Have you ever scrolled through those “Overheard At…” websites or Twitter accounts and had your mind boggled by the ridiculous things people say in public?
Well, a conversation two top-level IBM executives (and a woman who may have been a colleague) had next to a woman coder — who live-tweeted the whole thing — is more mind-boggling than anything we’ve ever heard (or read) before.
Last Monday, self-described “feminist activist, writer and gentle mama” Lyndsay Kirkham was sitting in a restaurant in Canada when she heard the two men at the table next to her start discussing why they don’t hire young women.
These IBM executives should have picked someone else to sit beside to have a working lunch focused on “why they don’t hire women”.
— Lyndsay (@HisFeministMama) July 21, 2014
Apparently IBM doesn’t like hiring young women because they are ‘just going to get themselves pregnant again and again and again’.
— Lyndsay (@HisFeministMama) July 21, 2014
They went on to say that they only look at “mature women” who aren’t likely to have kids. Absolutely awful.
— Lyndsay (@HisFeministMama) July 21, 2014
According to Kirkham, the executives said that mothers were more likely to miss “years of work” because they had to take care of their kids. They then started naming female employees at IBM with kids and estimating how much time they’d take off in the coming years for anticipated pregnancies.
Needless to say, Kirkham was not amused, and neither are we.
Unsurprisingly, a study by the Center for Work-Life Policy found that the two biggest reasons that 52 percent of the women working in private-sector technology and science fields drop out are the “hostile macho cultures — the hard hat culture of engineering, the geek culture of technology or the lab culture of science … and extreme work pressures.”
Hopefully, by bringing to light some of the rampant sexism in the industry, Kirkham can help make sure future women will never have to hear such shocking and awful conversations again.