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

RACHEL: I have no problem being the person who focuses on the problem, being unpopular, being the person who takes heat on Twitter—

SARAH: No, no, it’s done great for you. You’re on stage at Disrupt, you drive lots of traffic, you get lots of attention. I think you’ve played it brilliantly.

RACHEL: Yeah, that’s totally why I was after it. But I really want to get back to the point that Michelle made which is that having women involved is a total plus. We’re talking about this TechCrunch event—you know J’aime Ohm, who won the Hackathon, won it with—

CYAN: She won it because her application was awesome. I want to be straight on that.

RACHEL: I was just about to say before you interrupted me, that she won because she came up with something that was well-needed and it was also something that a woman will come up with. Because her application is basically a black box for a woman’s movements over the course of an evening god forbid something happens. Like, this is something that women think of more than men think of because of the realities of personal safety.

SARAH: Rachel, no one here is arguing women shouldn’t be in businesses. You keep arguing a point that no one is arguing against you.

RACHEL: I just come back to the ratio.

SARAH: I don’t know why you are so defensive about it. Because no one is saying—raise your hand if you’re in this room and think women shouldn’t be in companies.

CYAN: I don’t understand this artificial ratio anyways.

SARAH: I don’t understand what you’re arguing—who on this panel is saying that companies aren’t better served by having diversity? Who’s saying that?

RACHEL: I think that it’s not that people are saying it. Panels like this happen all the time and people say the right things. But I think that, you know, you just gotta push back against assumptions, the sort of casual nature of who hangs out with who, who refers who. When you say, “We really looked and tried to find a woman to bring in for X, Y and Z”, how far did you look, who did you ask, did you break out of your comfort zone, did you break out of your plane of existence? And I think that’s how you find people. And again it’s not just women, it’s also minorities and I think it’s really important. And I don’t mind being unpopular and saying it. Because if it drives the message home to one person then that’s one person who will be more aware.

CYAN: I think this is a form of collectivism that’s actually quite generous. I think we should celebrate individuals. I am Cyan Banister first; I am woman last. I’m sorry.

RACHEL: I think that individuals are fantastic. Individuals comprise the ratio. And when that ratio is constantly 80/20 men/women, I’m going to keep on banging the drum.

CYAN: Where does this ratio come from? Who made up these numbers?

SARAH CHIPPS: Give these women publicity. Make it so the 9-year-old girls who are sitting at home in front of their computers get to see a successful, powerful woman as much as possible. When you grow up you want to be the successful, pretty woman you’ve seen your whole life. And getting founders, developers, out there in the media—showing them can inspire these young girls. And then we can change the ratio. Focusing on these individuals is the first step. Besides getting women to ship software and to be founders, another step is making sure that girls in high schools and middle schools know about them.

CYAN: I think it starts with our daughters, it starts very young.

LEILA: What’s the ratio of women who pitch VCs? Do you know?

RACHEL: I mean, it’s probably like under 20%.

SARAH: Oh, it’s definitely under 20%. Is Ron still here?

OFF-CAMERA: Oh, I’d guess it’s under 15 or10% too.

RACHEL: There’s absolutely a step-up problem too. There’s no question about that. And this is like a multi-factorial thing. It’s not easy to, you know, say, correlation and causation. I get it, they’re not always the same. But—

LEILA: It’s easy to point our fingers at individuals and at companies for not featuring them enough—

RACHEL: There are pathways that are easier for dudes. Because they know other dudes who refer other dudes. That is the reality of it. So it’s just identifying there might be a bottleneck here. So if it’s a bottleneck of information you don’t have or stuff you don’t know that’s going on, find that bottleneck, free it up.

NEXT: The Pathway to Dudedom.

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