Recode Decode: Michele Madansky

Hi, I'm Kara Swisher, editor at large of Recode. You may know me as the Smasher of Miratocrocies, but in my spare time I talk tech and you're listening to Recode Decode from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today in the chair is Michelle Medansky, who's been on the show before to talk about her research into harassment and discrimination in the tech industry, which was called Elephant in the Valley. It was a long time ago.

She now has a new version of that study, and we're going to talk about it, what has changed in the past couple of years, and of course, what hasn't. Michelle, welcome to Recode Decode. Thank you for having me. So you say you're just going to talk and tell me things.

I would love to know, let's review what you do. Tell the people what you've done in your long and storied career. Okay, so I am an independent market research consultant, and I work mainly with digital media companies. So my clients have been Pinterest, Twitter, Chegg, BabyCenter, Postmates, Uber, etc.

My last full-time job was at Yahoo, where I ran market research from 2003 to 2007. I know people didn't like Yahoo. They did at the time. It was a good time to be at Yahoo.

And I'm here because I'm co-author of the Elephant in the Valley, which I'm going to talk about, but I kind of got into this project in a very sideways manner. So most people that we've heard about who are talking about gender bias in tech had something bad happen to them. Ellen Powell's a student follower, etc. And the reason I got into this is because I'm a market researcher.

Right, you've got to put numbers to this. So the background is the Ellen Powell trial, 2015. Recode is doing a great job blogging about this every single day. We did.

We do reporters on it. We have a very excellent list of games, and Nellie Bowles also did an amazing job, and it was great. They did amazing coverage, the two of them. They did.

And like many women, I was following this every day. So we're all kind of reading about this. And one day, this woman, Trey Basalo, was subpoenaed, and she was testified about being harassed by the same guy who Ellen Powell had been harassed by. And after that happened, this is all according to Trey.

So Trey was a partner with Kleiner Perkins. She was harassed by this guy. She did all the right things. She reported to HR.

The guy was fired. She ended up leaving Kleiner. She now has her own VC firm called Defy. She said, hey, I had no idea this was such a prevalent issue.

I want to learn more about it. Let's do some market research. And she was walking and talking with her friend, Hilary Michael, who was my colleague at Yahoo. And Hilary said, oh, if you want to do market research, talk to Michelle.

So that's how I got involved. And it was really a kind of collaborative effort between a number of women, some Stanford affiliation. And we reached out to our network of senior-level women in Silicon Valley and surveyed them about their experiences. And, of course, the first thing that we did was we had the results.

I said, hey, Cara, can we talk to you about it? And this was a long time ago. This was before all the Me Too stuff. Exactly.

So the podcast was January 2016 is when it was released. And after that happened, what was interesting is that we had built a website. So you can still go to elephantinthevalley.com. And some of the stats are there.

And it was also a way for women to enter their stories. So after the podcast, we had got 600 women entering their stories on our website. And every media outlet wanted to talk to us. So we wrote for Time.

We wrote for – we were published in Newsweek. The Irish Times, Vogue, like really kind of wrote it. So you have this data from all these women telling stories. And you're trying to collect statistics, too.

Yes, yes. It's not just stories. Stories are critical. No, right.

And the one stat, which – this is a headline which I love, which is from the SFist, that 60% of women in tech are sexually harassed and more numbers to make you throw up. So that was a great headline for a story. But that, of course, was the thing that got picked up the most. So after that, we got contacted by South by Southwest.

And, you know, Trey got the email. And I was like, oh, I'm going to South by Southwest. Let me – I'll talk to them. I want this to be on a panel.

And the next thing we know, they said, hey, will you keynote at South by Southwest? Yeah. They tried to get you to influence. And you were already booked.

They don't want you to do two things. So anyway. Stupid rules of South by Southwest. By the way, you know I'm a Hall of Famer.

I get to say whatever I want about South by Southwest. I get a special badge and shit. I can probably, like, damage people. Like, laundry.

I know. You punch whatever I want. I really like the podcast of Kathy Griffin. That was great.

I'm so good. Oh, man. I like her so much more. She's texting me all the time now.

She's my bestie on the desk. Go ahead. Should I never come to code? Or do you think that's just a disastrous idea?

Why not? Because it could be a disastrous idea. Oh, she can come. She can make trouble.

