Pathways toward Change: Ideologies and Gender Equality in a Silicon Valley Technology Company

Abstract

Companies have devoted significant resources to diversity programs, yet such programs are often largely ineffective. Cultivating an organizational commitment to diversity is critical, but scholars lack a clear understanding of how top executives conceptualize change. In this article, I analyze data from a year-long case study of a Silicon Valley technology company implementing a gender equality initiative. The data include 50 in-depth interviews and observation of 80 executive meetings. I pay special attention to longitudinal interviews with 19 high-level executives and explore how their ideologies about inequality affected their change efforts. I find that executives tend to favor individualistic and societal explanations of gender differences and inequality, and these explanations correspond with change efforts focused mainly on altering individuals or affecting external communities. Executives rarely engaged in attempts to change the organization structurally. Thus, the implementation of gender equality remains limited by top executives’ ideas and assumptions about the sources of inequality.

Keywords

organizations gender organizational change technology workplace diversity policies

Although companies have devoted significant resources to diversity initiatives, such initiatives are often ineffective and can even backfire, for example, by normalizing bias or sparking resistance (Duguid and Thomas-Hunt 2015; Kalev, Dobbin, and Kelly 2006). Particularly in the technology industry, gender inequality remains a pernicious problem. Women currently constitute about half of the U.S. workforce yet hold only 26 percent of computing jobs, and many of the top companies in Silicon Valley report less than 20 percent women in technical positions (Peck 2015). In the summer of 2014—around the time I began this research project—high-profile Silicon Valley companies such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter began publicly releasing their gender representation numbers and committing to positive change (Peck 2015).

Although gender scholars have unpacked various ideologies about the sources of gender inequality (Cech and Blair-Loy 2010; Risman 2004), we have not yet tied those ideologies to the organizational change efforts they support. As research has shown, high-level executives can make or break diversity change initiatives, and their attitudes can set the tone for the larger organization (Dobbin, Schrage, and Kalev 2015). Yet we lack a robust understanding of how high-level executives understand inequality and how these understandings shape their change efforts, as gaining access to these elite populations is extremely difficult.

I gained rare access to a Silicon Valley technology company’s top leadership as they began to implement a multifaceted gender equality initiative. Combining a total of 50 interviews and observations of 80 meetings, I examine high-level executives’ views about inequality and how those views correspond with actual change implemented in their departments. Drawing on these data, I chart the ideologies these executives espouse along five key dimensions: the sources of gender inequality, beliefs about gender differences, the primary target of change, the change efforts executives actually implement, and ownership of change activities.¹ I find that while executives often draw on multiple ideologies at once, each ideology tends to correspond with particular change approaches, and executives tend to limit their efforts to individualistic and/or societal types of change rather than organizational change. Such approaches have implications for the way equality initiatives are implemented and likely contribute to their lack of effectiveness. Importantly, I find the structural ideologies supported by decades’ worth of gender scholarship are rarely the ideologies that executives tend to endorse.

Although research on diversity programs demonstrates they are often ineffective (Dobbin, Schrage, and Kalev 2015; Duguid and Thomas-Hunt 2015; Kalev, Dobbin, and Kelly 2006), this research has not yet uncovered the ideological mechanisms underpinning various current diversity approaches. In addition, research on ideologies of inequality shows that executives tend to espouse individualistic explanations for inequality (Cech and Blair-Loy 2010; Scarborough, Lambouths, and Holbrook 2019); such research often suggests this might lead to less support of structural diversity changes, but such research cannot link ideologies to the actual actions of executives in organizations. This article bridges these literatures to reveal a novel theoretical insight: Organizational initiatives designed to achieve equality are limited in their reach and effectiveness because they remain anchored to individualistic gender ideologies, and in doing so, such programs reinforce the status quo rather than challenge it. By limiting their change efforts to such activities as mentorship programs and unconscious bias trainings, organizations reinforce assumptions about gender that fuel inequality (e.g., the ingrained gender binary) and maintain the structural causes of inequality.

Ideologies of Inequality and Change Efforts

Sociologists have long analyzed the structural causes of gender inequality in organizations, for example showing how forms of bias and discrimination can be built into organizational policies such as hiring and promotion (e.g., Acker 1990; Kanter 1977; Risman 2004; Williams, Muller, and Kilanski 2012). In fact, some scholars argue that gender inequalities derive primarily from the differential treatment of men and women by institutional and structural sources, rather than from any ingrained gender differences (Epstein 1988; Wharton 1991). Thus scholars, particularly sociologists, often view gender as a structural arrangement rather than an individual trait or set of traits (Risman 2004). Individuals exist within (and are shaped by) both structures (e.g., institutions, organizations) and cultures (e.g., societal norms and expectations), all of which combine in dynamic ways to shape behavior and outcomes (Ridgeway 2008; Risman 2004).

However, many people, including high-level corporate executives, continue to harbor an individualistic view of gender inequality. For example, Cech and Blair-Loy (2010) find that women who occupy the top positions in their companies or have ties to graduate business schools are most likely to offer “meritocratic” explanations for inequality, such as implicating women’s preferences and choices. In contrast, women with young children and those who serve as primary breadwinners for their families are more likely to recognize structural barriers to equality (Cech and Blair-Loy 2010). The authors hypothesize that women who offer meritocratic explanations for inequality will be less inclined to support efforts to address structural causes of inequality, but they lack data on the change efforts these women actually undertake. New research similarly finds that survey respondents are more supportive of diversity policies when they believe that inequality is caused by discrimination and not individual traits and preferences (Scarborough, Lambouths, and Holbrook 2019). Therefore, existing research about people’s inequality beliefs hints at the actions they might take to mitigate that inequality (or to maintain it), but such research cannot investigate this question. I extend this literature by examining both beliefs and actions to shed light on how common ideologies about inequality shape the direction of diversity initiatives, thereby limiting their potential reach.

