changetheratio:

This. #nofilter #changetheratio

The New Yorker has come out with its profile of Facebook COO Sheyl Sandberg: “A Woman’s Place: Sheryl Sandberg & Male-Dominated Silicon Valley.” Stop for a second - it’s 2011 and it’s sort of nuts that such a title should even work. And yet! Sandberg is terrific and Auletta shines a light on the issue of access, and visibility, and opportunity - all of Change the Ratio’s favorite obsessions. It’s a great time for Sandberg’s message to be magnified (raise your hand; don’t leave before you leave; lean in) and a great time to be an awesome woman doing cool shizz ready to catch that spotlight now that it’s finally swinging around.

This is great for CTR, too. I was psyched when David Remnick emailed me back in March to hear my thoughts on the matter and more psyched to get to bend Ken Auletta’s ear for 90 minutes in the Hashable office - but he spoke to lots of people and seemed focused on Sheryl and the Valley, so who knew what would make the cut. But we did - with our core mission of visibility front and center. He also included a precis of the contretemps with Michael Arrington not even a year ago - and my God, how out of date it sounds now, eh? See below:

Sandberg and many other women in Silicon Valley think the problems women encounter are usually more subtle than blatant sexism. “I think it is largely innocent,” says Rachel Sklar, a New York writer and entrepreneur who has actively protested against digital conferences that invite too few women to speak. Sklar co-founded a women’s organization called Change the Ratio, and she tries to make sure there are more women onstage. “You can’t know about what you don’t see,” she says.

Some suggest that women are also to blame. Michael Arrington, the editor of TechCrunch and the organizer of the TechCrunch Disrupt conferences, defended venture capitalists and Silicon Valley males in a blog post last summer. “The problem is that not enough women want to become entrepreneurs,” he wrote. Referring to Sklar, and her campaign, Arrington added, “Yeah ok, whatever, Rachel. Every damn time we have a conference we fret over how we can find women to fill speaking slots. We ask our friends and contacts for suggestions. We beg women to come and speak… . And you know what? A lot of the time they say no. Because they are literally hounded to speak at every single tech event in the world because they are all trying so hard to find qualified women to speak at their conference.”

It is SO not hard to find qualified women to speak at tech, digital and entrepreneurship conferences - good Lord, I trip over all of you every day. I can’t imagine that all but the most clueless and narrow-minded readers won’t think to themselves, huh, that doesn’t sound quite right, as they mentally go through all the amazing women who are making incredible stuff happen more and more visibly every day. This article will swing that spotlight around even more, and hopefully further illuminate the blindspot where guess what? There are lots of qualified, amazing women raising their hands and leaning in.

This is a good day!

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