Okay. Anyway. So, you know, you get to speak. You're a Hall of Famer.

Like, for me, I'm a market researcher. It was a big deal for me to be able to keynote at South by Southwest. And that year, Obama was speaking. So I have a PowerPoint slide with my face next to his, which I try to show as many places as possible.

Okay. So at South by Southwest, we do this panel. Trey Zonder, Meg Zonder, Laura Bynon Power from Go2040. And in the audience is a woman who is from an organization called the 3% Movement, which is focused on getting more women in senior creative positions in advertising.

And she contacted me afterwards and said, oh, my God, I would love to replicate this research for the advertising community. And you know that before I worked at Yahoo, I was in advertising for the first half of my career. And I saw much more egregious behavior there. And so I was like, yes, let's do this for advertising.

So we published something called Elephant on Madison Avenue. You can also download that research. Someone from Automotive News contacted me and said, oh, my God, I'm going to do Automotive this. So Automotive News published it, market research.

So we now have all this research kind of comparing the different industries. This is all because of you. Oh, thank you. Well, anyway, you got the word out.

All right. So where are we now? So I know. And you want to get to where we're now.

But I do want you to talk about just the comparison to different industries. All right. Yes. So when I first got the statistics, 60 percent of women have been subjected to online sexual events.

It's like, that seems super high. Is that high? Is it not high? I couldn't find any comparable statistics.

The best thing I could find was a Cosmo survey in 2015 that said one in three women 18 to 34 had been sexually harassed. All right. Whatever. They make that up.

Go ahead. So, I mean, it's higher. 60 percent is higher. Compared to other industries, advertising was lower, 54 percent.

Automotive, higher, 65 percent. Market research, woohoo. I work in a good industry, 35 percent. So still not great, but much better.

There are some other differences. Advertising, women are most likely to have been asked to do lower level tasks. So like the work mom kind of thing. Automotive is obviously most for sexual, you know, for sexual harassment.

So other industries have also reached out. So tech industry is bad. A lot of other industries are bad. There are different nuances for each of them.

Right. But at least now we have a way to say, OK, this is how we compare to some other industries. We'd love to get more. Interesting.

This was an issue. This is a way, you know, Coastal tried to actually, Nelly did a really great interview with him at the Commonwealth Club and they talked about that. And I think he was like, well, lots of industries are bad, which I thought was a lame freaking excuse for bad behavior. But anyway, you know, that was the idea.

It's not different than anywhere else, which I don't think is the point. But no. But tell me why you wanted to compare them. Because I think that to understand, like, for a woman coming into tech, is it, oh, is this much worse than if you go into finance, if you go into academia?

Like, you know, we don't want to scare away women from joining our industry because we are worse than other industries. Right. Right. And the fact is that, you know, there's a lot of room from women across industries.

Right. Right. OK. So you compare these all.

And then where's this new stuff? OK. So 2018. It's like, OK, it's three years later.

All this stuff has happened. There's a Me Too that's happened. There's a Susan Follow that's happened. The Google walkout can happen afterwards, right?

But basically, the answer is everyone's getting sexual harassed or bother or there's some gender bias. Yeah. But there's much more visibility into it. Right.

And much more open discussion about it. So I said, hey, I want to relaunch a survey three years later. Let's see if anything has changed. With the same women?

Same cohort of women. Cohort of women. Yeah. So we actually had 300 women in 2018, 200 women in 2015.

So I'm going to share with you stats on some of the stuff that's worse, some of the same. But I really want to focus on some of the stuff that gives me hope. OK. Well, before we do that, I want to do the next section.

Talk to me about what's the goal of this for you to be doing these? And the next thing I want to talk about in the next section, I want to talk about the results. But what is the goal of doing studies like this and continuing to do studies? What do you think the point is?

Yeah. So for me, I think that the way to make improvements is, first of all, to have a benchmark. To say, like, let's make people aware of all these issues. And yeah, sexual harassment is one thing, but there's the things like not looking women in the eye.

There's the things like, you know, having women take the notes in the meetings. There's the, you know. All a thousand little slights. Yeah.

The death by a thousand cuts. So when I talk to a lot of, you know, men who are pro-women, promoting women, they have no idea. Like, there's really, you know, you know who the bad actors are, and you know that when you see it. Right.

