The CEO looked at her fellow panelists. When no one else spoke, she began. “And if you want us to go there, which I absolutely think we should precisely because of the gender imbalance here before us . . . Imagine being told the substance of your pitch is irrelevant because you’re hot. Being asked to show pictures from your beach vacation—and not of the sunsets. Being sent a link to a sexy costumes site at Halloween. Being told that your very hiring, especially as a woman of color, was due to a lowering of the bar. And then, of course, there’s the ‘handsy’ factor—in elevators after a night at a retreat, under the table during dinner, back rubs at a meeting.”

The engineer snorted. “Just once I’d like to see a male colleague try to deftly brush off a coworker’s wandering hands and then be told he’s not being a team player.”

The CEO gave a commiserating nod. “Skills in diplomacy are a prerequisite for women in tech. Startups in particular are a tough place, with investors dangling money in exchange for drinks and dinners, holding hot tub parties-as if most women want to pitch their company in a string bikini-and, well  . . . the point is once we get in the door, there are impediments to staying and succeeding. Women leave tech at twice the rate of men. We need to be open about why. It’s the only way it’s going to change.”

“And is it?” Nishi asked.

“Diversity training and commitments for hiring are happening. But I believe real change will come from us. Programming was seen as unglamorous and rote when Silicon Valley was emerging in the forties and fifties, and so it was relegated to women. Once its profitability was revealed, the guys came and suddenly coding became a male realm. If as a woman you look around at your team and no one looks like you, you may feel like you don’t belong in that job. And that’s a problem not just for the women who want to be in this space, but for the women who use the products we create. Apple’s first health app could track sodium intake but not menstruation. Phones with ever-growing screen sizes may be welcomed by men, but their usability for women who have smaller hands decreases with each centimeter gained. We can no longer fit our phones in our pockets or type or take photos with one hand unless we choose an older model that, interestingly, comes without all the bells and whistles. One of the newest, most advanced artificial hearts fits more than eighty percent of men but only twenty percent of women. Would this happen if more women were on these development teams? We need to find out. We need more women and women of color to start their own companies, like you’ve done, Nishi.”