“I’m now of the opinion that pervasive bro-ness is enough of a distraction to be worth dismantling,” Shevinsky tweeted, joining a chorus of outrage over the TechCrunch scandal. She elaborated on her rekindled feminism in a follow-up blog for Business Insider titled, “That’s it—I’m finished defending sexism in tech.” “I thought that we didn’t need more women in tech,” she wrote in the impassioned manifesto that elevated her to the role of social justice warrior. “I was wrong.”
Yet in her new book Lean Out: The Struggle for Gender Equality in Tech and Startup Culture, Shevinsky says her initial response was flawed. Recruiting more women is not the answer, she writes, because women are not the problem. “The solution is to respect the professional environment,” says 36-year-old Shevinsky, an acclaimed designer of female-centric dating apps and cybersecurity software. “Simply having more women in the room doesn’t fix that. We need to fix the root issues in tech, to overhaul the entire culture. Women are smart to not show up to an industry that doesn’t welcome them.”
To read the rest of the review, visit Metro.