I’ve recently come across two well known individuals in the IT world who believe that the IT entrepreneurial and employment worlds are a meritocracy, that gender and race don’t matter, only the quality matters. One of the articles is on the blog at the Women 2.0 site http://women2.com where the COO from Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg was interviewed for an article entitled “Sheryl Sandberg Explains Why Younger Women Should Pursue Tech Careers”< http://www.women2.com/we-need-more-women-in-tech-heres-why/> Ms. Sandberg made excellent comments, but while her comment supporting “It’s a meritocracy” is accurate, I really think it’s delusional. In fact in her next quotation in the article she actually spells out why.
I think that while this is true for women who get to that level, there are way too many instances where all kinds of subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) prejudices abound not only for adult, but even moreso for those much younger females. The roadblocks can be immense and can start at an early age. But even these hurdles, some subtle, some overt, continue right through K-12, into college and into the workplace.
Examples abound like the woman sitting in her first engineering class in a local university being told by the professor in front of the class that she should withdraw for this program and allow her seat to be taken by someone who will more likely succeed (this was about 10 years ago and this woman is now the successful owner of a highly regarded engineering firm); or the young woman who won a national Award for Aspirations going to the engineering department to enroll in her college courses and being told that the biology department is down the hall. And this is 2013, folks!
The National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT, http://ncwit.org) focuses on these problems and continues to do a great job finding and developing solutions. Most recently they’ve released “Girls in IT: The Facts” < http://www.ncwit.org/resources/girls-it-facts > and along with the report an excellent infographic < http://www.ncwit.org/infographic/3435>. I would encourage you to take a look if you’re at all interested in this idea.
Another article on Women 2.0 by Jessica Stillman entitled “Women in Tech: What has and hasn’t changed in 15 years” < http://www.women2.com/women-in-tech-what-has-and-hasnt-changed-in-15-years/> references similar issues and talks about some solutions including focusing on K-12.
Returning to the original Sheryl Sandberg interview article, to me, if Ms. Sandberg were to look around (and I’ll bet she’s aware of this), tell me that it’s a meritocracy when there are few startups run by women, when there are very few corporations with women in high positions like hers, when there are so many girls in the NCWIT Aspirations Awards essays that talk about all kinds of issues they’ve had to dodge as they try really hard to pursue computer science and IT. Too many give up and therein lies a problem. No meritocracy here, at this level.
If a woman manages to get past these and many other hurdles, then the situation and landscape probably is much closer to a meritocracy for startups and venture capitalists who fund them.
I mentioned at the beginning there was another individual who has recently written about meritocracy in the IT industry. That would be Jason Calacanis, who wrote an essay where he says “the tech and tech media world are meritocracies. To fall back to race as the reason why people don’t break out in our wonderful oasis of openness is to do a massive injustice to what we’ve fought so hard to create.” While he’s specifically addressing race, I picked up on meritocracy.
I think he’s accurate in stating “our core beliefs: 1. anyone can do it, 2. innovation can come from anywhere and 3. product rules.” He wrote this post with good intentions, but…
When I hear meritocracy I hear just another excuse – the tech industry does (for the most part) look at new ideas on the basis of merit, but the problem is those in underrepresented groups never managing to make it past the many barriers that continue to exist. The barriers may be overt or (mostly) subtle, but they’re certainly there at least for now. I think things are getting better, particularly the last half dozen or so years. Thankfully groups like NCWIT, CSTA and ACM are exposing the problems and working toward solutions.
