by Lori Morgan | January 2nd, 2011
I recently read an article on Huffington Post by Carla Rover (Writer, The Advertising Technology Review) where she argues that the reason women are not rising to the top at tech companies is because of their mindset. She eludes that women, despite their education and decade of work experience, have been socialized into psychological submission by a culture that teaches women that confidence, assertiveness, and demanding to be heard translate as unattractiveness, arrogance, and the dreaded “bitchiness.” And those adjectives add up to the “unlikeable.”
She starts of her article by saying,
“There’s a disturbing trend in technology right now. Bright, highly-qualified women, regardless of where they start climbing the ladder at technology companies, rarely end up at the top. Few women found technology startups, or at least, few women who found them get funded. It isn’t a matter of an orchestrated push to keep women out of the boardroom by some misogynist club of investors and company heads. Qualified women aren’t rising to the top because they are advancing the hard way — without mentors, the right meeting skills, and, often, without the right mindset.”
Although I disagree with Carla, my intent here is not to get into a debate on whether or not Carla is right in her premise. I only want to point out that there are many women who are not only rising to the top, but they are also Disrupting the space that they are in. We have the privilege here at Daily Disruption of interviewing and speaking with many of them! Here’s just a few examples:
1. Clara Shih, Founder & CEO of Hearsay Social
Hearsay Social’s award-winning platform is the only comprehensive social media solution for the enterprise, delivering brand and regulatory protection as well as business results across every major social network at every level of the organization, from the corporate brand to regional managers to local representatives. Today, tens of thousands of company brand ambassadors use Hearsay Social to deepen customer relationships across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. Clara Shih, 29, who wrote a book about Facebook and social media marketing, “The Facebook Era.” also previously created an early Facebook business application for Salesforce.com while she worked there. To top it off Starbucks has recently named Clara Shih to its board of directors. Talk about rising to the top!
2. Mariam Naficy, Founder & CEO of Minted
Mariam has pioneered new consumer Internet models since 1998, when she co-founded Eve.com, the first online retailer of cosmetics, upon graduating from business school. Eve.com grew to $10 million in annual sales in its first year and was sold successfully to Idealab for a reported $100 million in cash in 2000. The company was then sold to Sephora in late 2000. After Eve.com, Mariam served as the Vice-President and General Manager of E-Commerce for The Body Shop, the international beauty goods retailer.
Minted, Mariam’s newest venture founded in 2007, is a crowd-sourcing design company that holds design competitions to source graphic design and lets its community vote to tell the company what to sell. The designs are then printed on paper in the form of wedding invitations), holiday photo cards and other personalized stationery and photo card products. To read more about Minted and their success story please read the profile that we did on the company back in November as they were chosen as our “Disruptor of the Day”.
3. Linda Rottenberg, Founder & CEO of Endeavor
Endeavor is an organization that pioneered the field of High-Impact Entrepreneurship. Endeavor’s mission is to “lead the global movement to catalyze long-term economic growth by selecting, mentoring, and accelerating the best High-Impact Entrepreneurs around the world.” Headquartered in New York City, Endeavor has offices in 15 countries and operates in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon, Mexico, South Africa, Turkey, and Uruguay. The 600 Endeavor Entrepreneurs selected to date, screened from 28,000 candidates, have created 150,000 jobs, generate annual revenues of $4.5 billion, and serve as role models in their countries.
Linda is recognized as one of the world’s premier experts on entrepreneurship, business opportunities in emerging markets, and leadership for the new economy, Rottenberg was named one of “America’s Best Leaders” by US News & World Report and one of 100 “Innovators for the 21st century” by TIME. She has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, New York Times, Fast Company, Inc., the Economist, Bloomberg TV, and CNN. Rottenberg, who in 2011 was named “Ms. Davos” by Business Insider, served as co-chair of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and currently Vice-chairs the Forum’s Entrepreneurship Council, and of course Daily Disruption. She has been named a “Global Leader for Tomorrow,” “Young Global Leader” and “Leading Social Entrepreneur” by the Forum. She was referred to as the world’s “Mentor Capitalist” in Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat.
Rottenberg is the subject of three Harvard Business School and Stanford Graduate School of Business case studies. In February 2009 she delivered the keynote address at Harvard Business School’s Social Entrepreneurship Conference, and has had prominent speaking roles at such venues as the New York Forum (2011).