Existing research on diversity programs has identified certain factors that can impact their effectiveness. Diversity efforts are often ineffective because leaders do not support the need for change and the specific mitigation efforts taken by their organizations (Dobbin, Schrage, and Kalev 2015). Researchers have also identified that a collective organizational commitment to diversity plays a crucial role in making diversity initiatives successful (Dobbin, Schrage, and Kalev 2015; Duguid and Thomas-Hunt 2015). However, such research lacks insight into executives’ internal beliefs and the ideological mechanisms fueling diversity initiative outcomes. In this article, I develop a more robust understanding of how leaders understand inequality and support or resist different types of change, and I identify ideological factors that can inhibit or foster an organizational orientation toward diversity change efforts.

In sum, I extend existing research by examining the link between ideology and action; in doing so, I find that current diversity approaches (such as unconscious bias trainings and mentorship programs) derive from and reinforce harmful gender ideologies (e.g., individualistic ideologies emphasizing ingrained gender differences) that fail to challenge or change the organizational drivers of inequality, and thus maintain the status quo.

Methods

The data for this analysis come from a year-long, in-depth case study of a Silicon Valley technology company. The company was founded in the late twentieth century and has more than 10,000 employees. With this empirically grounded case-study approach (e.g., Kanter 1977), I trade broad generalizability to gain rich depth and a window into organizational features that typically remain unobservable to outsiders.

As part of the women’s initiative, high-level executives from every department were chosen by their bosses and the initiative co-leads to be part of an “Executive Council” (pseudonym).² Over one year, the Executive Council members (or “ECs”) were tasked with drafting and completing gender-related goals for their department, with the support of human resources (HR) and the women’s initiative co-leads.

I first gained access to the company by meeting one of the women’s initiative co-leads at a gender-related joint industry and academic event. The co-leads facilitated my access to the company in multiple ways, such as signing the collaborative research agreement, introducing me to the ECs and other employees, helping me schedule interviews, and inviting me to relevant company meetings. I observed 80 meetings related to the women’s initiative and conducted 50 interviews with 37 people. In this article, I focus primarily on the interviews conducted with the Executive Council (32 interviews with 19 people)—two waves of longitudinal interviews five months apart. Because the Executive Council experienced some turnover during the data collection period, I interviewed 13 ECs twice and six ECs once. Importantly, I interviewed the entire population of ECs, most of them more than once and everyone on the council during each interview period. Access to such high-level executives in a Silicon Valley tech company is extremely rare and required significant effort, as well as close partnership with internal change agents, because the executives were extremely busy.

The first set of interviews lasted 90 minutes on average, and the second set 60 minutes. I also interviewed 11 HR executives, four change agents, and three other informants for additional context. My observations include “subcommittee meetings” that some ECs conducted within their departments, unconscious bias trainings, development meetings based on Lean In Circles, and meetings the women’s initiative co-leads held with the ECs to support them. The observations allowed me to compare what executives said in interviews to what they actually did in their departments.

The EC interviews—the focus of this analysis—were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. I coded each interview transcript using Dedoose software for qualitative and mixed methods research. I analyzed the data using a modified grounded theory approach and coded the interviews in two distinct stages (Glaser 1978; Glaser and Strauss 1967). In the open coding stage, I created high-level categories to understand the diverse ways participants conceptualize gender inequality and organizational change. In the focused coding stage, I examined theoretically relevant patterns in more depth. Quotations presented below are representative of key themes in the data and encapsulate core theoretical understandings that emerged from the interviews. To protect their privacy, I use pseudonyms for participants, and I conceal the company name and other identifying details.

The Executive Council is split about 50 percent by gender—an intentional feature of the council’s construction, according to one women’s initiative co-lead—thus containing an overrepresentation of women relative to the broader company population (and relative to the percentage of women at that job level). Most of the interviewees are White or Asian, and all are highly educated, as is common in the technology industry more widely (Peck 2015). Companies in other industries and regions may differ in key ways.

The company in my sample bears many similarities to other Silicon Valley technology companies but also has some important unique qualities. First, my interviews and observations suggest that the company in my sample has a noticeably less offensive masculinized culture, for which Silicon Valley tech companies are routinely criticized (Alfrey and Twine 2016). Perhaps related to this comparatively less exclusionary culture, the women’s initiative was championed by C-level leaders. Thus, this company presented an ideal context or best-case scenario in which to study the women’s initiative because its leadership support, Executive Council, dedication of resources, and comparatively more inclusive culture poised it well to achieve success. However, even in this relatively supportive context, executives demonstrated important limitations in their conceptualization and implementation of gender equality. (See the online Supplementary Appendix for additional methodological details.)

How Ideologies Shape Pathways toward Change

Three Predominant Ideologies about Gender Inequality and Change

When asked where inequality comes from and what causes it, the ECs offered explanations that can be categorized into three ideal types, which aligned with their views about the target of change and the change efforts on which executives chose to focus their time, attention, and energy.