But you don't know all the little slights that happen every day. Yeah, exactly. So it was interesting. One of the things I found interesting when we were doing the coverage of Ellen Powell's trial, which I thought was a real watershed moment for Silicon Valley, and Susan Ballard was the second, you know what I mean?

The two of them, sort of, I think of them connected in some way, is that every woman, when we did that coverage, it was really important to do it that much. I was such gifted writers and such good reporters, because we wanted to put a light on it. I thought that was critically important. And so, and then people started picking it up, because it's also an interesting story.

There's, you know, there's sex money and weirdness. You know, there's a lot of weird going on. That's interesting. It also gives you a real, you know, you can see it in other places.

People can understand it. And great characters, et cetera. So what was fascinating with people reading it, and we were trying to create a narrative around it so people would tune in every day, you know, with that great writing and that great reporting. What was really interesting is that every woman I ran into had 10 stories like that.

And they often, they were very much on a scale. And they loved to read it, because they were like, I see myself. You know what I mean? Which was interesting.

On a scale of those little slights, like take notes, get the coffee, that kind of stuff, to very serious sexual harassment. Now, most people were down in this area, like down in the slights area, the lack of promotion, the treatment, somewhere in the middle, which are just gross remarks. And the others were lesser people, but still significant, were over here. And it was really interesting.

10, 10, everyone had 10. Like at least 10 examples. I have 10, which I can't believe I do. I can recount 10.

And all the really good men, who I consider, I use that sort of a loose term, but people who I don't consider, you know, schmucks, schmucks. We all know the schmucks, right? Then there's the jerks. But then there's most people.

Didn't know anything about it. Didn't know. Didn't be, they weren't paying attention, willfully ignoring their own stupid behavior sometimes. Or didn't notice it when it was happening around them.

Or it was really interesting. Just didn't know. And it was like, is it because the women that tell them or they aren't paying attention or a combination of the both? And it was very interesting.

I remember thinking, that's why we have to keep telling the stories. That's why we keep putting the statistics out. Just so people get it. They can't look away, I guess.

They can't look away, which is interesting. So what is the reason you want to call Ellen Valley? Because it's still a room that everyone pretends not to see. Do you believe that's still the case they pretend not to see it between then and now?

I think there's a lot more visibility. That's interesting. Maybe we should change the name. But I do think that there's a lot more awareness among men and women and calling each other out on that.

So women also are feeling more confident to call out men or to support other women in meetings when men are kind of mansplaining or taking their ideas as their own. Right, which are the typical ones. But there's more insidious ones than that. We'll be back when we talk more about what the research was that you found in between the two things.

With Michelle Medansky, she is an independent media market research consultant for Yahoo, worked all around the Valley, lots of companies. And she did research into harassment and discrimination in the tech industry several years ago called Elephant in the Valley. And she's back with the new information now. This week on Never Within Shell, I'm joined by Tank Sinatra, the meme king, with over $15 million followers across Tank's good news, influencers in the wild, and his personal account.

Tank is breaking down what the meme economy really is, how much a single sponsored post pays, why major brands are throwing serious money at jokes, and how meme culture thinks Preparation H, starter packs, and a perfectly timed screenshot is actually reshaping how we think about money and value. Get ready for a conversation that'll change the way you scroll, make you rethink what going viral is really worth, and prove that sometimes the most serious money moves are wrapped in the silliest of jokes. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on youtube.com slash yourrichbff. We're back with Michelle Medansky.

She's the author of Elephant in the Valley, which talks about surveys and research she did into harassment and discrimination in the tech industry. So we had before, and now we have now. So let's talk about now. Compared to before, too.

Talk about the results you got. Okay. So I am going to talk about, I'm going to start with the bad and move to the better. Okay.

So we're starting with what's worse. Okay. Percent asked to do lower level tasks went from 47% in 2015 to 61% in 2018. That is because people are reporting them more, or what do you think?

You know, I don't know. I think that they may be more aware of what that could be. Right. They've heard it before.

Yeah. So two of the quotes I have here. One colleague said, oh, men can't multitask like you when I asked him to take the notes instead of me. Like, ridiculous.