Like I said I’m not trying to call out Carla for what she wrote, I understand where she was going with her article, but the times are changing and I have a feeling we’ll be hearing a lot more story’s about women Disrupting the space they’re in!
Bravo Ladies! It takes a powerful look at the present reality and perceptions as well as a personal and collective shift in the way we feel, think, act and interact to create the change we want to see.
To get beyond sexism, racism, ethnocentrism and all other such labels, we need to acknowledge the role each of us has played in perpetuating these systems; forgive self and other and develop a new language and understanding of human attributes and possibilities beyond these limiting labels.
Thank you for your leadership in uncovering both the challenges and the promise. As more women support, talk about, mentor and invest in women initiatives, ventures and leaders, we will realize a more open, creative, caring and sustainable lifestyle one ecosystem at a time.
Bravo Ladies! It takes a powerful look at the present reality and perceptions as well as a personal and collective shift in the way we think, act and interact to create the change we want to see. “We have to demand equity by creating it. Force the difficult conversations about why women-led startups are not being funded…To do that, we, as women, as ethnic minorities, have to create that change. We have to support female entrepreneurs, but we also have to foster the ecosystem that will create more of them.”
An added point. We are what we speak. To get beyond sexism, racism, ethnocentrism and all other such labels, we need to acknowledge the role each of us has played in perpetuating these systems; forgive self and other and develop a new language and understanding of human attributes and possibilities beyond these limiting labels.
As more women support, talk about, mentor and invest in women initiatives, ventures and leaders, we will realize a more open, creative, caring and sustainable lifestyle one ecosystem at a time.
Hey Lori!
No offense taken. Definitely am happy to see more women bringing their startups to the forefront. But it isn’t nearly enough, and it isn’t their fault. It’s the nature of the playing field.We can’t look at society and really say “Silicon Valley is totally fair, open and talent-driven.” I welcome opposing viewpoints- but to summarize my argument as women not reaching the top because of their mindset actually overlooks several (5) key points. First, many women lack entrance to the mentorship system that has historically helped create a disproportionately male-dominated arena. It is only recently that women in tech have a firm enough foothold in the industry to begin openly mentoring women and recruiting them with an eye on top jobs. The second element that I mentioned was that women have not for the most part been instilled with the aggressive networking skills that men are taught is socially acceptable.We often don’t tout our abilities and we are willing, it seems, to be the “housekeepers” of organizations, doing the heavy lifting without much glory. That has to stop. We also tend to have the wrong mindset- the idea that we have to (as I heard growing up as a Black / Latina / Jewish-heritage female) that we have to be twice as brilliant, work twice as hard, for half the pay until we “win people over.” That isn’t the case. We have to demand equity by creating it. Force the difficult conversations about why women-led startups are not being funded. Start questioning major companies about their hiring practices. Above all, we have to create a society that looks at ideas as weightier than gender identities. To do that, we, as women, as ethnic minorities, have to create that change.We have to support female entrepreneurs, but we also have to foster the ecosystem that will create more of them. That means talking about the real issues in the industry at large- like sexism and racism. It means that we have to be brave enough to learn new ways of getting what we want- looking at powerful women like Esther Dyson, Kaliya Hamlin, Mary Hodder as examples. These women are significant voices in Silicon Valley and in the world. All of them are entrepreneurs / mentors /thinkers. They didn’t wait for the Valley, or Silicon Alley, to “get” that they were just as good as everyone else. They simply blew the competition away by publishing, speaking, developing and promoting their own disruptive ideas. We also have to say what the problem is out-loud, and then go about fixing it, openly.
Hey Carla,
I agree with you it isn’t enough, and I apologize (really) for not elaborating more about the other (5) key points of your article. As I mentioned in my post I was not writing the article to debate your points. However the reason I wrote what I did was because I don’t read or see enough recognition given to the women that have accomplished so much and have changed the way we live and work through their innovation. Your article and others like it do a good job at pointing out the difficulties for women and the fact that “Silicon Valley is not totally fair and open”. All the more reason why we need to recognize these women for their amazing accomplishments. I believe the more stories us women see of other women who are truly disrupting their respected industries, the more confidence it will bring about.