Figure 1 displays the categorization of executives’ pathways toward change. Although these ideal types are theoretically distinct, most executives blurred the boundaries, choosing explanations from different categories at different moments. This categorization charts each perspective in its purest ideological form rather than providing a static mapping of executives’ thinking.

Figure 1:

Individualistic, Societal, and Organizational Change Ideologies

Executives overwhelmingly tended toward a combination of the individualistic and societal pathways, as opposed to the organizational pathway commonly recognized by sociologists of gender (e.g., Acker 1990; Risman 2004; Williams, Muller, and Kilanski 2012). Among the Executive Council, 16 of 19 (84 percent) espoused primarily individualistic and/or societal perspectives, and the few executives who held an organizational mindset combined it with the other two ideologies.³

Individualistic Pathway

Individualistic sources of inequality

The box in the first column and first row of Figure 1 captures how the individualistic ideology conceptualizes the sources of inequality. Individualistic explanations for the existence of inequality typically emphasize how individual men and/or women contribute to unequal gender outcomes. For example, Daniel, EC for a technical department, said,

I do think—I do agree that the unconscious bias definitely exists. . . . That’s just human nature in some ways. If you have a group that are dominated by men, then naturally by nature, they look for more men even though they don’t know it. Yeah, so I think the first step is bringing it to the awareness. Second step is to correct it.

Daniel attributes inequality to men’s unconscious biases tending to hire men. Although structural arrangements certainly contribute (e.g., men’s numerical advantage), Daniel identifies the problem primarily as one of “awareness” and “unconscious bias,” rooted in “natural” preferences. Daniel draws from the societal pathway as well, relying on assumptions about broader societal patterns (e.g., “dominated by men”), which he could have linked to gendered cultural norms and the larger gender status hierarchy. However, he instead emphasizes ingrained tendencies and preferences within individuals making biased decisions (“human nature,” “naturally by nature”). By limiting societal understandings of gender to those compatible with individualistic perspectives, Daniel and other executives fail to see or endorse alternative explanations of gender inequality that might be more viable for organizations to affect, as described in later sections.

Men were not the only ones to implicate men’s biases as the primary source of inequality. Women also told me anecdotes about times male superiors unfairly passed them or other women over for promotions or project assignments. For example, Linda, EC of a technical department, told me about a conversation with a male colleague who was hiring for a new role. Linda asked him whether he considered an extremely qualified woman candidate for the role; unfortunately, he did not:

I said, “I think you might have an unconscious bias here.” [She laughs] He started laughing and he went, “What?” I said, “Think about what I’m saying. You’re not even considering her,” and he went, “Huh, okay. You’re right. Maybe I should talk to her.” If I hadn’t said anything—and who knows how many times that happens when I’m not around.

Linda ended her anecdote by telling me she felt optimistic about the unconscious bias trainings the company was conducting. Although the barriers women face could be considered the result of a poorly designed promotion process, Linda focuses instead on the biases held by individual men in decision-making roles. According to this narrative, men make biased decisions when hiring, staffing, or promoting women, which is considered the cause of resulting inequality.

Executives also often described how women contribute to their own disadvantage and presumed that women lack the assertiveness or interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields that would propel them toward success. For example, Charlotte, the EC from a business operations department, said, “Some women make their own choices on whether or not they want to move up and risk a work–life balance challenge that they may potentially get. Some women may not be as good in terms of leveraging their network as men are.” Charlotte locates the source of inequality in women’s unwillingness to encounter work–life conflict or women’s inability to use their network connections. Similarly, Leslie, a C-suite executive, spoke on panels across the company about times she had “hindered her own success.” According to Charlotte, Leslie wanted to “create a forum where women leaders like her could share those personal experiences, so that women can be conscious of what they personally are doing that could sabotage their own success.” In fact, during my observation I attended such a meeting where Leslie shared personal examples of times she felt she had held herself back, such as declining to be acknowledged on stage during an award ceremony. Similarly, Diana, EC of a business operations department, told me,

I think that as far as getting women into leadership roles, . . . [She laughs] women don’t take the risk, but it’s so personal to me. I look at myself and say how many times did I—how many times they’ve asked me to take on a new role here, and today I still, ‘I need to keep doing my job for another year. It’s not perfect.’”

When asked about the source of inequality, Diana directs the question inward and considers instances where she failed to take on more responsibility. Along these lines, during my observation I noted an advertising flier for a women’s initiative event that read, “It starts with you. Have you ever thought about why you don’t put yourself forward or how you may be holding yourself back? Join us to explore the unwritten rules that exist in organizations and those we imagine.” The implication that women “imagine” organizational rules clearly puts the onus on women for creating their own obstacles, and this event seeks to raise women’s awareness of their own biases. Rather than addressing organizational barriers to equality, this event proposes only to address women, missing an opportunity to change organizational rules. In this way, executives—particularly high-level women—often blame themselves for gender inequalities.

Though at first glance, considering women responsible for creating inequality may seem very different from considering men responsible, both explanations view the source of inequality as bounded within individuals. Inequality is locked within men and women’s heads, causing them to make biased choices in an otherwise equal and gender-neutral institutional context. Although larger cultural beliefs are certainly presumed to influence men and women, the primary cause of inequality is identified as individualistic.

