But many have struggled to manage aging technology companies. Of these women, only Mrs Katz, Mrs Hood and Mrs Porat remain in their roles.
“The pace of progress for women leaders in Silicon Valley is worse than disappointing,” said Nicole Wong, deputy chief technology officer in the Obama administration and former executive director of Twitter. “This makes the commitments made by technology leaders around racial and gender diversity in 2014 seem performative.
In 2017, stories of sexual harassment by influential men in Silicon Valley became part of the #MeToo movement. In the same year, a group of women investors created All Raise.
In 2018, California passed a law requiring publicly traded companies to have at least one female board director, which led to dozens of women joining corporate boards. (A California judge overturned the law last month; the state said it would appeal the decision.) Another new law passed last year, the Silence Ban Act, provides legal protection for people who speak publicly about discrimination or harassment who have experienced work .
Women in technology continue to talk about unfair treatment. In 2020, Ms. Brougher reached a $ 22.5 million agreement with Pinterest for discrimination and revenge. A discrimination case by Emily Kramer, a former chief marketing officer at financial startup Carta, is making its way through the courts.
There were some signs of progress. For the past five years, Katrina Lake of Stitch Fix, Julie Wainwright of The RealReal, Jennifer Hyman of Rent the Runway and Whitney Wolfe Herd of Bumble have made public the companies they founded. And following in Sandberg’s footsteps, women chief operating officers are now more common in technology. These include Ms. Choi of Coinbase, Gwyn Shotwell of SpaceX and Jen Wong of Reddit.
At Meta, Ms. Sandberg hires and promotes women, such as Marne Levine, Chief Business Officer, and Lori Goller, Head of Human Resources and Employment. The percentage of women in Meta’s leadership with director titles or higher has risen to 35% in 2021 from 30% in 2018, according to the company.
Meta also developed women who now run other technology companies, including Ms. Simo, who ran Facebook’s main app before becoming Instacart’s CEO last year.
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