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Their stories came out slowly, even hesitantly, at first. Then in a rush.
One female entrepreneur recounted how she had been propositioned by a Silicon Valley venture capitalist while seeking a job with him, which she did not land after rebuffing him. Another showed the increasingly suggestive messages she had received from a start-up investor. And one chief executive described how she had faced numerous sexist comments from an investor while raising money for her online community website.
What happened afterward was often just as disturbing, the women told The New York Times. Many times, the investor's firms and colleagues ignored or played down what had happened when the situations were brought to their attention. Saying anything, the women were warned, might lead to ostracism.
Now some of these female entrepreneurs have decided to take that risk. More than two dozen women in the technology start-up industry spoke to The Times in recent days about being sexually harassed. Ten of them named the investors involved, often providing corroborating messages and emails, and pointed to high-profile venture capitalists such as Chris Sacca of Lowercase Capital and Dave McClure of 500 Startups, who did not dispute the accounts.
The disclosures came after the tech news site The Information reported that female entrepreneurs had been preyed upon by a venture capitalist, Justin Caldbeck of Binary Capital. The new accounts underscore how sexual harassment in the tech start-up ecosystem goes beyond one firm and is pervasive and ingrained. Now their speaking out suggests a cultural shift in Silicon Valley, where such predatory behavior had often been murmured about but rarely exposed.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 3, Interesting) by technoid_ on Wednesday July 05 2017, @02:55PM (2 children)
It is happening in the tech industry, it can be.
Part of the problem is the culture of the office/industry that allows this to go on. If the company does nothing about the problem, then it is a company problem. If multiple companies in the industry have this problem and do nothing to fix it due to the culture of the industry, it is a problem with the industry.
So yes, it can be a tech industry issue. Part of what your example doesn't take into consideration is that the harassment from the article is serial and affects multiple tech companies, thus the Tech industry and not just a single company.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 05 2017, @03:54PM (1 child)
Your not seeing the forest because of the trees there slugger.
This is rife in EVERY industry. In particular its bad with attorneys and financiers. Blaming that on the "techies" is misplaced.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 05 2017, @06:37PM
No, it is not! This is the point! We blame the techies because they are not Runaway, and so are susceptible to shaming, being called on their hypocrisy, and they should just fucking know better than to act like this. If you cannot see this, you must not really be a techie, because no true techie would ever discriminate based on gender, or sexually harass anyone. It's just unprofessional.