WiCipedia: Hardwiring Sexism, Brogrammer Culture & Wall Street FearmongeringWiCipedia: Hardwiring Sexism, Brogrammer Culture & Wall Street Fearmongering

"Brogrammer culture," created by gaslighting guys in hoodies, has not been squashed by the #MeToo movement; on the contrary, it's alive and well, says the Financial Times. From frat boy office culture to chauvinistic coworker comments, women in tech deal with brogrammers every day. The article interviewed many women in tech who feel as though they are entering a battle every time they step into the office. One female engineer in London is quitting her job because of the sexist treatment and the lack of belief when harassment is reported. She explained, "It is death by a thousand paper cuts and managers not believing you are bleeding. These things can seem like small problems or nothing at all to someone hearing them for the first time [but] by the time you are telling someone, you have been ground down." (See WiCipedia: Diversity Awareness & Schooling Brogrammers and What Brogrammers Look Like to the Rest of Us.)

Australia's TPG Telecom , which recently started the process of merging with Vodafone Australia , is now moving into the 21st century. The Sydney Morning Herald explains that TPG is making an effort to bring new female leaders into the upper echelon of the company. Executive Chairman David Teoh is currently interviewing only female candidates for the open director position and has said that hiring a woman for the role is a "priority." (See WiCipedia: All-Female Boards, Google 'Utterly Unprepared' & Insecure Men.)

In the wake of a sexual harassment scandal, how do you avoid repeating what got you there in the first place? By avoiding women at all costs, or so says Wall Street. Bloomberg reports that on Wall Street, instead of hiring more women to level out the gender gap and treating them respectfully (i.e., not sexually harassing them), the finance bros have swung the other way and decided to avoid women altogether. They're calling it the "Pence Effect," since the VP is famous for not dining alone with women who aren't his wife. Yet this fear of interacting with women isn't going to solve the real issue. One employment attorney stated, "If men avoid working or traveling with women alone, or stop mentoring women for fear of being accused of sexual harassment, those men are going to back out of a sexual harassment complaint and right into a sex discrimination complaint." (See Women of Wall Street CEO Offers Discrimination Solutions.)

We were saddened to learn that Evelyn Berezin, the woman who created the first word processor, has died at age 93 of lymphoma. The New York Times reports that Evelyn was a true trailblazer for women in tech in the 1970s and 1980s, and brought an end to the "dead-end secretary" job with her technological inventions. While she admitted that she never considered that her innovations might threaten jobs historically held by women, she paved the way for women and men alike to rise to the top of the tech world. British writer and entrepreneur Gwyn Headley said of Evelyn, "Why is this woman not famous?... Without Ms. Berezin, there would be no Bill Gates, no Steve Jobs, no internet, no word processors, no spreadsheets; nothing that remotely connects business with the 21st century." (See Meet the Woman Who Can Make You a Millionaire Inventor and WiC Leading Lights 2018 Finalists: Female Tech Pioneer of the Year.)

— Eryn Leavens, Special Features & Copy Editor, Light Reading