Are you sexist and you don’t know it? Why you should ask yourself that if you’re in tech

In the cool world of tech, gender discrimination is so uncool that it is rarely overt. But scratch the surface, and you will soon see shades of sexism in startup hubs the world over, from the Bay Area to Bangalore and Beijing. When it comes to women in tech, it seems like there are no borders – they face the same issues whether they are American, Chinese, or Indian.

Let’s begin their story in India.

Sukriti Vadula, president and co-founder of the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Foundation (RAIF), chuckles when she recalls the day she walked into Simple Labs, a robotics company in Chennai, as an engineering student looking for part-time work. She wanted to learn all about embedded systems and automating her home. She knew the boss at Simple Labs and he knew her interest in the subject.

“But he was skeptical. He wondered if a girl would be able to come by everyday after college, work from 6pm to 9pm, and get back home close to ten,” she explains.

Vadula was the first woman to come up to him asking for a job. He thought she wouldn’t last for more than three days in an all-male, hard-tech workspace. But she did. In fact, Vadula went on to work with them – “the only woman in the team” – for a few years after graduation as well. Now, as robotics evangelizer at RAIF, she makes it a point to visit girls-only schools and colleges and hard-sell the subject.

Embroidery for girls, electronics for boys. That’s the usual norm for extra-curricular activities at Indian schools. Not many girls brave raised eyebrows, teachers’ ire, and worse to go play around with electronics. The social conditioning starts even earlier. Even educated parents nudge their girls toward medicine, humanities, and commerce over engineering. That’s partly because the archetype of an engineer is an asocial male. The gender stereotyping begins at home, continues through schools, and obviously extends to workplaces. So it is not much of a surprise that girls are a minority at engineering colleges, and a rare species in tech workplaces. This is despite the fact that girls outshine boys by a large margin in secondary school exams in every Indian state, even in less developed ones like Uttar Pradesh.

The few Indian women who do trickle into the tech job market face uncomfortable situations from the very outset – until they get so used to it that they stop noticing. During job interviews, a regular question thrown at women in tech is about her relationship status. Are you married? Do you intend to? Do you have a boyfriend? You hear versions of these even if you’re armed with degrees from top-notch universities. A radar scientist with India’s Defence Research and Development Organization recounts her experiences.

“I’m an IIT [Indian Institute of Technology] topper. I know my tech, enjoy working with technology, and can happily tackle any tech challenge. But these personal questions always got my hackles up. I had never thought of myself as a feminist, but eventually felt I must be one because I always countered questions about my relationship status with a retort or two. Now, I have grown blind to these sexisms as people respect my work,” she tells Tech in Asia. She requested we not disclose her identity because she works in a government organization.

These are stark situations, but you can argue that India isn’t a microcosm of the world. After all, the country has much catching up to do with more developed countries on a number of counts, from living standards to basic sanitation. But when it comes to gender discrimination in the tech sphere, it seems India is on par with the rest of the world – nowhere close to becoming gender-blind.

Subtle sexism at work

Ask any educated man if he believes in the need for gender equality at the workspace, he will swear by it. The ground reality tells another story.

For every Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer, there are countless other women who never got their due at work. Even in the US, it has been difficult for women to make their way to positions of power and influence in tech. Why else do you see so few women entrepreneurs? And the few who do make it hate the gender prefix they are forced to carry. ZipDial founder and CEO Valerie Wagoner bristled when Tech in Asia asked her about being a woman entrepreneur. “Don’t call me a woman founder,” she said.

All boys club

Numbers speak

Girls in tech hit back