Don’t blame the men? OK, I’ll just blame the arrogant windbags.

TechCrunch co-founder Michael Arrington has gotten himself into some trouble this week for an opinion piece he posted about women in tech. Often I feel bad for writers who take public heat in the aftermath of an article that was perhaps written in haste. But given Arrington’s ignorant and smug comments, compounded by an equally arrogant follow-up, I not only agree with the critics but I’m going to pile on. Let’s look at a few choice points from his article.

• “Success in Silicon Valley, most would agree, is more merit driven than almost any other place in the world.” Really? “Most” would agree with that? Who did you poll? I know we like to think that the tech industry is a meritocracy, but for entrepreneurs—the focus of the article—luck is a huge component of success, even in Silicon Valley. You need to win over venture capitalists (most of whom, incidentally, are men). You need to introduce your product at the right time and find a good staff and market your idea, and just generally do all kinds of things that are not about how smart you are or how good your idea is.
• “Statistically speaking women have a huge advantage as entrepreneurs, because the press is dying to write about them, and venture capitalists are dying to fund them.” That argument sounds an awful lot like some guys I knew in grad school. Of course you got into Dartmouth, they’d say to me (the only woman in the room); computer science departments are dying to admit women. It was hard for me to resist the urge to compare GPAs and GRE scores, over which I believe I would have had reason to gloat. The way they talked, you’d think it was so easy for us to get in, the place would be crawling with women.
• “What they probably won’t admit, but I suspect is true anyway, is that the rate of acceptance for female applicants is far higher than for male applicants.” This attitude is a huge part of what works against us. If you’re a woman in tech, you must not be as qualified as the men around you (obviously!), and you have to work twice as hard to prove yourself. Women still have to overcome the condescending attitude that we don’t deserve to be here.
• “The next time you women want to start pointing the finger at me when discussing the problem of too few women in tech, just stop. Look in the mirror.” This point gets at the real heart of the issue. Arrington thinks women need to be more like men, that we’re the ones who need to adapt, not the tech community. Well, computer science was established as a discipline in the 1950s. We’ve had over fifty years of the same attitude. Yet in 2008, women accounted for only 17.5% of Bachelor’s degrees in computer science, and as Arrington himself concedes, a similarly paltry representation among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. So it doesn’t seem to me that this attitude is getting us anywhere.

Trying to get more women in the field is not about “helping women,” as Arrington insinuates. Rather, it’s about helping our whole industry. We need full and equal participation for women (as well as people of color and other underrepresented groups) in order to ensure a robust tech community and to continue leading the world in innovation and technology. Arrington can lose the condescending tone and talk of “helping” women. He should be trying to help the industry help itself.

Related posts:

1. What Venture Capitalists Are Investing in for 2009
2. Solving the Tech pay gap between men and women
3. Inspiring Women Series – Female Internet Heros
4. Computer Science Education Act of 2010
5. Doing it Right – Tips to Fundraise in 2009