And then another woman, I thought this was interesting, not fetch the coffee, but more emotional labor these days, literally smooth this over. So she wasn't talking about, like, you know, taking notes, but more like you deal with that problem employee or you deal with that, you know, problem client. So I thought that was a different take on it. We were better at that.

Yeah. So whenever they send me in, it gets worse. We have different personalities. But there's a whole separate conversation just around, I feel like there are women, like you and me, who, you know, can hang with the guys.

And we have no, you know, we've been very successful. And it doesn't matter. And it really, you know, but we want to make this a place where someone who doesn't have our personality, who's quieter, who's less likely to interrupt. I agree.

Can be successful. Yeah. So the second thing, this is not what's worse, but one of the questions I ask is, is there anything that you think that we should have asked that we didn't? And we totally forgot to ask about compensation in the first study.

There's been a lot of studies. Yeah. So 60% of the women say that they're less well compensated than their male peers. 18% say it's equal.

3% more favorable. 19% don't know. So if you actually re-base together the people who don't know, three in four women believe that they're less well compensated. A lot of them actually have proof, like men leaving their W-2s on the printer, things like that.

So that's the what's worse. What's the same? Two stats are exactly the same. So sexual harassment, 60% 2015, 59% 2018.

And what did you, how did you describe it? That's a very good question, because I think that partly explains why there are such wild differences. But the way I phrased it was, people who are, we're subjected to an unwanted sexual advance. So it wasn't like you were, you know, necessarily accosted, but it was an unwanted sexual advance.

A comment or a touch or something like that. You have to define it your own way, right? Okay. So I think that's another thing about kind of using the same serving instrument across industries, because the way that you phrase it can really vary how people respond.

Sure. So this was any unwanted sexual. Yeah. Could be touching, could be not touching, could be words.

Yes. Okay. And did you ask people to differentiate? I did not.

We had a lot of anecdotes, and I think a lot of them were, you know, advances, and some of them were, you know, more accosts. The other thing, which is exactly the same, was that two and three felt excluded from key social and networking events because of their gender. So how many stories about golf? You know?

Yep. How many stories? I've just heard something, I'm not aware about that strip club in Soma. There was something about that, like, gold.

Oh, gold coast. Yeah, I was like, never, I don't even know where it was. And I love this one story. This woman said, I was excluded from a whiskey tasting, and the guy who organized it said, he thought that I needed to be home to pick up my kids.

What? And she doesn't have kids. Whoa. That's the clincher.

So there's all this, like, okay, it's just an excuse to get together with the guys. I mean, Trey talks about, like, these extreme skiers. I mean, she's a really good skier, so she can, like, go on ski trips. But then they're like, oh, well, we only have an Airbnb, and there's no room for the women there, you know, whatever.

But that's so many. That remains the same. Right. And I think that's a big problem.

Like, I, you know, again, I personally have not seen any, had any, you know, active harassment, but I have seen a lot of the women, there's this whole network of the Yahoo diaspora, and we've all done, you know, well, but all the men who are putting each other on each other's boards, the men are all putting each other on each other's boards, not the women. Yep. Okay. So that's the He-Man, no lady, no women's club.

Yeah. Exactly. What's the one up in, uh? Oh, nothing.

I think I'm at Rating every now and then. That's the one in the woods. It's the name. The bohemian thing.

My brother's a doctor up there. He does doctor words a lot older, I think. Anyway. Okay.

So, now I'm going to talk about what's better. Okay. Okay. So, Kara, I listen to your podcast a lot.

Okay. I don't listen to it at all. You're so prolific. I'm prolific.

The teachers and the policemen and everything in our schools have to move ahead. Oh, I'm talking to London Breed about that tonight. Okay. Yes, so not to mention the homeless.

We're not doing anything about this anyway. So like, do we want to stay here? Do we want to sell our AirPods? AirPods are great.

Positive thing about technology. I love my AirPods. So I am going to be saying, what I want you to say here is that why the co-author of Elephant in the Valley is optimistic about the future of women in tech. I just want Eric to be the thing.

Okay, all right, okay. This is another one which was not correct. So, and I'm going to frame this as progress, not perfection. Fewer have heard demeaning comments from men on multiple occasions.

So that has been a little bit better. Yeah, they're smarter. They're not going to do those. They're worried.

Fewer have recorded men making eye contact with male peers, but not with... So they're getting more eye contact. Yeah, maybe they're like less aspergy. Okay, yeah.