Individualistic view of gender as internalized

Executives who proffer an individualistic explanation for inequality also tend to maintain an essentialist or ingrained view of gender differences (Burr 1995; Epstein 1988), as indicated in the second row, first column of Figure 1. Men and women are seen as fundamentally different from one another in temperament, personality, preferences, talents, and behavior. For example, Linda explained:

It sort of sounds like I’m generalizing, but I think men are still good at doing—not necessarily clubs, but teamwork. . . . I think that even though women are doing more sports teams and everything else, I still think that they are just kind of wired that way, and I think women are not as wired that way.

Linda’s use of the phrase “wired that way” demonstrates her fundamentally essentialist viewpoint. Gender differences are contained inside men and women’s minds, affecting their behavior in patterned ways. She claims men have a natural tendency toward “teamwork,” whereas women are not prone to the same level. Even though men’s numerical predominance theoretically could be understood to have structural causes, Linda attributes men’s relative success to the way individual men are “wired” in comparison to women.

Astrid, the EC from a sales department outside the United States, has a similarly internalized view of gender, though the specific content of her gender beliefs differs from Linda’s. She said:

I have my uniqueness as a person, but I also think there’s a lot of gender-specifics to it. I think I’m less direct in my communication style [than my husband]. I think I’m more collaborative in the way I discuss things. . . . [I] get input as to whether it’s the best decision.

Rather than viewing men as better at “teamwork” like Linda, Astrid believes women are more “collaborative” and better at reaching joint decisions. Linda’s and Astrid’s perspectives could be considered contradictory in content, but both demonstrate a framing focused on individual personality differences between men and women. Astrid uses her husband as a point of comparison and applies their individual personality differences to the broader workforce. Astrid’s and Linda’s perspectives likely stem from larger societal norms and stereotypes; however, the executives here primarily emphasize the individual differences rather than the cultural norms.

Although men occasionally espoused this internalized viewpoint as well, they were typically much more timid about making such statements, possibly to avoid offending me (as a woman interviewer) or anyone else. For example, Daniel stated, “There are common myths which are probably incorrect about—even biologically, how women and men may be different or so on and so forth, which I have no idea whether it’s true or not.” He uses qualifying language to downplay the claim of biological differences between men and women, which could indicate general hesitance to speak about gender inequality or could be a response to conversing with a woman interviewer; however, even when being interviewed, he is not overtly critical of this gender essentialist claim. Men also often framed such claims of ingrained gender differences as a positive reason to support diversity: Diverse teams are important because men and women bring different strengths that benefit the business in combination. For example, Mike, an EC in sales, explained that his former company had a more equitable division of men and women on his teams. He said his “best teams” included women managers, who “brought a different vision to solving problems” and “good diversity.” When he came to his current company, “The conversations were different. They were just different. I’ll leave it at that.” When the interviewer probed further, asking how the conversations differed, he replied:

I think it’s—there’s a level of ego there. I think they’re more aggressive. There’s not as much thought. There’s more just action. . . . It was different. There wasn’t thought sometimes brought to a situation. There was overlapping discussions. There was a lot of people cutting each other off. It was just different. . . . [At my former company], it just wasn’t a bunch of men, sitting at a table, providing their opinions. It was just a different collaboration.

According to Mike, fundamental differences between men and women make diversity even more desirable, as a diversity of approaches leads to better outcomes. His repetition of the phrase “it was just different” highlights his perspective that men and women are essentially different from one another. Emphasizing these differences enables a departure from the otherwise masculinized status quo (e.g., arguments with “people cutting each other off”). Mike also draws from broader cultural narratives to fuel his understanding of men and women’s individual personality differences, demonstrating his blend of individualistic and societal framings.

Individualistic target of change

It may seem surprising that executives with an individualistic perspective on gender would believe that gender inequalities can be altered at all; however, I find these executives tend to focus on self-improvement–type approaches. Either women must become more like men and stop “holding themselves back,” or men must stop being biased against women. Either way, the solution lies in individuals changing their thinking and behavior (as noted in the first column, third row of Figure 1).

Framing inequality primarily as a result of women’s behaviors and choices tends to align with approaches that focus on improving women’s skills and coaching them to behave more like men. When asked about their change goals, executives of this mindset favored implementing training, mentoring, and developmental programs all designed to reshape women rather than to change any systematic bias in the way women are hired, promoted, or treated. I found this particularly interesting because many of the executive women proffering this ideology told concrete stories of times they had experienced inequality firsthand—times they had been unfairly passed over for projects or promotions—yet they continued to focus on what they described as their own faults rather than attempting to change the larger organization. For example, when asked what would help improve women’s advancement, Mary, the EC of a technical department, said, “Well, not becoming a man, but thinking more like one. . . . That’s the biggest nut to crack in women moving up in the organization along with the men” (emphasis added). Similarly, when discussing women not feeling heard in meetings consisting of mostly men, Charlotte said, “If your point is important enough for you to speak up the first time, then you should somehow bring the topic back around so that your point is heard again.” Rather than holding others accountable for not listening to women, Charlotte locates responsibility internally to women and suggests that if their point is really “important enough,” they should be willing to repeat it. This perspective may paradoxically help women feel empowered by focusing on improving themselves instead of feeling victimized by institutional forms of bias.

