What Happens to Us Does Not Happen to Most of You
I don&#x27;t think the tech industry can really change unless it makes gender balance a priority.<p>How many tech CEOs will stand up and say: &quot;I have an 80% (or 90% or a 100%) male tech team because there are not enough qualified women to achieve gender balance.&quot;<p>No CEO will be caught dead saying that explicitly but they are saying it implicitly every single day with how they are staffing their companies.<p>From reading HN it seems like a large percentage of people here <i>believe</i> that the gender gap is due to a qualifications gap and they might dump on people like James Damore for being dumb enough to say it in public but most of them believe it and the way they act shows it.<p>The bottom line is that if you are not achieving gender balance on your teams what you are telling women and what you are telling the world is that you believe men are superior to women and that women are not qualified for these jobs.<p>Actions speak louder than words and as long as the actions of companies and individuals reflect this attitude no amount of words is going to change anything.<p>Achieving gender balance in tech is possible and is only a matter of choice.<p>There are more than enough qualified women to fill tech jobs in roughly equal proportion with men.<p>It doesn&#x27;t happen because (among other reasons):<p>1) The people doing the hiring are overwhelmingly men and set rules and standards for hiring that discriminate against women<p>2) Companies believe that young men are more profitable employees and so they do nothing to seriously discourage discrimination<p>Unless this changes the experience of women in tech will be a negative one.<p>All a woman has to do to know that she is undervalued and seen as an inferior  is walk into a company that has a overwhelmingly male tech team and that is most of them.