There is a widespread belief that we live in a meritocratic society. We believe that professional success can be achieved by anyone willing to work hard enough. Your startup never took off? You didn’t work hard enough! Didn’t get the promotion you wanted? You didn’t spend enough hours at the office. Yes, but no. The tech industry is biased, and working 80 hours a week won’t necessarily lead you to your dream.
Meritocracy is a threat to equality because it gives the illusion that there is only one thing that can have influence: work.
The organizations that believe themselves to be the most meritocratic are often the least vigilant, because they don’t feel concerned by the need to self-examine and mitigate their biases.
The desire to present the technology sector as a meritocracy is understandable. Compared to other fields, such as banking for example, where certain degrees or family ties are required to break through, technology seems relatively accessible. The fact is, a person can be self-taught, have a good idea, drop out of school and create a startup that raises tens of millions of dollars. It’s happened before.
Unlike politics, technology is transparent and data-driven. Factors such as these are irrefutable. Good ideas have a chance of seeing the light of day, and if they don’t, it’s because they weren’t good enough. It’s a 1 or it’s a 0.
What’s more, the concept aligns very well with fundamental American values: an individual is capable of professional success as long as he or she works hard enough. The famous self made man (woman).
Finally, programming is a field in which you can get a job without having studied. This was the case in the early 2000s and is still the case in 2019. Because there are so many ways to learn – programming bootcamps, websites such as CodeAcademy or learning sessions like Les Pitonneux – you can become an excellent programmer without having spent four years at university.
Many of the initiatives underway to bring women and minorities into IT careers are based on the idea that IT is, at root, a meritocracy. Women make up only 20% of the overall workforce in the industry, but “it’s up to them to take an interest”, is a widespread view in the field. But this article tells a different story. Stanford University sociology graduate student Alison Wynn and professor Shelley Correll led research into on-campus recruitment of STEM (science, technology, computer science and mathematics) graduates by Silicon Valley’s big tech companies. The study found that the general idea that women aren’t supposed to do these jobs is distilled throughout recruitment sessions by several completely unconscious mechanisms. I doubt it makes them want to enter the profession.
In the U.S., women receive only around 4% of venture capital. In a meritocratic context, women are told that they have to make better presentations or be more assertive to get such funding. The assumption is that women aren’t trying hard enough, not that the way venture capitalists provide funding is inherently unfair. In this Techcrunch article , Sarah Thebaud, professor at the University of South Carolina Beaufort, examines gender bias in entrepreneurship. She notes that “people are likely to ignore the competence of women entrepreneurs and the value of their businesses”. She also observes that study participants rate women as less qualified and less competent than male participants.
According to the meritocracy principle, if women want to work in technology, they should just do it. They have indeed tried to take their place, but have ended up being driven out of the profession. As technology historian Marie Hicks recalls in her book Programmed Inequality, in the 1950s, 30-50% of programmers were women. Although programming required advanced mathematical skills and problem-solving ability, it was less lucrative than hardware, which was perceived as more intellectually demanding; and therefore masculine. As revolutionary advances in computer software arrived, respect for computer programming grew. Men began to take a greater interest in the field and the money that went with it. In 1984, women accounted for 37% of the wage bill, and the figures declined from there to today’s figure of 20%.
I encourage you to visit the Is Tech A Meritocracy? site (the answer is no) and read the manifesto written by open source activist and advocate Coraline Ada Ehmke. The post-meritocracy manifesto includes this passage: “What does a post-meritocracy world look like? It’s founded on a set of core values and principles, affirming the belonging of everyone involved in software development.” If technology were indeed a meritocracy, women would be more numerous, as they have been in the past. The current dynamics of our field are unfortunately unfavorable to them. Let’s ask ourselves what values we want to build our industry on. I love technology, and I hope that anyone who wants to make a career in it can.
