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

RACHEL: I bring it back to the ratio. 80/20 is good, across the board. And when 80/20 is good—for women, I’m talking about 20% women. When you’re looking at that ratio and it isn’t reflective of the population, of the lower levels of the space, it raises a rebuttable presumption that there’s something going on.

LEILA: I think you’re focused on the wrong area. The problem that we need to solve is why women aren’t entering math and science and engineering fields. And that’s a far broader problem than why women are not getting covered.

And second, your organization is called Change The Ratio. I work in poverty alleviation and the problems we’re talking about are rich people problems. 70% of the global poor are women, 3 million women are trafficked every year, are sold into sex trafficking. I feel like we have far bigger problems when we think about gender equality globally than that women aren’t being covered in effin’ TechCrunch.

SARAH CHIPPS: And I think this is only an American issue. If you go to India, if you go to Egypt–

SARAH: No, in fact, Rachel made some potshots at me because I published some data by the World Economic Forum that actually showed in the United States that there’s closer to parity of women in technical and professional jobs than anywhere else in the world.

MICHELLE: Except in computer science.

SARAH: Yeah, but I’m saying is that I think it’s better here in terms of basic job parity. Definitely, there’s not—

RACHEL: The point was that because we have it better than the rest of the world, then we shouldn’t complain. And like if you apply that to poverty, “Sure we have poverty in the States but it’s not as bad as Bangladesh so we don’t need to do anything about it.” I mean, that’s crazy.

CYAN: We shouldn’t complain.

SARAH: I think you should build something and not complain. I think if you build something good, you’ll succeed.

LEILA: Even if it’s not good. To be honest, as a woman, I feel like people are on the hunt for woman-led companies. I feel like we’ve gotten way too much PR given our size as an organization and the fact that we’re a non-profit that can’t make any VC any money at all. It’s kind of incredible that we’ve been held up the way we have. And I think it’s due in large part to the fact that we’re run by a woman who’s also a minority. And VCs and tech people love that, and they want to support us. It’s just that there aren’t enough of us pitching them.

MICHELLE: Well, so, there are people like that. And that’s awesome. But the simple truth is that we’re all here on this “silly panel” because a bunch of people went on a blog and called me a nasty word repeatedly and said I’ll never make it. There’s no excuse for people behaving that way. I don’t care what color you are, who you are, people should not be treated in such a way for just suggesting that women can be good at math and science too. Because that’s all I really did. But the simple truth is this: we’re here today at TechCrunch Disrupt, which is a blog run by a woman. And it just got acquired from AOL for a ton of money. So it doesn’t matter if people say these things about women. I think Heather Harde is one that has proved that we can be successful too. So they can keep hating, they can hate all they want but it’s a pretty good use case for—how many women do you have on staff?

SARAH: More than half our staff is women—half our senior staff is women. And I have to say, I’ve been in media for 15 years and this is the first newsroom I’ve worked at where I’m not the only woman covering business and technology.

MICHELLE: But that’s awesome. And it just goes to show you that you can be number 1 with women. So not all men think that way, but there are some that do.

SARAH CHIPPS: I think there’s something to be said about you and Lauren and people that are female founders starting companies, getting out there. Instead of focusing on the problem, let’s champion the people that are doing it.

NEXT: Should we focus on the problem or champion the people doing it? Or is that a false dichotomy?

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