frankly, women who don’t ask for raises have. Because that’s good karma. It’ll come back. Because somebody’s going to know: ‘That’s the kind of person that I want to trust. That’s the kind of person that I want to really give more responsibility to.’ And in the long-term efficiency, things catch up.”

It’s not enough that women in technology companies (and elsewhere, no doubt) are being told by their managers to be “less abrasive” and to “step back” and “let others shine” if they actually speak up to, you know, contribute to corporate success. (While men are given suggestions on what technical skills they might want to develop.) Or even that women who ask for raises are seen as “unpleasant”, while men doing the same are not viewed negatively.

But now the CEO of Microfreakingsoft flat out tells women: don’t ask for a raise, Babycakes, and the very act of not asking will ripple through the great, all-knowing halls of your corporation, and your superpower-strength forbearance will in the end pay off. Because “the system will give you the right raises as you go along.”

Just state your request—silently—to the universe, and your increase will drop from the branches of the cosmic salary tree.

Oh, please. It’s bullshit advice like this that has meant that women have to be twice as good as men at whatever technology we’re talking about to get half the respect and 78% of the pay. Not to mention grinning and bearing through the fratboy brogrammer cultures. Tech companies up and down the Valley They Call Silicon are reluctantly releasing demographic data (prodded by the Anita Borg Institute, which organizes the Grace Hopper Celebration) that reveals again and again that most of their techies are young males (primarily white and Asian).

(Moreover, if you look at what Nadella said, if you just smile and show how hard you work, “someone is going to notice”…and what you’ll get is more responsibility. He says nothing about more actual, you know, money. And that’s the system as we currently know it.)

And you have to ask: is this the advice Nadella gives to men in tech; just wait for your work to be rewarded? Hell no, it isn’t, because the entire industry is roaring with its males continually and loudly competing for more recognition and money. Because they all know that size matters, and you measure size by how far your ego gets you as well as by your salary, bonus, stock options and the rest of it.

That “I am a ninja” mentality is the “traditional superpower” of men in most businesses, but certainly in technology.

It was great that Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College (which is all about STEM, and which until about 35 years ago was male-only) shared the stage with Nadella. She stepped in and politely disagreed with that piece of advice, and shared a couple of experiences of her own, where she didn’t advocate effectively for herself. Which just goes to show you: if a woman as astute and respected as Klawe has problems with negotiating salaries, we all have a lot to learn.

Some time after Nadella left the stage in Phoenix someone must have pointed out the shitstorm that was erupting around the Internet, and he issued first a tweet saying he’d been “unclear” about the issue:

Then the PR folks got to him and he issued a statement saying he’d been “wrong” in his answer, and that—man or woman—“if you think you deserve a raise, just ask.”

Yeah—no, not so much. Because the whole point of the question he was asked is that women are much less comfortable about or inclined to ask for a pay raise than men, and studies show that when they do ask, they’re much more likely to not get it and to in fact have a black mark laid against them for doing so.

So, Nadella’s “just ask” is kind of like Nancy Reagan’s “Just say no” campaign: catchy to say but both ridiculous and meaningless in the execution.

Although it does sound marginally better than his original response.

In a way, I’m glad Nadella was such an idiot, making that statement at a conference on women in technology. It shows exactly how systemic that attitude is—the one that says, “Oh, we value women in our organizations…as long as they shut up, smile at our antics and work.” Because the CEO of Microsoft—which reported earlier this month that 29% of its global workforce is female (and in the tech arena, only 17% are women)—really thought that was a fine answer to a question about an issue fundamental to hiring and retaining talented people.

It also raises the question of how well the CEO of Microsoft grasps the technologies of today. Because it’s almost as though he didn’t know that Twitter exists.

Fiber of life

My, my, time does roll around, doesn’t it? Seems like only yesterday I was writing about Beatrice Shilling, the woman who solved one of the more important engineering problems for the Royal Air Force during World War II. But, here we are at Ada Lovelace Day again, and I’m spoilt for choice in terms of subject matter.

But since I’m a military historian, I’ll stay with my area of expertise (a couple of years ago I introduced you to Joan Strothers Curran, who developed “window” or “chaff”, which was successfully used to confuse German radar reception in aid of D-Day). I’m honoring Stephanie L. Kwolek, the chemist whose curiosity led to the synthetic fiber we now know as Kevlar.

Kwolek, who died in June at age 90, actually took the job with the textile chemistry division of the DuPont Company as a temporary measure between undergraduate study and medical school. (As a child, she loved sewing and working with fabrics, but her mother convinced her that she wouldn’t make a good fashion designer because she was such a perfectionist; so she gave that up for medicine.) But she found the research she was doing into polymers so interesting that she decided she was where she should be and dug in.

