Friday, November 29, 2013

Lack of female leadership in Silicon Valley “just as bad” as Wall Street (?)

Question for Salon.com: Is it possible for them to post a piece about women that does not include sexist and unsupported commentary about men?

Take the commentary found in this piece from Salon:

Twitter Inc.’s lack of women on its board is “a joke,” showing that Silicon Valley is no better than Wall Street when it comes to female representation, said Sallie Krawcheck, a former executive at Bank of America Corp.
A "joke" to whom? Why? Oh because there are no women on the board. Well there are no black people either. Will Salon allot space for someone to write about that too? Anyway. Why is it such a joke? Read on.

Twitter, the microblogging site that raised $2.09 billion in a initial public offering this month, has an all-male, seven- member board.
Does the above sound like "a joke" to you? a company is making 2.09 billion. Offers a free service that is used worldwide. That's a joke?

Twitter has said it’s in discussions to diversify its board.
Why? It just gathered 2.09 billion dollars as is. Why should it do anything different? No, really? WHY? And if it is a matter of "representation" then I think we should force Twitter to hire black and Hispanic board members, Well I don't know about the latter, but I know about the former. But here's the sexist kicker:

Women think differently than men and “can see problems they don’t see,” said Browner, who was an adviser to President Barack Obama and administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from 1993 to 2001.
Really? Women, by virtue of having ovaries and titties "can see problems they [men] don't see." No really. That's some sexist shit. Don't see it. Well let's just change up the sentence:

"Men think differently from women and "can see problems they don't see."

Do you even THINK such a statement would be tolerated? How about this:

"Whites think differently than blacks and "can see problems they don't see".

No really. Do you even THINK such a sentence would see the light of day in Salon? Of course not but you can get a woman to make a blatantly sexist comment and it goes unchallenged by anyone on the editorial staff. How the fuck does this happen? Back to Twitter though.

I repeat. Twitter had an IPO that netted 2.09 billion bucks. Exactly WHAT problems does Twitter need to see that the board isn't seeing that this woman knows about? It seems to me that the board of Twitter is doing a bang up job.

Here's how you get onto a board or become CEO: Start your own business. Create your own product and work damn hard. Then instead of attempting to shame people into bringing you on board, people will come to you. Take it from the black guy, people HATE when they are forced to deal with you because of some physical attribute rather than because your fucking good at what you do.

So back to the question:

Can Salon.com write an article about women in [enter business here] that does not include sexist comments about men or at least challenges them when they appear in quoted material?