When men are seen as responsible for change, a similar change tactic is employed: Educate men, encouraging them to be more aware of their biases and self-correct their behavior. For example, when discussing the promotion process, Daniel said,

We should reemphasize the ideals of meritocracy. . . . Making sure that for all the selection committees and so on, your job is not—you are not given a quota. You are not given a directive, but you are just given the reminder to be aware of the bias that you may have and try to self-correct for those biases.

Rather than setting “quotas” or changing anything in organizational policy, Daniel here favors raising awareness and encouraging men to “self-correct” their biases. He explicitly eschews an organizational framing and instead prefers to focus on individualistic solutions. He continued, “To me, I think that’s the key is not to go for the quota or the actual outcome, but rather be aware.” Similarly, Robert, EC for a sales department outside the United States, explained:

A lot of our people are [hired] from connections, word of mouth, or internal references, . . . contacts, and so forth, networks. Therefore you can understand, if you get the unconscious bias training early on, when you’re using a network to build a business, those people can then go, ‘Oh okay, well gee whiz, I just thought of my buddy, rather than the best person in the role, which might be this—being a woman. I want to make sure that she’s given the opportunity as well.’ That’s why it’s important to get that sort of training done: build the awareness.

Although Robert’s quote potentially could be seen as offering a structural understanding of inequality (e.g., reliance on male-dominated networks), he identifies the target of change as individuals reducing their level of bias when suggesting potential candidates for hire. Instead of trying to change the structural reliance on referrals or considering incentive structures around diverse hiring, Robert favors training individuals to be less biased when tapping their networks for referrals.

Individualistic change efforts

When I paired interview data with observations of actual change efforts that took place within the larger umbrella of the multifaceted gender equality initiative, I found that executives with an individualistic ideology tended to focus their time, energy, and attention on efforts to change individuals rather than structures (as referenced in the first column, fourth row of Figure 1). Of the executives I categorized as primarily individualistic in their approach to inequality, 100 percent took primarily individualistic change routes, such as unconscious bias trainings (for both male and female managers) and programs targeted to women (e.g., training, mentorship, and development). At the larger corporate level, the co-leads of the women’s initiative organized women’s networking groups based on Lean In Circles, which have been criticized for their individualistic approach (Fitzsimons, Kay, and Kim 2018), as well as unconscious bias trainings, which researchers have found can exacerbate inequality when not sufficiently coupled with a shared commitment to change (Duguid and Thomas-Hunt 2015). The executives frequently described these efforts with enthusiastic support and optimism. Specific departments also formed programs designed to mentor and develop women’s skills. For example, Daniel’s technical department formed a mentorship program for women and a peer-mentoring panel. The first topic they chose for the panel was “presentation skills: how to get your points across in meetings”—a topic aimed to help develop women’s skills. Diana’s business operations department formed an executive shadowing program: a short-term program where three high-potential women were paired with executives to participate in meetings and learn from watching them work. Such efforts attempt to change the beliefs and actions of individuals but risk ignoring (and thereby perpetuating) structural forms of inequality.

Societal Pathway

Societal sources of inequality

Turning to the middle column of Figure 1, a societal perspective on inequality emphasizes elements of the broader culture responsible for inequality. Whereas the societal perspective can closely resemble the individualistic perspective in its views about inequality and gender differences, and executives often overlap the two ideologies in practice, the societal pathway theoretically corresponds with different change efforts, as detailed in later sections. When executives voice a societal perspective, they tend to emphasize an earlier time point of inequality generation than the individualistic perspective (e.g., childhood rather than adulthood). If inequalities and differences are determined by cultural norms early in childhood, inequalities in the workplace are seen as fixed and unchangeable; in contrast, if gender inequalities stem primarily from the skills, traits, and behaviors of adults, then adults may be expected to alter themselves.

Executives offering a societal explanation for inequality focus on the way in which boys and girls are treated differently by the larger culture. Through socialization, boys and girls develop differently, which is said to account for resulting gender inequalities (Zosuls et al. 2011). According to this logic, because girls are socialized to dislike math and science, they are less likely to pursue careers in STEM fields as adults. This explanation for inequality may be particularly entrenched in the tech industry, where masculine stereotypes align with success in the field (Alfrey and Twine 2016). When asked about the sources of gender inequality, Diana explained,

Well, I think in tech in general obviously it’s just it starts when the kids are young and stereotypes and everything else, and the women coming out of schools with technology degrees is still lacking then obviously, and the pool is smaller.

In this conception, gendered childhood socialization causes gender inequalities in adulthood, particularly in STEM fields.

Societal view of gender as culture

According to executives’ societal perspective, gender differences arise because boys and girls are held to (and influenced by) cultural standards of masculinity and femininity (as noted in the second row, middle column of Figure 1). Children internalize the culture so that, by the time they become adult employees, they are fundamentally different from one another; thus, it is assumed there is little the company can do to mitigate inequality. In this way, executives typically combined societal explanations with individualistic ones, effectively supporting ingrained views of gender: Adult men and women are assumed to be fundamentally different in personality and preferences. For example, when asked where gender inequality comes from, Mary, EC of a technical department, replied:

It’s just, I mean, it’s just everything. Everything from the time you’re—everything you’re exposed to. Everything you see on TV. Everything you learn in school. All the way that teachers teach. The way that parents parent. I mean, how boys should be this way, and girls should be this way. Then all this marketing, and things around girls. They just reinforce all that stuff. Think of all the Disney machine, and the princesses. I mean, I don’t think it’s anybody’s fault in a sense. . . . Then it just gets ingrained. It’s just layers, and layers, and layers of just years, and years of conditioning, I think. I don’t know if I’m wrong.

