It’s The Culture, Stupid
CW: This article discusses sexual harassment, assault and the Australian startup sector
Two weeks ago, we heard the story about an overwhelmingly male cohort in the graduate program at the Australian Public Service, who had ranked the girls in their cohort by apparent sex appeal in a ‘hotties list’. This understandably caused an outcry, which also led to a discussion about why the cohort was so overwhelmingly male and whether this lack of diversity contributed to the fact that these young men felt this was appropriate behaviour in a work setting.
Gender studies academic Blair Williams posited that the APS at least seemed to have forged a culture where the women felt able to step forward, voice their concerns and seek assistance, and that the bigger issue is the higher education system failing to cultivate a culture that teaches against harassment and assault to protects students.
In 2023, it is absolutely not good enough that “at least women can tell us when they are being sexually harassed at work now”, but progress is progress, I guess.
Of course, one needs only to think a little farther back to recall that after a similar list was circulating by a private boys school in Sydney, Chanel Contos asked the question of how many in her network had been sexually assaulted at high school by boys who attended private schools in Sydney, and then published the results by school. The results were overwhelming. Chanel noted the issue isn’t with private schools specifically, and she has since gone on to launch an education program called Teach Us Consent in schools in Australia.
Which leads me to this weekend.
On Saturday, Capital Brief published a profile on me as a venture capitalist, where journalist Bronwen Clune suggested “every time a study comes out on gender and diversity in the sector, it’s hard to see what gains women have made and how can we can make meaningful change?”. I responded that one way to accelerate the change is for capital allocators to allocate more capital to smaller or emerging managers with a thesis that incorporates diversity — especially given the data says that diverse teams objectively outperform and generate better returns.
This was a small focus of the profile, but an important one to me. Nevertheless, it took less than an hour after posting it on LinkedIn before there was a barrage of abusive, sexually harassing and vile comments by one person in particular — a founder in the ecosystem.
This individual threatened a female commentor who was merely congratulating me on the article to ‘bang you then abortion’. He suggested to another woman that they should sleep together before proceeding to call her ‘fat’. And, if any woman dared replied to him to tell him his comments were out of line, he would condescendingly suggested she was being irrational and perhaps it was because ‘you are on your period’.
Now, wonderfully, men stepped in also, which is where he showed himself to be an equal opportunity abuser, abusing them with ad hominem attacks also. Yet his comments towards men were only mean, not sexual in nature. He saved the repulsive sexual threats for the women.
This barrage of comments was reported to LinkedIn by multiple parties, and LinkedIn’s response was to say that the comments did not contravene their ‘Professional Community Policies’. If LinkedIn doesn’t see that as sexual harassment, and their remedy is simple (delete the comments and remove the commentator ) is it any wonder that our physical workplaces don’t respond adequately?
It’s easy for some to dismiss these examples as silly boys or young men, or just another internet troll — as some did to me on the weekend. Some suggested it was a Saturday night, so maybe he was ‘drunk’, as if that made it somehow ok but that would be a mistake and it is naive. And I do understand the urge to try and explain away the cognitive dissonance between how some men behave in the workplace and how we like to think it should be. But it’s important to understand that when men (and it’s usually men) behave this way, it’s not them ‘acting out’ or not being of sound mind. It’s them expressing exactly what they think of women. This is as much a part of who they are as their personality and favourite food and it has been, and will continue to be, enabled by a culture every time we make excuses and that says this is ok.
And it’s most definitely not ok.
There is a direct line that can be drawn between these types of behaviours and more serious ones like we have seen this past fortnight in the aftermath of the brutal alleged murder of Lilie James by her boyfriend of 5 weeks, after she broke up with him. Both of them only recently out of high school themselves, according to The Guardian Lilie was the 43rd woman murdered in gendered violence in Australia this year, and it has reignited statements that we are in the midst of a national crisis of gendered violence.
It was distressing but perhaps not surprising that the comments from the headmaster of the school at which Lilies alleged murderer previously attended, again an all boys private school, described in a newsletter, that her alleged murdered as ‘not a monster’ and was “an absolute delight” as a student.
“He was not a monster; rather, in the last five hours of his life, he committed a monstrous act which was in complete contradiction to what everyone who knew him observed in the rest of this short life.”
