Shevinsky’s cutting compilation of essays doesn’t specifically ask why tech is so congenitally sexist. Sexism in Silicon Valley is an observable, quantifiable reality. More daringly, Lean Out questions whether the tech industry even deserves women at all. When highly criticized tomes like Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead tout the importance of proactively turning yourself into a workplace commodity, Lean Out comes as a welcome counter-manifesto, with fangs. The problem isn’t necessarily that women don’t care about programming, or that women in tech aren’t measuring up to their male peers. According to Lean Out contributors, they do, and they are. The problem is that some cocktail of internalized misogyny and financially-reinforced tokenism runs through the veins of tech.
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