Et tu Tesla?
“The Tech Industry’s Gender-Discrimination Problem” (New Yorker):
AJ Vandermeyden drove to Tesla’s corporate headquarters, in Palo Alto, California, sat down on a bench outside the main entrance, and waited, in the hope of spotting someone who looked like a company employee. Vandermeyden, who was thirty years old, had been working as a pharmaceutical sales representative since shortly after college, but she wanted a different kind of job, in what seemed to her the center of the world—Silicon Valley. … A few weeks later, she was hired at Tesla as a product specialist in the inside-sales department.
… Vandermeyden, who worked closely with a group of eight other employees, soon learned that her salary was lower than that of everyone else in the group, including several new hires who had come to Tesla straight out of college. She was, as it happened, the only woman in the group. Her supervisors, and her supervisors’ supervisors, were male, all the way up the chain, it seemed, to Musk himself.
There was a sense that the male executives had little understanding of the challenges women faced at the company.
She noticed that sometimes, when female employees walked through certain areas of the plant, male workers whistled, catcalled, and made derogatory comments. Women called it the “predator zone.”
In July, 2015, about three months after Vandermeyden joined the team, several of her male colleagues were promoted. Although she was under the impression that she would shortly receive a promotion and a raise, she did not get either, according to court documents.
On September 20, 2016, Vandermeyden filed a lawsuit charging Tesla with sex discrimination, retaliation, and other workplace violations.
(The New Yorker writer and editors don’t address the question of whether it is problematic to label a person with, apparently, no technical education or experience part of the “tech industry.”)
Some profound thoughts from a woman who, rather than waste her youth coding, was smart enough to marry a rich guy:
“Men who demean, degrade or disrespect women have been able to operate with such impunity—not just in Hollywood, but in tech, venture capital, and other spaces where their influence and investment can make or break a career,” Melinda Gates, the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, told me. “The asymmetry of power is ripe for abuse.”
Will my friends who are passionate about social justice have to give up their Teslas? If so, what brand of car is ideal for signalling a commitment to gender equality?
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