It was in the mid-1960s, while she was looking into the creation of fibers capable of performing in extreme conditions, that she came across something that didn’t emerge from the process as expected—instead of a clear, syrupy liquid, it was thin and opaque. Ordinarily this sort of disappointing output would have been thrown away (which is what her colleagues wanted to do), but Kwolek was curious. She persuaded one of them to run it through a spinning process to remove liquid solvent and reveal fibers.

What came out of the spinneret was an exceptionally stiff fiber that tested five times as strong as steel of equal weight. It was also fire resistant. The DuPont crowd latched onto its potential right away—Kevlar has been used by law enforcement officers and combat troops since the mid-70s. It’s integral to body armor and helmets that deflect handgun and rifle fire, as well as shrapnel (which is ugly, ugly stuff).

Additionally, the fiber is used in tires, sporting equipment, cables and cellular phones.

Here’s what I really like about Kwolek: she was curious. She saw possibilities where her colleagues saw useless goop. She was willing to push for further information, again and again. She saw connections and tested everything. She was a successful and respected professional in an industry that typically expects those qualities to come in a package containing the Y chromosome and advanced degrees. And she shared her experience, her expertise and her enthusiasm, inspiring generations of potential scientists.

A paper she co-wrote for the Journal of Chemical Education in 1959, “The Nylon Rope Trick”, describes how to demonstrate condensation polymerization in a beaker at atmospheric pressure and room temperature. Yeah, beyond me, too, but it’s commonly demonstrated in classrooms around the country.

It’s possible that someone would have come up with a Kevlar-like fiber eventually, but Stephanie L. Kwolek got there first, doing what she loved. Saving thousands of lives, doing what you love; it don’t get any better than that.

Gratitude Monday: Peace out!

I’m very often grateful for small things in my life, here on Gratitude Mondays. Dahlias, cotton candy, idiots, rain, library systems working. Sometimes I aim a skosh higher: a fundraising walk, the Irish, first responders.

Today I’m going global. And Nobel. I am joyfully grateful that the Nobel Peace Prize committee got its head out in the sunshine and has awarded this year’s prize to a teenaged Pakistani advocate for the education of girls, and an Indian man who’s spent decades fighting against child labor, trafficking in children and forced marriage of young girls.

Malala Yousafzai, 17, nearly died two years ago when a Taliban hit squad gunned her down on a school bus in retaliation for her girls’ education campaign. Since being airlifted to the UK for medical treatment for her head wound, Yousafzai has lived and gone to school there. She was in chemistry class when the news came of the Nobel award.

Her advocacy has spread far beyond the borders of Pakistan, and she is a hero to millions who support the notion that society is better off when all its members get an education.

She is still under a Taliban death threat, and (rather predictably) some Pakistani Muslim factions are putting forward the conspiracy theory that the Nobel Prize is some sort of continuation of the Forces of the West Using Malala for their Own Purposes. Liaqat Baloch, of a right-wing Muslim political party, pouted, “There are lots of girls in Pakistan who have been martyred in terrorist attacks, women who have been widowed, but no one gives them an award. So these … activities are suspicious.”

Yeah, right. This is rich, given that the terrorist attack Yousafzai survived was ordered by the likes of Baloch himself.

So you can see that Yousafzai has an uphill climb here. But if there’s anyone with the brains and the backbone to make it, it’s this young woman, who has never displayed anything less than grace, determination and generosity.

Kailash Satyarthi, 60, trained as an electrical engineer and taught the subject at college level until he became interested in the issue of child labor, against which there are laws in India, but they’re barely enforced. Satyarthi founded the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Mission) in 1980, and has been at the forefront of the fight against trafficking in children and for education.

This kind of work has not made him popular amongst management in the global supply chain, or with national and local governments, all of whom count on cheap, uneducated child labor for the production of cheap textiles and other goods to feed Walmart and Apple Store shoppers. He’s also been a thorn in the side of police forces in India when his organization intervenes in cases of selling girls into marriages.

So far, if there have been any death threats, at least no one’s shot him in the head.

I’m told that nominees for the Peace Prize this year might have included Edward Snowden, Pope Francis and Vladimir Putin. I can only think that last one was some frat boy joke, stuffing the nomination box after a three-day Jägerbomb kegger. (Although, given some of the recent awards, I’m not ruling it out entirely.)

His Holiness might be a contender for a number of years. So far he’s looking good; let’s see if he can keep it up. But I have to say that, in awarding this year’s Prize to these two advocates for children—and especially to Malala Yousafzai, who’s displayed more courage, consistency and conviction in her 17 years than every man and woman in government around the world could maintain for three hours—the Nobel Committee is giving us hope for the future.

I take real heart from this, especially in light of the UN members patting themselves on the backs for planning a conference on gender equality without including women.

This is how you work for gender equality, boys, and for the protection of the weakest members of society. I'm really grateful that one international organization gets it.