Tech firm addressing sexual harassment crisis
SAN FRANCISCO — Faced with a burgeoning sexual harassment crisis, leaders in Silicon Valley have come up with a very Silicon Valley solution: Use technology to create a blacklist.
One of the region’s most prominent firms recently emailed an online reporting form to 3,500 entrepreneurs, encouraging them to blow the whistle on sexual harassment by venture capitalists. Now it is also considering creating an app that could provide reviews of financiers, akin to Yelp or the workplacereview site Glassdoor.
“We don’t call it a blacklist, but that is essentially what is happening,” Kat Manalac, a partner at the influential startup incubator Y Combinator, said of the blast email. “There has always been a whisper network, where investors and entrepreneurs know which other investors are bad actors.”
The efforts by Y Combinator and others are part of the industry’s search for answers in the wake of harassment scandals that have cemented Silicon Valley’s reputation as hostile to women.
Silicon Valley’s longstanding problem with gender discrimination and harassment came to a head in recent weeks, as the internet lit up with unprecedented outpourings of rage, soulsearching and stories from female startup founders who publicly said they had been violated by prominent venture capitalists.
One group of women has founded a startup, BetterBrave, that aims to be an online hub for female workers who felt they were sexually harassed at work. SheWorx is planning an online database that would enable women and others to report unethical behavior by investors.
LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman called on all venture capital firms to sign a decency pledge.
A number of firms have tweeted support for the pledge, but several prominent women in the industry say that none of these efforts requires companies to make concrete commitments such as a binding agreement to hire more women, disclose harassment to funders or fire people who have broken pledges or policies.
“We’re seeing this movement in Silicon Valley toward pledges, mea culpas and quick fixes,” said Y-Vonne Hutchinson, a Silicon Valley recruiter who focuses on diversity. “I think that’s dangerous. That doesn’t get at the heart of what’s really driving our issues with sexual harassment.”