
government

Me on @BBCWorld news talking about the #Googlememo, #womenintech and #whitemaleprivilege
I was interviewed by Aaron Heslehurst for his Talking Business show on BBC World News channel yesterday about the memo “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber” written and shared internally by a Google engineer.
My main points:
- He has no idea what he’s talking about, he’s not a woman in tech and is displaying a classic case of #whitemaleprivilege
- “For those used to privilege, equality looks like oppression”
- It’s wonderful that we can now discuss these issues openly, it’s the first big step towards an equal society that cares about everyone not just the privileged few
- It’s great that the media now think of this as an issue, just a few years ago that wouldn’t have been the case, I’ve been in the #womenintech space for 25+ years and even though the change happening is ridiculously slow I’m delighted to see it finally start speeding up
- Mainstream media are becoming supportive of equality and feminism
- Many people in our society are backward looking and change averse like this engineer (and his country’s president), for us on this planet to have a successful future we need to work together to ensure that EVERYONE has equal opportunity
- Our society is misogynist, which is bad for women and men
- Engineering and software engineering are about cooperation and people skills as much if not more so than coding. It’s been shown time and again that one of the main reasons IT projects fail is because of the lack of communication in one way or another.
- Ada Lovelace invented the very idea of software (did her brain have “biological differences”?) and we have many amazing women in tech pioneers e.g. the incredible Dame Stephanie Shirley who set up F International 300+ women coding from home in the 1960s. They wrote the Concorde black box flight recorder software for example.
- We need quotas short term to redress the balance, to create a level playing field.
- It’s not about men vs women but about being enlightened and forward thinking rather than change averse and backward thinking white male privilege.
- It’s social conditioning, we know that behaviours that are seen as assertive in men can be seen as bossy in women
- It not about men vs women its about those that want to create the best products and services and see that change needs to happen for that to be the outcome and those that are change averse and have the privilege of being in the majority.
- I’ve been hearing this shit since I got into tech in 1989, it’s time for CHANGE!

Government ministers’ misogyny towards Kids Company CEO Camila Batmangelidjh
Im disturbed by the way that all of the (mainly male) ministers and others being asked to comment on the closing of Kids Company and the demise of its CEO Camila Batmangelidjh use terms such as “mesmerised” and “charmed” as part of their defence in giving the charity large amounts of public funding. This smacks to me of timeless, insipid misogyny.
What is the job of a CEO of a large charity? Surely a large part of it is to make sure the charity can continue to run by bringing in funding. How do you bring in funding? I imagine by persuading people that your charity is doing great work and is more important than the others in the same space.
From the Telegraph “Kids Company Camila Batmangelidjh – How we fell for this matriarch”
Isn’t this what Camila Batmangelidjh did really well?
Instead of putting their hands up and saying “yes, it’s a fair cop, we should have been more rigorous with our checks into the organisation” etc they all talk about how they were “charmed” or “mesmerised” trying to dodge the blame and put the onus on the CEO for persuading them to behave a certain way.
There are of course many stories and behaviours going back centuries which promulgate the same misogyny, Adam and Eve and witch hunts for a start, so it’s interesting that in our society this blaming of women for men’s actions is still being used. But isn’t it time we moved on?
I don’t want my grandchildren growing up in a misogynist world. It’s time for change.