“Death by A Thousand Cuts”: Women Engineers Speak Out About the Sexism in Silicon Valley
Wired recently posted the above video, which can also be viewed on their website if the YouTube video doesn’t work in your region. It highlights a series of testimonials from women engineers who speak about their experiences with sexism and racism in the tech industry. While I assume most TMS readers already knew that Silicon Valley has a serious diversity problem, it’s still powerful to hear these women speak about their own experiences, and testify to the possibilities that would open up if the tech industry committed itself to creating more diverse, more inclusive workplaces.
Below are just a few of the quotes, which will probably sound familiar to anyone who’s worked in white- and/or male-dominated spaces before.
“People sort of assume that I am not technical.”
“Being in environments where it’s mostly men, where it’s mostly white people, there is a physic toll, because I can’t be my full self. There’s always a little bit of needing to filter…It’s a calculus that I do every day. It’s exhausting.”
“The default is that women of color can’t be technical, aren’t technical, and as a result we get treated like we aren’t technical.”
“When people know that you’re a person of color, they want to know your origin. They want to know a bunch of things about you that don’t really matter when it comes to your work.”
“I recently had a conversation with a gentleman who asked me, ‘Why should I care? Why should I want to change it? What’s in it for me?’…There should be no one group who gets to say, ‘What’s in it for me?’ for an industry that is changing the world right now.”
(Via Wired; image via screengrab)
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