Women’s tech careers were systematically credited to male mentors while men’s were not

Evidence

Thomas’s questionable logic becomes even more problematic when this portrayal of Culver is shown to be part of a pattern. In addition to Tara Hunt and Chris Messina, one informant told me that the career of Ariel Waldman, a social media consultant and blogger, had been launched when technologist Tantek Çelik “discovered” her. Blogger Penelope Trunk wrote a post calling business strategist Glenda Bautista a “gold-digger” for her relationship with WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, although Mullenweg achieved his success only after he and Bautista began dating (Trunk backpedaled once Bautista’s considerable professional accomplishments were pointed out). In all these instances, women’s accomplishments were attributed to their involvement with men; I did not witness a single instance of this with men who were mentored by other men. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 704

Categorization

• SEED: Angles: the ‘discovered woman’ trope in tech, or how mentorship narratives get gendered differently in Silicon Valley.
• XREF: Connects to the broader influencer-culture theme of how credibility and ‘track records’ are socially constructed rather than objective. — connects to: Work-life balance discourse in tech masks a gendered pressure to choose work — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 184; Women face extra barriers to mentorship, and mixed-gender professional relationships get sexualized — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 698; Women’s tech accomplishments get credited to their male associates regardless of romantic reality — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 701 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Women’s tech accomplishments were routinely attributed to sexual relationships with men #corroborates (0.88) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 703
• Tech women’s success is dismissed as appearance-driven rather than earned #corroborates (0.85) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 707
• Men assign women’s status to serve their own projects, not women’s interest #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 288
• Gender expectations spill into work roles and cost women authority #expands (0.72)