That could be it. Okay, so that's good. All right. So those were questions I asked 2015.

In this next survey, I also asked some specific questions about like Me Too and diverse inclusion. Because again, Me Too had not happened. Exactly. So Susan had happened, right?

No, Susan had happened. It was Ellen. Yeah, it was Ellen Powell, but it wasn't Susan Foller. It wasn't Susan Foller.

Susan Foller did. Okay, so 27% agree that Silicon Valley has become a better place for women to succeed. 57% said no change. 16% said it's more challenging.

But that's a positive. There's 27% saying, hey, it's become better. This is a new question. That's not a very good number.

It's not terrible. There's a positive. There's the like... All right, but 50% of the amount that said no?

No, there's no change. No change. Same old, same old. There's a glad the Ober brothers are finally taken down.

There's more awareness of the problem that people don't know how to fix it. It's easier to speak up when incidents arise. So there's like, there's awareness. Awareness.

Is that the first step? Yeah, awareness is the first step to enlightenment. Okay, has a focus on gender bias in Silicon Valley and Me Too been helpful or harmful to the industry? 58% helpful.

Helpful, yes. That's a small number, though. I think it should be 500%. It should be like 100.

35% say no difference? Okay, all right. 77% harmful. So there's like, you know what I've heard, like, now men are afraid to go have lunch with women, blah, blah, blah.

Like, that's not... Someone said that to me the other day, and I'm afraid, I'm like, just don't touch their boob and it should be fine. You're not like, what? I'm like, you're an idiot.

But that's a positive number, that it has been helpful. All right, okay, positivity. Yes, positive. No, no, no, not a Pollyanna, but I really like...

Six and ten have said that their companies launched a diversity inclusion program, which is neither here. Everyone's doing that, but among those, half have said that the programs have actually helped the atmosphere and acceptance of women in our diversity programs. Not these ridiculous, like, let's hire unusually looking people to, like, do our diversity programs. You know what I mean?

You know, they don't give them teeth. They don't give them true teeth to really change things. Right, so it's not just... They feel like they're helpful.

Yes, okay, all right. So that's good. Is there companies that are better than others? Well, you know, I don't know.

I was, you know, Mark Benioff is one of the, like... Mark is a good guy. I know. I was like, you do have, like, occasionally, like, oh, I'm so uplifted by listening to one of your people.

Okay, so he's a good guy. So that's the quantitative reasons, but there's other qualitative reasons that I am personally optimistic. Okay. So we talked about the awareness in Silicon Valley, and there is this genuine surprise about the men, you know, for men not understanding, which you've identified also.

The second reason is the next generation of men. Okay. So from the research, I looked at the data of sexual harassment of women under 40 versus over 40. Okay.

And those under 40, only 53%, only 53% have had an unsexual advance, and those of us over 40, 65%. Yeah. The same is true in the advertising community. And we can be cynical, and we can say, the reason that happens is that the more conferences you go to, and the more you travel internationally, there's more chances to meet a schmuck, right?

Or you can say, you know what, this younger generation of men are more aware and, you know, just better actors. Yeah. And that's the narrative. Probably these more online porn.

But anyway, I'm teasing you. I think that is an improvement. It's still 50. That's still too many.

I mean, I'm sorry. Of course it's too many, but it is, but it's the fact that hopefully as it continues. Right. So is it that the younger men are not sexually harassing as much or the older men have stopped sexually harassing younger women?

That hasn't had a difference. We need more sample. We need other stuff. We're going to get at that.

So that's kind of the layoffs. Is it a creepy old dude or a creepy young dude? Which creepy was it? Which level of creepy was it?

And there's, of course, there's creeps across the board. Well, it is a level of awareness. I mean, look at this from Biden. I mean, you know, even though he seems functionally unable to say I'm sorry to anybody.

It's a really awareness of what he's doing. I don't think he'll be grabbing anybody again, ever again in his life. Like we're touching them without their permission. Al Franken also.

Yeah. I think it's just the awareness is massive. Now, how much people should pay for that is a good question. Right.

You know what I mean? That's really probably they won't make that much. Whatever you think of it, it probably won't. Like people are going to just give it a buy because it's not like Harvey Weinstein love behavior.