According to Mary, socializing agents such as the media, teachers, and parents reinforce rigid gender roles that become “ingrained” by adulthood through “years of conditioning.” Children are socialized into gender roles, and inequalities result from this differential socialization.

Jennifer, EC of a service department, ties this socialization to women’s lack of confidence in the workplace:

I think a lot of—I think it’s that unconscious bias that we talk about too where they don’t have the confidence, where there’s a lack of confidence from their support, or they don’t feel like they can speak. It’s everything that we’ve talked about as part of that initiative, but I would say it’s the earlier-on perception of the amount of—the perception of the role they should be in as women, but an earlier age.

Jennifer makes it clear that gender norms at an early age influence women’s confidence levels later on. Jennifer believes this early socialization leads to individual differences between men and women in their level of confidence—thus blending societal and individualistic framings. Mike, EC in sales, similarly believes early socialization contributes to men’s desire to “provide” financially for their families, explaining, “I was brought up that way.”

By emphasizing their recognition of the way cultural and societal norms shape gender inequality, executives with this mindset may be using socialization logic to try to differentiate their perspectives from essentialized or biological ones. In this way, they distinguish themselves as falling on the “nurture” side of the “nature vs. nurture” debate. However, scholars offer alternative explanations that transcend the nature/nurture debate. In theory, the societal pathway could also include arguments common among social psychologists: Gender inequality is produced real-time in interactional contexts, as widely shared beliefs and stereotypes shape interactional expectations and local status hierarchies (e.g., Ridgeway 2008). However, such an argument was not voiced by the executives in my sample; instead, executives combined societal and individualistic explanations, favoring socialization arguments positing that culturally derived personality differences—rather than ongoing dynamic cultural expectations taking shape in interactional contexts, such as those routinely encountered in organizational settings (e.g., company meetings, team projects)—cause resulting inequalities. Thus, while theoretically the societal ideological pathway could encompass broader cultural or structural explanations for inequality, by remaining wedded to the individualistic pathway executives limited their conceptualization of the societal pathway to an internalized, fixed understanding of gender difference and resulting inequality.

Societal target of change

Following the societal pathway’s logic, because the presumed source of inequality rests outside company walls, the company itself cannot be the target of change. Instead, executives with this primary framing tend to suggest larger cultural changes are necessary before inequality can be reduced (as noted in the third row, middle column of Figure 1). Executives espousing this ideology often presumed all change must originate outside the organization and intervene early in childhood or young adulthood. The company may invest in external programs to increase young women’s interest in math and science, but this mindset offers no support for change within the company.

According to Mike: “The question I have is: do we really have a problem? Does [our company] have a problem? From the data I’ve seen, I don’t think so. I think the industry and this country potentially has a problem” (emphasis added). Mike attributes inequality to larger cultural problems in the tech industry and the United States, thereby absolving the company of responsibility. Rohan, EC of a business operations department, similarly argues:

Well, so I think in that respect, [our company] is no different than any other tech company where when you look at engineering talent, . . . the proportion of women in the engineering workforce is lower than the proportion of men. . . . It’s about the number of men and women graduating from engineering colleges with engineering degrees, and the availability of that talent. I mean, it just takes time to move the needle, right? . . . Are we moving fast enough? I think the entire industry is moving slower, but I think that’s, again, because there is big boat anchors that we have to overcome.

This societal view of inequality thereby serves to exempt the company from responsibility for change. That said, some executives did attempt efforts to change the broader culture beyond the company’s walls, as described in the following section. Executives vary in the extent to which they believe the organization is responsible for attempting to change societal inequality.

Societal change efforts

By partnering with external nonprofits and charities and hosting community events, some executives attempted to help raise girls’ and young women’s interest in STEM fields (as indicated in the middle column, fourth row of Figure 1). For example, I observed that Daniel’s technical department partnered with a nonprofit organization to create a summer internship program for high school girls interested in technology. The program was intended to mentor young women and foster their interest in persisting in STEM fields.

However, societal explanations for inequality often functioned as an excuse not to change anything internal in the company’s structure, as Mike and Rohan’s earlier quotations revealed. In Mike’s department, for example, change efforts remained limited; toward the end of my observation, they expanded on Diana’s department’s executive shadowing program, in which eight women from his department participated, but otherwise, Mike’s department engaged in few organizational change efforts. Rohan’s department similarly made little progress.

Organizational Pathway

Organizational sources of inequality

Organizational explanations for inequality focus on biases built into hiring procedures, performance management processes, and other organizational processes (as indicated in the last column, first row of Figure 1). Organizational inequalities could theoretically include hiring procedures that systematically advantage men (e.g., reliance on referrals from existing employees or prejudicial interview procedures), subjective performance evaluation criteria that enable decision makers to act on preexisting biases, promotion procedures that advantage men (e.g., reliance on informal networks), or other biases built into the procedures governing the execution of work and the progression of employees’ careers (Acker 1990; Kanter 1977; Ridgeway 2008; Williams, Muller, and Kilanski 2012). For example, Daniel explained:

If you are giving interviews, and I think the very fact that most of the interviewers are men, and the questions and problems you give to the interviewees were those questions and problems that are liked by men, may already have built in unfairness to the women employees because those are the problems men like. [He laughs] We don’t realize that. We thought these are good problems.

