Why is an older Woman a bigger problem than an older Man, in tech?
Friday, October 2, 2009 by willist
I was thinking about a Women’s role in Technology after reading this article about the performance of new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz. Whilst the content of the story is fairly mundane I’m interested in the content of the comments section. She seems to be constantly criticized for her age. But there are lots of of technology companies that have older CEOs. Amazon(Jeff Bezos), eBay(John Donahoe), Apple(Steve Jobs), Microsoft(Steve Ballmer), and Barry Diller from IAC Interactive, to name just a few.
Still insiders of the Tech community seem so opposed to an older Woman taking on the management of Yahoo. I think it’s pretty easy to make the case of elevated sexism in the Tech community, versus a genuine concern about her age. Perhaps because the industry tends to be dominated by Men, it might be the ideal breeding ground for these sorts of sentiments. That said, Yahoo is still significantly more profitable than Microsoft's 'MSN' which makes a huge loss every year, despite its head start over Yahoo (having itself set as default on the lions share of new PCs). Yet Microsoft's Ballmer faces significantly less criticism than Bartz. Whilst it looks like a lot of Programmers seem to mourn the age in which the founder of companies were also CEO that looks like it is compounded when the CEO is a Woman.
Still insiders of the Tech community seem so opposed to an older Woman taking on the management of Yahoo. I think it’s pretty easy to make the case of elevated sexism in the Tech community, versus a genuine concern about her age. Perhaps because the industry tends to be dominated by Men, it might be the ideal breeding ground for these sorts of sentiments. That said, Yahoo is still significantly more profitable than Microsoft's 'MSN' which makes a huge loss every year, despite its head start over Yahoo (having itself set as default on the lions share of new PCs). Yet Microsoft's Ballmer faces significantly less criticism than Bartz. Whilst it looks like a lot of Programmers seem to mourn the age in which the founder of companies were also CEO that looks like it is compounded when the CEO is a Woman.