No, there's gradations. Right. It's hard to do that. I have several people recently come up to me and say, shouldn't we just give everyone a buy now?

Who's not bad? I'm like, I don't know. I don't believe I said I don't know. And I said, no, let's not.

It was interesting. It was interesting. You see that more and more. So where do we go from here?

Okay. Okay. There's more though. Gen Z.

Louis. Louis, my son. Your son. I have two Gen Z sons.

And Louis was awesome on your podcast. He was eloquent. He was, you know, he did a really good job. And I look up, so my two sons, my older son is in college.

His first semester of college, he went to Greece and his roommate was transgender. And it was like, he didn't even think that it was like, oh, by the way, my roommate's transgender. My younger son has room with transgender students at youth group retreats. But I think for this generation, they just have different attitudes towards humans.

Well, it depends on what you're raised. I mean, the hosts are right. You know, my kid has been raised in a very liberal environment. And I think, but I do think, I actually think it's more than that because I have another student who's a little more conservative, I would say.

But I think they're both like, what the hell is that a problem for? You know, you can get that. And I think a lot more kids than you think of from all areas of the country are like that. There was actually an interesting evangelical statistic that the older people are still obsessed with the gay thing and the older people are like, let's just move on.

Let's let Pete Buttigieg get married and leave him alone. It's nice that he's religious and married. And so the statistics are really quite glaring, actually, in terms of young versus old, which is fascinating. So yeah, I think definitely Gen Z is a different group of people, including around issues around women.

And I don't think he feels, my younger son's too young to think about this, but I don't think he feels burdened by it. Like he doesn't think, oh, what a bummer, I can't be an asshole. I just think that's the way they think, right? You know, like he doesn't feel like he has to change because he never behaved like that, if that makes sense.

So a lot of the men are like, oh, victims, we can't do that anymore. Like they feel bad about you, you know, you get that thing, but Gen Z people, they just don't, I mean, it is the most, you know, it's the most multicultural generation. I think they're most open-minded. A hundred percent.

I mean, and also, they also find it offensive. They find it gross, I think, which is interesting. Although I have to say, my son just related something to me about someone in his class that was kind of gross, but he also was like, I'll put a stock to it. Like, you know what I mean?

Like they feel responsibility. Now, of course, I have like really into him and it's his responsibility to see something and do something, but it's really, it is an interesting, it should be interesting to see the next statistics you get, right? Okay, so another trend which I'm optimistic about is the rise of breadwinner moms. So, Liz Mundy, do you know who she is?

She wrote a book called The Bitter Sex. Super interesting, but, you know, 58% of college graduates now are female in the United States and globally it's over 50%. That's a step. And when you go to visit colleges, especially if you go to the small liberal arts schools, a lot of them are 70% female.

So, it's, at Yonkwe, there were a lot of women like myself who were the breadwinner moms. What does that mean breadwinner moms? Oh, so according to Pew, thank you for asking, according to Pew, the woman just has to earn a dollar more than the men. Oh, okay.

So, in my case, Travis was a stay-at-home dad for a decade when I moved here. And there were not, I mean, he could not find other men in Menlo Park who were stay-at-home dads, right? So, it's, I think just the overall acceptance of women as breadwinner moms, as men in kind of different roles is going to change the narrative around the workplace and the home place. All right.

We're going to get back in a second with Michelle Madansky. She is the author of the studies Elephant in the Valley about gender discrimination and sexual harassment. She's come back with some new stats. We're going to talk about that a little more and what we can do to make the numbers better going forward.

We're here with Michelle Madansky. She is a researcher and she did a study that I did a podcast with her and Travis Bessolo many years ago called Elephant in the Valley. It was about how women in tech looked at sexual harassment and gender discrimination. She has since done a lot of research in other industries like advertising and automotive and she's back with new tech information.

She's been relating a lot of it and one of the things we just talked about was breadwinner moms. How does that affect younger people? Is that they're less, what? Well, I think that there's this, you know, as there are more women who are getting undergraduate degrees or getting graduate degrees, they're going to be more poised to be the breadwinners in their families, right?

So there's going to be this natural evolution where they need to navigate just as I did the work environment. Like, you know, if you're the breadwinner you need to be able to work in whatever environment whether that's tech or education, et cetera. And so the workplace is going to have to adjust to that and as well as the, you know, our home lives. So men taking on more responsibilities in the home, you know, et cetera.