Daniel notes that the questions asked in interviews during hiring—and the structural inequality of having more male than female interviewers—may build unfairness into the hiring process. Daniel’s comment still draws from an internalized understanding of gender differences (e.g., the assumption that men and women prefer different types of problems), but his emphasis on the interview questions themselves is organizational. Similarly, Astrid stated, “I would say that we’ve been a rather immature organization. We haven’t necessarily put in place the necessary environment to make women successful.” While not offering any specifics, Astrid clearly considers the organizational environment responsible for causing inequality.

Readers may note that Daniel and Astrid both offered individualistic explanations for inequality, in addition to the organizational explanations offered here. In the rare instances where executives espoused any organizational explanations for inequality, executives combined these explanations with individualistic and/or societal ones, thereby limiting the potential reach of organizational framings.

Organizational perspectives on gender differences

An organizational perspective on gender differences might point to how men and women are treated differently by organizations and institutions (as noted in the last column, second row of Figure 1). Rather than viewing gender as a set of individualistic traits, or as a set of societal norms and expectations, an organizational perspective would theoretically identify gender differences as stemming primarily from structural differences in the way organizations sort, limit, advance, and generally respond to different gender groups (Acker 1990; Risman 2004). Despite being a potent idea in academic literature, none of the ECs offered this explanation of gender differences. Executives were much more likely to rely upon individual and societal views. This gap is an extremely important one, given how academics have highlighted the significant role organizations play in creating the gender inequalities that fuel apparent gender differences (e.g., Kanter 1977; Williams, Muller, and Kilanski 2012). However, this academic understanding of gender clearly has not permeated among executives of a leading tech firm. If executives continue to view gender differences as ingrained in individuals rather than produced by organizations, such executives may be hampered in their ability to address organizational inequalities.

Organizational target of change

As with the organizational explanations of inequality, Astrid and Daniel were among the few executives who identified organizational processes as a proper target of change efforts (as referenced in the last column, third row of Figure 1). Although executives told me anecdotes about times they had witnessed what scholars would recognize as organizational forms of bias, they consistently neglected to identify the organization as the target of change and instead focused on individualistic and societal change efforts. For example, Charlotte told me about inequalities she witnessed in the project assignment process:

I had a project assigned to me that should have been automatically assigned to me, but it was actually given to—whether consciously or not—it was given to a male peer, and I had to actually raise my hand and say, “That’s not right. It fits in my scope and it’s logically part of my role. I’d like to have it.” It was switched. Conscious or not, I don’t know, didn’t question it.

Her phrasing “conscious or not” demonstrates how she attributes this project assignment mishap to potential cognitive biases of the decision makers rather than any deficiencies in the project assignment process more broadly, which she “didn’t question.” Executives also mentioned the overreliance on referrals as a mechanism reproducing inequality (as discussed in earlier sections), but rather than questioning the organizational hiring process, they recommended training managers to be more aware of their own biases when tapping their networks for new hires.

In contrast, when asked about the challenges to hiring qualified women, Astrid replied:

I actually don’t think that there are that many [challenges], except you need to take that extra step to go find [women], but then I don’t think that it’s that hard. . . . I think if you have the right opportunity and the right pay as well as the right work environment, I don’t think there are any particular challenges. . . . I don’t think it’s so hard . . . if there’s a willingness from the top to just go do it.

While Astrid recognizes the pernicious “pipeline problem” so often lamented in technology, where few women choose to enter STEM fields to begin with, she implicates aspects of the organization (e.g., opportunity, pay, work environments, hiring and sourcing efforts, and senior executive-level commitment). Lakshmi, an executive from outside the United States who joined the council late in my data collection period, also suggested that organizational changes would be necessary in the form of work–life policy changes. However, most executives in my sample did not identify the organization as the target of change.

Organizational change efforts

Organizational change efforts, such as changing hiring and/or promotion procedures, are noted in the last column, fourth row of Figure 1.

Daniel engaged in more organizational change efforts than the other ECs, according to my observational data. In addition to individualistic and societal change efforts, Daniel held women-targeted recruiting events and identified top-talent women in performance evaluations (as a first step in designing the mentorship program). In the 14 subcommittee meetings (held one to two times per month) I observed from his department, where Daniel met with employees in his department to discuss and execute the women’s initiative, change efforts from all three pathways (individualistic, societal, and organizational) were discussed, with a clear preference for the first two pathways. More specifically, in all 14 meetings, at least one (usually more) of the following individualistic and societal change efforts was discussed: trainings, community events or external groups, mentorship programs or peer mentoring panels, and women’s networking groups. Meanwhile, recruitment efforts were discussed in eight meetings, and some recruitment discussions centered on changing organizational procedures, such as requiring at least one woman candidate in executive searches—an idea that was ultimately rejected in favor of individual awareness approaches such as unconscious bias training. Recruitment efforts also included hosting one woman-focused recruiting event, which resulted in the hire of three new women employees.

