'Bro culture' at start-ups keeps talented women out: Harvey Mudd President
'Bro culture' at start-ups keeps talented women out:
Harvey Mudd President
The president of Harvey Mudd College is speaking out
about Silicon Valley's culture in the wake of numerous scandals.
"This stuff has been happening and everybody knew it
was happening and everybody thought it was awful," Maria Klawe told CNBC.
By Ari Levy July 9, 2017
During Maria Klawe's 11-year run as president of Harvey
Mudd College, she's turned the school's prestigious computer science program
into a hotbed for aspiring female developers.
Graduates from the small Southern California college are
all over the industry, at places like Google, SpaceX, Yelp and Airbnb. Despite
her role championing women in tech, Klawe has long been reluctant to recommend
that her graduating students—particularly females—seek out emerging
venture-backed companies.
The "bro culture" is bad enough, she said. On
top of that, young founders typically avoid investing in human resources,
making it even more difficult to address problems that arise.
Klawe is currently on summer vacation, but she took some
time this week to talk to CNBC, in light of the multiple sexual harassment and
sexism scandals that have hit the venture capital industry of late, and amid
the ongoing crisis at Uber.
"For ages, we've been talking to students about
whether they want to go to start-ups or not because they tend to have virtually
no HR," said Klawe, who previously held board seats at Microsoft and
Broadcom. "If something goes wrong, it's a matter of luck whether you have
management that cares about these issues."
In short, none of this is a surprise. Men behaving badly
is a theme that permeated the tech industry long before venture capitalist
Justin Caldbeck's sexist behavior was exposed by The Information last month.
Just last week, 500 Startups founder Dave McClure abruptly resigned from his
investing firm.
And it was happening long before ex-Uber engineer Susan
Fowler wrote a blog post in February about her "very, very strange
year" at the ride-hailing company, filled with sexism and harassment. That
post sparked an investigation that ultimately led to the forced resignation of
CEO Travis Kalanick last month.
"This stuff has been happening and everybody knew it
was happening and everybody thought it was awful," Klawe said. "Susan
Fowler empowered people to say we can complain about this. It feels like
somebody took the lid off."
Klawe has made it a big part of her life's work to help
fix the problem of women in tech. Roughly half of Harvey Mudd's 120 computer
science and engineering graduates last year were women, about three times the
national average. Five of the school's seven department heads are female.
As a college president, Klawe can only control so much.
'Inclusive cultures'
In 2015, women held just 25 percent of computing jobs,
according to the National Center for Women & Technology. Start-ups are even
less diverse. According to data from PitchBook, just 16.8 percent of U.S.
companies funded last year had at least one female founder.
Harvey Mudd is doing its part to improve the pipeline and
get women excited about entering STEM (science, technology, engineering and
math) fields. Yet Klawe recognizes that it's time for schools to do even more.
Stanford University's Graduate School of Business just
announced that its offering a class in the spring titled "Building Diverse
and Inclusive Organizations," specifically targeting start-ups, according
to a report in the Wall Street Journal last week.
Mudd has courses on social justice and equity issues and
Klawe said she'll be looking at other opportunities.
"I am excited about this whole idea of creating
courses that look at this," she said. "We need more than just
exposing the fact that bad things are happening. We need to do a lot more
constructive work and help create inclusive cultures."
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