A Striking Absence of Women

Editorial | Notebook

A Striking Absence of Women
By VIKAS BAJAJ
Published: October 12, 2013
The New York Times

Twitter, the popular social networking company, recently drew unwelcome attention to itself and the technology industry when it revealed in the filing for its initial public offering that none of the seven people on its board was a woman. One academic accused it of “male chauvinist thinking;” Twitter’s chief executive, Dick Costolo, seemed to only make matters worse by referring to that critic, Vivek Wadhwa, as the “Carrot Top of academic sources,” alluding to the over-the-top standup comedian Carrot Top.

That a high-flying San Francisco company has an all-male board should come as no surprise. About 49 percent of publicly traded information technology businesses have no women on their boards, compared with 36 percent of the 2,770 largest public companies in the country, according to GMI Ratings, a research firm.

With prominent exceptions like Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook and Marissa Mayer of Yahoo, the technology industry is largely a men’s club. The absence of women in positions of power undermines the progressive image the industry has long tried to project, and it can’t help with its customer base, which in the case of social networking services includes slightly more women than men.... MORE at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/opinion/sunday/a-striking-absence-of-women.html