Women in tech industry come forward about sexual harassment in the workplace

The #MeToo movement rose to prominence just over three years ago, and opened a conversation around the sexual harassment of women across the world. As a result of this open conversation, more than 40% of women who work in the tech industry have opened up and stated that they have experienced sexual harassment from an investor or boss.

These findings were published in a report conducted by Women Who Tech.

The organisation includes a network of women-led startups, allies and investors who are working to increase diversity and funding in the male-dominated tech industry. The report found that women in this industry still face toxic work environments that deeply impact their experiences as both employees and founders.

The report surveyed the responses of over 1000 tech founders, employees and investors, and found that 48% of women in this industry have been harassed in some form. A further 42% said that this harassment was perpetrated by a supervisor or manager. Of those harassed, 42% reported that it was of a sexual nature. This also includes being forced to have sex in exchange for a promotion of some sort.

Speaking to CNBC Make It, Allyson Kapin, who is the founder of Women Who Tech, said that she was not at all surprised by these statistics as the tech industry has a long history of failing to hold company leaders and investors accountable for both sexual harassment and sexual discrimination.

Since the rise of the #MeToo movement, women have found the strength to come forward and force companies to take responsibility for the issues of discrimination, toxic masculinity and inequality that have simply been brushed aside.

Kapin pointed to Google as a prime example – the company gave Andy Rubin, who is the creator of Android, a $90 million exit package when he left the company in 2014 following accusations of sexual misconduct.

In 2019, shareholders filed a lawsuit against Google’s parent company, Alphabet, for allegedly covering up and mishandling sexual misconduct cases including the allegations against Rubin. Earlier this year, Alphabet settled the ensuing lawsuit by agreeing that executives will no longer receive severance or be able to amend their stock sale plans while under investigation for sexual misconduct.

“But on a mass scale, harassment has not gone down. If anything, there are pockets of harassment that have actually gone up,” Kapin said. “The problem is creating a culture and a set of values where you do not tolerate a toxic culture of harassment and that people who are employees in the company have a place they can go to safely report harassment incidents, where they will not fear a culture of retaliation and that actual people who are committing harassment will be held accountable.”

Kapin believes that HR departments should hold company leaders responsible, and tech companies, in general, need to do a better job of holding investors accountable for sexual discrimination and sexual misconduct against female founders. Approximately 44% of women in the industry say they have been harassed, with 43% saying it happened in the past year.

A further 40% said that they were harassed by an investor specifically. Nearly 50% of women founders say they were told they would raise more money if they were a man, and 55% say they feel like they received “differential treatment while raising funding, specifically because of their gender”.

“One investor told me that I looked so young and that I was at the right age because it’s hard to invest in women after they turn 28,” DeShuna Spencer, CEO and founder of the streaming service kweliTV. “[The investor] said all women are going to want to do is have children and they’re not going to be thinking that much about the business.”

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