Astrid had an organizational target of change but favored individualistic solutions, such as training programs for women. She explained this in interviews by claiming the organization has a responsibility to its women to offer training for them; thus, Astrid framed an individualistic change effort as an organizational solution. Other ECs occasionally engaged in small-scale organizational change efforts (e.g., Linda joined Daniel’s women-targeted recruiting event, and Diana supervised training hiring managers to write less biased job descriptions, which is an individualistic solution that seeks to address an organizational process), but most change efforts focused on changing individuals. These examples demonstrate how organizational, individual, and societal solutions can be deeply intertwined. Ideally, solutions might span all three pathways, addressing inequalities stemming from all three sources, but reliance on the individualistic and societal pathways limits the potential reach of company change efforts.

Conclusion

Using interviews and observation of a technology company, I found that high-level executives’ ideologies about the sources of inequality correspond with certain types of change efforts. However, as the empirical data demonstrate, executives frequently interweave these theoretical pathways in practice, routinely providing explanations for inequality that anchor societal and organizational framings to a pervasive assumption of individual, internalized gender differences. Through the contradictions and real-world messiness that result from combining the theoretical pathways in this way, we can see that the discourses executives draw upon in fact serve to uphold the broader gender system of inequality. As executives struggle to make sense of inequality, understand its root causes, and work to change it, they employ discourses that legitimize, justify, and maintain the broader system of inequality (e.g., by reinforcing assumptions of ingrained gender differences). Although scholars (e.g., Acker 1990; Ridgeway 2008; Risman 2004) offer views that might break out of the gender system—views that consider how organizations create (and correspondingly might be able to mitigate) inequality—the high-level executives in my sample tend to endorse views that, though diverse in some respects, are consistent in their support of the larger gender system (e.g., by reifying binary gender categories and failing to challenge the organization’s structural and cultural drivers of inequality). Thus, even in situations where high-level executives have the resources and organizational support to enact gender change, the limitations in their ideological framings lead their change efforts to remain anchored to the status quo, consequently reducing the potential impact of such efforts.

The question arises: Do executives believe that change efforts targeting organizational inequalities will be ineffective, or do they fail to notice organizational inequalities at all? As described earlier, executives did tell me stories of times they observed organizational inequalities; however, executives consistently failed to identify the organization as primarily responsible for causing or fixing these inequalities (with a few exceptions as noted, such as Astrid), and instead attributed inequality to individually held biases, which executives then attempted to minimize by changing individuals. In a separate research project, I found that HR employees are more likely to understand the organizational drivers of inequality but express more pessimism about the capacity of the company to successfully execute organizational change (Wynn 2019b). Therefore, whereas executives fail to identify the organization as the cause of inequality, HR employees tend to doubt whether organizational solutions are likely to succeed.

The case study data presented here have the advantage of providing the in-depth access to top executives necessary to analyze their gender ideologies and related behaviors, yet this case study, like all case studies, sacrifices breadth for depth. As a result, caution must be used when applying the findings to other contexts. This gender equality initiative and company context may have particularities that affect the way the theory operates. The masculinized culture of technology in Silicon Valley (Alfrey and Twine 2016), along with the competitive culture of high-status companies in the U.S. corporate sector more generally, may contribute to the overreliance on individualistic and societal framings over organizational ones. Perhaps organizations in other industries may tend to have a more organizational approach to change; however, without comparative data I cannot test this possibility. In addition, the particular type of initiative studied here—a gender equality initiative—may influence the way change is implemented.

In addition to examining this theoretical framing in different organizational and geographic contexts, future research can test specific causal relationships. While my research suggests that ideologies about inequality affect the change efforts executives choose to implement, it is possible that the reverse causal relationship also holds: Specific types of change efforts may foster individualistic, organizational, and/or societal mindsets. Experimental studies could test whether certain mindsets can be provoked under different circumstances. With my data, I cannot answer the question of when different mindsets are likely to emerge. What are the factors that lead someone to adopt an individualistic versus organizational mindset?

Even so, this study has important broader implications. By identifying common ideologies about inequality and tying them to change efforts, I provide novel insight into the mechanisms affecting the way a top–down initiative operates among executives. To my knowledge, this is the first study to examine how individual assumptions about inequality affect the way change is implemented, and it is certainly the first to explore this question in the new economy context of a Silicon Valley technology company. This study also has important policy implications: Future change initiatives should focus on providing executives with the structural understanding and organizational framing necessary to execute effective change.

This research provides one clue as to why gender inequality has remained so persistent in high-status industries such as technology. By identifying the barriers to successful gender equality initiatives, and by examining in detail how executives view organizational policies around gender, this research can enable organizational and gender scholars to develop a more robust understanding of how corporate initiatives designed to achieve equality actually operate.

Supplemental Material

GandS876271_DS – Supplemental material for Pathways toward Change: Ideologies and Gender Equality in a Silicon Valley Technology Company

Supplemental material, GandS876271_DS for Pathways toward Change: Ideologies and Gender Equality in a Silicon Valley Technology Company by Alison T. Wynn in Gender & Society

Footnotes

Author’s Note:

I thank Shelley Correll, David Pedulla, Woody Powell, Kathleen Gerson, David Grusky, Aliya Hamid Rao, and Sharon Sassler for their helpful comments and suggestions. I also thank the members of the social psychology, networks and organizations, qualitative methods, and Clayman Institute workshops at Stanford University. I am grateful for support from the Clayman Institute for Gender Research and the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.

ORCID iD

Alison T. Wynn

Notes

Alison T. Wynn is a research associate at the Stanford VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab. Her research examines organizational policies and practices that may inadvertently create or reinforce inequality in elite industries.

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