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On Sunday, a former Uber engineer published details about the sexual harassment and rampant sexism that she claims she and other women experienced at the company. But despite reporting the incidents to HR on several occasions, Susan J. Fowler was repeatedly ignored, and even berated a few times for bringing the issues forward. The story has since been met with widespread outrage, with many criticizing Uber over how it treats its female employees.
This is just the latest in a litany of complaints levied against the company. Just a few weeks ago, Uber was under fire for turning off surge pricing during a New York City taxi union strike against Trump's travel ban. CEO Travis Kalanick was also heavily criticized for being a part of Trump's advisory board. He eventually left the council, following multiple objections. This, on top of the various other accusations of driver sexual assaults and disregard of local laws, has tainted Uber's reputation, to say the least.
But it's too easy to write Fowler's account as an isolated incident. The truth is, her story is all too common in the tech industry. Despite the lip service given to diversity and inclusion by many tech companies, sexism is still rampant. According to the Elephant in the Valley study published in 2016, about 60 percent of women in tech reported unwanted sexual advances. Sixty percent of those who reported their incidents were dissatisfied with the course of action, 39 percent did nothing for fear of career reprisals, another 30 percent did not report because they wanted to forget the incident and 29 percent filed a non-disparaging agreement to not say anything.
The state of tech in one woman's story, also the story of many women, many people at many companies. Take the time to include everyone early https://t.co/H35SjS0nME
— Ellen K. Pao (@ekp) February 20, 2017
One anonymous contributor to the survey wrote: "Experiences included being groped by my boss while in public at a company event. After learning this had happened to other women in my department, and then reporting the event to HR, I was retaliated against and had to leave the company." Another was asked by a client to "sit on his lap," and even though she reported the incident to her boss, the company did nothing.
There have been other high-profile incidents besides Fowler's account. Multiple women have come forward to accuse former Tor project developer Jacob Appelbaum for sexual assault. Kelly Ellis, a former Google engineer, tweeted in 2015 that a supervisor had told her "It's taking all of my self control not to grab your ass right now" during a company trip to Maui. Julie Ann Horvath, Github's first female developer, left the company due to harassment and a decidedly sexist "culture of toxicity" where men occasionally ogled at women employees.
The sexism shows itself in other ways beside blatant harassment. For example, Fowler describes how Uber only ordered leather jackets for the men, but not the women, because there were "only six" of them and it wouldn't be cost-effective to just get six jackets in their size (despite them having enough money to order jackets for over 120 men).
In my reporting for this story, a female consultant (name withheld) told me that a VP at a prominent tech firm (name also withheld) got rid of the ladies restroom in its engineering department because there were only seven women engineers out of 75. Instead, all they had were the men's room and a "unisex" bathroom that was only one room with no stalls, which the men would occupy anyway. "More than once I had to go down to the Walgreens down the street and ask to use their bathroom," she said.
When women do publicly come forward about their problems, they face name-calling and abuse, like both Horvath and Ellis had. And when there's a discrimination lawsuit like in Ellen Pao vs Kleiner-Perkins, women are accused of just wanting money. What's more, as Greylock VC investor Sarah Guo points out, success in Silicon Valley is very dependent on having good job references. So if you're known as a "troublemaker" or given a bad review, that could adversely affect your career.
1/ The Valley is very reference-driven. A sinister side effect of that which relates to diversity:
— Sarah Guo (@saranormous) February 20, 2017
In the past 24 hours, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has since responded to the sexism allegations, saying that it would conduct an "urgent investigation." The company is calling on former Attorney General Eric Holder and Uber board member Arianna Huffington to assist with the matter, which at least gives the impression that Uber is seeking a more "independent" review.
Kalanick also said that Uber would finally publish a diversity report for the very first time, to show the company's efforts at inclusion. He states that 15.1 percent of its "engineering, product management and scientist roles" are women, adding that "Facebook is at 17 percent, Google at 18 percent and Twitter is at 10 percent."
But this is problematic for a few reasons. Those numbers he gave on Facebook, Google and Twitter cover what those companies describe as "technical roles," which may or may not include product management. Further, it's not like those companies have a stellar record on diversity and inclusion either, so the comparison doesn't necessarily paint Uber in a positive light. (For the record too, Twitter actually reported 15 percent women in technical jobs last year, not 10, so the numbers Kalanick cited aren't even accurate.)
As if the problem is about how Uber's diversity numbers stack up to other companies and an unfocused need to fight some vague injustice... https://t.co/wDTnAJjUtU
— Violet Blue ® (@violetblue) February 21, 2017
Plus, while adding a diversity report is nice, it doesn't really address the root of the problem here. You can hire as many women as you want, but if the company's culture is hostile and demeaning to women, you haven't fixed anything. Fowler allegedly reported her harassment to HR and even to the CTO, but they did nothing, apparently because the managers were considered "high performers." It seems the only reason Uber is taking these actions now is because she went public.
So unless this investigation results in a systemic shift in culture from the top down, then things are just going to return to business as usual. It will take a genuine commitment to inclusivity -- like setting zero-tolerance harassment policies, where even so-called "high performers" aren't immune -- in order for anything to change. Kalanick, and the rest of Uber's leadership, need to say unequivocally that harassment, and sexism, is not acceptable at any level. And the rest of Silicon Valley needs to do the same.