So I think that just that kind of that discussion around roles and there was an article in the New York Times I just read, it was about a couple that were lawyers and talking about how the woman went to 20 hours a week and the husband works 60 hours a week and he makes five times as much as her, right? But that's not the, you know, the narrative is shifting so that, you know, women can do that and men can take the lower. Yeah, the lesbians already figured this one out. Lesbians should raise all men.

That is my new book. I'm doing research around breadwinner moms and if there's any listeners who are breadwinner moms who want to talk to me I'm hoping to write a book about it. But I think, yeah, I mean, the same-sex couples have figured out that we're just getting there. But we have to because there's just more and more women who are poised.

I mean, I have a PhD in business. My husband has a philosophy undergraduate degree and that's even better. What are you thinking? The good Travis, not the other Travis.

So let's talk about how you change it because the numbers still remain glaringly obvious that white men rule the rules continually. Every time I leave, even when those reports come out, I'm like, oh, once again, it just doesn't move. The needle doesn't move. It seems like there's no efforts.

As much as they say there's efforts, it feels like maybe it's priority number 15. Just recently, one of the big CEOs called me. They were adding someone to the staff and it had been a very male-dominated staff and I was like, is it a woman? And he goes, no, I was hanging out before and I was like, I don't want to hear about it.

I just think, okay, I'm not writing about it. I'm not writing about it. I just am tired of it. And I wasn't trying to push numbers on him, but it was like, really?

You can't find it. It was a role where there were plenty of women candidates. That's why I was irritated with him. So how do you change the numbers?

I think that's part of it, right? And power. And being in power. So the last reason that I'm optimistic is, and I think this is one of the ways that you change the narrative, is more women supporting other women.

So you think about, one of the things, in reading the Ellen Powell book, like you have to be one of the guys. And what I've seen over the past few years is all these women supporting each other more. So you see that through, you know, these informal groups like the Yahoo Diaspora women's group that I'm part of. We all get together.

Yeah, I mean, it's just like we all just get together and, you know, kind of support each other in whatever is needed. You see people like Aileen Lee and Tina Sharkey always pumping each other up on social media, you know? And you do that also, to your credit. But I think that we're seeing more of that and the more, again, board lists, et cetera.

I don't know when the board lists started. But it's the idea like a women's only dinners where she brought in big names and said, I'm never going to fight. Oh, sorry. They were great.

But the concept of it is that women supporting women. But I'm thinking about actual change of people getting into high-ranking positions. Will that make a difference from your perspective? Well, not at all.

Maybe not. There's lots of women at top companies that have problems. I think that it would definitely make a difference. How do we get there?

Was it Frida Kapoor? Yes, that was Frida Kapoor. Yeah, and the whole discussion around board members being responsible for companies and making that imperative I think is really important. So, you know, calling companies out and having more diverse boards certainly will help, right?

If you have a more diverse board then it would help get more diversity in the C-suite and that will help with the culture. What depends on me is women that have to do the heavy lifting are people of color that have to be the ones who are going to be lifting on this. In a weird way, you'd think that most people would find this a good idea or at least a normal idea and not seen as something that's like, oh, I'm going to have to be PC here. It's just a good thing.

Yeah, I mean, why? Why would they be like this? Yeah, I mean, I think the onus is on everybody. I don't know why the onus is never on the men.

It just isn't as much. Usually you've got to get three women in there and they have to push for women and women are tired of that, I think, having to do that. But, you know, whatever. Oh, yeah, no, men should be responsible for that as well.

So you're talking about positive things. What are you worried about? What are you worried about? There's been a little bit of a backlash to the concept so I can meet you and things like that.

Fatigue is more than backlash. No, I mean, I think that those conversations of the men not going to have lunch with the women, I'm not as worried about that. I think that people will get over that. And for me, I think the important thing is that we really understand where we are at a point in time we can't say we have an ageism problem unless we actually measure that, right?

Which is important to these people, right. Right, so you need to do that. I would love to see companies taking onus and doing that themselves and saying, hey, I'm going to measure where we are at this point in time and then make objectives around shifting some of this. Not just around the numbers, but how people are feeling in terms of being included.

