Transcript: TechCrunch Disrupt “Women In Tech” Panel [From The Archives]

RACHEL: Oh, I don’t take issue with any of that. Actually what I take issue with is the notion that in order for a woman to be considered a ‘woman in tech’ there has to be a math, science, computer science background. I mean, Gary Vaynerchuk is awesome, but he started making videos about wine. He recognized a need and he used social media. He used new media to fill it. I mean, even TechCrunch—TechCrunch is, you know, Mike Arrington, is a former lawyer. Unless I’m wrong, he doesn’t have a computer science degree. So I think that that’s a misnomer and one of the things I do see when we’re having these conversations is people do try to hem it into, like, “women in tech” into a very narrow category.

Being an entrepreneur means having vision, seeing a need that needs to be filled, being creative and then executing with a great team that – again, I’m going to hammer home the diversity point because when you have a group of diverse people sitting around then what you get is a bunch of different perspectives, a bunch of different viewpoints and you see things. Does anyone play Boggle? You know how you turn the board around and you see a word you didn’t see before? That’s what it’s like to sit with a bunch of people who have a slightly different perspective than you. Change The Ratio is not only about women, although that’s our core. But it’s also about minorities as well and people of color and you don’t see that much of a representation of that here. And I think it’s all an issue.

CYAN: I take offense to that actually. I think if we were to ask people in the audience who in this audience is Jewish, Italian, different groups that actually have been discriminated against, probably half the people here would stand up–

RACHEL: Oh, I’m Jewish.

SARAH: I’m technically enough Native American that I could legally be part of the tribe.

MICHELLE: Ok, but as it pertains to this panel—Gary Vaynerchuk is great and he makes lots of money but if you look at who TechCrunch covers it’s software companies. And why should there not be people who are not technical on stage? Well, it’s because TechCrunch’s audience cares about software and women aren’t creating it in numbers that we would like. So I don’t take offense to the fact that women aren’t on panels in massive numbers. I just think we should address the core issue which is why aren’t women creating software.

NEXT: Why aren’t women creating software – or aren’t they?

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.