Giving immediate, undeserved grace to these perpetrators, by perpetuating the narrative that the offenders actions are somehow out of character, is the foundation upon which these behaviours continue to thrive.
The reality is all of the examples I have highlighted above are part of the same spectrum of entitlement that is at the root of gendered violence and it starts really early. And when we normalise or accept a standard of sexual harassment in schools, or negative gender discrimination and harassment in the workplace, we are tacitly supporting the same culture that leads to the murder of women by the men they know as adults.
And for those who have made it this far, it is worth stating that the examples I have outlined above are not rare behaviour.
Sexual harassment, including gendered and vile sexually-explicit commentary is the common experience of most women in the workplace or on social media. If you don’t believe me, just ask the women in your network how many times they have been sexually harassed at work. Ask any woman with a public profile on social media how many vile comments about their appearance, rape threats and death threats she has had. Ask the women in your network whether they have been sexually assaulted, the numbers will surprise (shock) you.
Now I’m writing about this because I think our industry has work to do. Often the startup ecosystem sees itself as a progressive utopia and sadly some within the sector wrongly believe that as an industry, we behave better than many other industries. And that thinking would be wrong. The recent Diversity in STEM report highlighted that womens representation in the workplace falls off a cliff after University, and with STEM graduates being the engine of the startup industry, the report proffered that one potential reason is that workplaces are hostile to women in STEM.
And I can see why.
Even someone in a relative position of power, in the last two months in addition to the vile social media commentary this past weekend, I was sexually assaulted at work. A different man who attended an event I hosted continuously groped me, tried to kiss me, was told no several times, and was physically pushed away. He was also told ‘no’ and ‘stop’ by another person, a witness. Then, when we (myself and the witness) left to remove ourselves from the situation, he followed us home before my colleague stepped in and made sure he stopped following us.
I’m almost 50 years old. I’m a usually confident person who is fairly prepared to defend myself. But in that experience I froze, uncertain what to do. I didn’t want to be rude. I didn’t want to be impolite. I didn’t want to cause a scene. But here we are. Just like others such as former MP Julia Banks have shared, it’s possible for someone to be experienced, senior, in a crowded room and it STILL have it happen to them. I’m very grateful someone else was present to be my advocate. I, on the other hand, beat myself up ever since for not being more strident and forthright in my own defence. This is a cycle I know well, and every woman or man who has ever been the target of an assault like this or worse, knows well. I was also grateful someone else was present to be a witness and corroborate my experience, when I know so many people are not believed.
Can we all agree this is just a bit shit? Can we all agree that this stuff makes it so much harder for me to do my job, because I’m having to deal with danger, biases and collateral damage that the men in my industry just do not. And do I get any credit for effectively being Ginger Rogers to their Fred Astaire — having to do everything they do, but backwards and in heels?
[Narrator: no, dear reader, she does not].
And so here we are — having to perform in our jobs all while fighting for some basic respect and understanding at the same time, including by spending time on the weekend penning editorials about it.
We have come a long way, I appreciate that, but it’s still not where it needs to be. I really want to be part of the solution, but no-one can do it on our own.
As an industry, we need to actively foster a culture that holds people accountable for behaviour that is part of this very dangerous spectrum, or else we are going to continue to see attrition of very talented women who simply don’t feel safe.
Our venture capital industry has developed a code of conduct chaperoned by the good people at the Australian Investment Council, but this relates mostly to GP’s, in order to protect LPs interests.
There needs to be a code of conduct that goes broader for the ecosystem, there needs to be mechanisms for reporting that do not punish the reporter, and there needs to be consequences for those who behave poorly.
I would love to crowdsource some suggestions — so this is an invitation to anyone in our little industry in Australia to feel free to email me or chat to me about their suggestions — you can reach me on elaine@humanvc.co or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/elainestead/
Updated: I have removed the screenshots of the comments posted over the weekend, because of threats by the commentator to those he commented to. He called his comments ‘jokes’ . He also invoked the fact that by deleting them, he had the cover of LinkedIns privacy policy which states that they are not allowed to be republished if the commentator deletes them. This is the culture that allows these people to continue to operate and it makes me incredibly sad.