Well, it also has to do HR. That's supposed to be to me what HR is and instead it turns out to be a defender of the company versus trying to change HR. Too often at a lot of these companies it becomes a logistical thing. They become managing problems versus managing change or pushing change.

Yeah, no, I think a lot of the women But look, they've changed. I mean, I'm cautiously optimistic about the future of Uber with... Yeah, I guess I don't think it's common to say they're not quite as awful. They're not quite as, you know, grappy and mean to women.

I don't know. It's sort of like a low bar. To me, it's a low bar. I find it...

You know, it reminds me of when I was coming out and my mom was like, look, I was nice to you for being a... I was like, you don't get a star for being a decent person. So I think that's one of the parts is that I still get the feeling that the priority is not on that and it's just an irritant versus positive. That's my sense, but maybe I'm wrong.

Well, I have to look at the Frida Capores. Apparently, we'll see how her fun is doing. Yeah, yeah. But then you don't even know how the results are skewed because of your ability to access people, right?

And so some people have more access than others. You know, I think that's where the real problem is is the access and the ability to... Just the ability to get in the room. To get in the room.

Not the elephant in the room. To get in the room even if the elephant's there. Right. So I think that there are more stories coming out also.

I think I'm on the board of an organization called WoGrammer, which is... WoGrammer? So it's all about just telling stories of women in STEM, right? And I think the more that we tell those stories about the positive things that women are doing, the women who did the black hole.

Yeah. Oh my gosh, she was awesome. I'll tell you about that. They kept saying woman.

And I was like, she's... programmer, my friend. She's not a woman programmer. Like, I had someone the other day like, you're the best woman journalist.

I'm like, I'm the best journalist. Like, sorry. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's really interesting.

And it's not that I didn't want to celebrate being a woman. It's that that wasn't the point of my work or her work or anyone's work. No, but it is. That's my TED Talk.

But it is the fact that she was clearly responsible. Yes. And she was being featured as the woman behind the black hole, the person behind the black hole photo. Right, yeah, yeah.

And she was adorable. Right, she was smart and everything else. So, let's start talking about what needs to happen next among these companies. If you were going with these numbers, what do you say to the companies you may be advising?

So, give me five things they have to do. So, number one is understand what's happening in your company, right? Like, you need to understand where these challenges are and what they are. Is it, you know, the egregious stuff?

Is it the, you know, death by a thousand cuts? And what are they? And where, in which areas of the company and which segments of your working population so that we can fix that? Number two, you know, boards need to be responsible.

There needs to be more diversity on boards. There needs to be more diversity in the C-suite. And, you know, I think there's the make your C-suite like your consumer base, right? That's just a good motto to have.

Excellent motto to have. And, you know, again, I am not, I'm not in HR. I'm not in diversity and inclusion. I'm just trying to shed a light on the stories.

I think that shedding a light and making people aware and share the data, like share the data within your own company, share the data within the industry so that you can understand. But you're not going to have any change unless you understand where we are at this point in time. What about, like, I'm going to your positivity because I'm not a positive person. I'm an optimistic pessimist.

I don't know, what are you? Are you a pessimistic optimist? I think I'm an optimistic pessimist. Optimist, that's what I am.

Here's one. He's also talking about stories that are good, too. That is one thing that I do get lost in this because everyone feels badly all the time, and they should. But it's something like, I'm always like, Walt Mossberg changed my career, like, and talk about, like, good outcomes when they work.

Like, you can blame him or give him kudos for me, but you have to. Like, it's a through line between him, you know, my career and him. And so I think a lot of those kind of things you have to talk about, which people don't. And I think that's a good support point, which is that men mentoring women.

And I just was on a panel with Dave Smith, who wrote a book, I'm going to forget the name of it, but it was all around men mentoring women and how important it was and how to, you know, be a better mentor. And I think that's a really important thing that kind of gets lost because for all those, you know, kind of schmucky guys, there's another Walt Mossberg out there who is supporting and advocating for, and we need to be celebrating that and not making people feel afraid to, you know, go out to lunch with the next hot Kara Swisher because... The Kara Swisher's never hot. Interesting.

A hot journalist. Hot as in, like, you know, journalist. I get it. I get it.

Pro-eth. I mispronounce words from now on. What do you think? I do it all the time.