I didn t want to make a film about complaining, I m not a fan of it. But I realized there was a huge responsibility for me not being a woman in tech, that I had to do justice to what was really going on in the industry. That meant showing women happy in their space, women that weren t happy that left, and showing that some women are there and are sort of suffering quietly. I think it s just important to show all of it.
— Robin Hauser Reynolds, director of the documentary CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival this week.
In Q&A with the Atlantic, Reynolds talks about lack of understanding and poor communication as factors in the gender issue.
She says of the infamous mobile app Titstare — which, yes, involved staring at women s breasts — that some men just simply thought it was funny.
I believe that that is truly how a lot of the guys in the industry feel, like, Come on, Titstare was absurd, I didn t take it seriously. But they didn t take the next step and think, How would that affect women? How do women feel? How would that affect a female programmer, someone who was maybe on my team?
Addressing how some top male tech executives effectively have been telling women to simply try harder or work harder and rely on karma to get ahead, Reynolds said: It s a perfect example of how if you re not careful with the way you re articulating things, you have to become conscious of what you re saying and how that affects the people around you… That s the frustration that so many women have. It s microaggressions. This is death by a thousand cuts, it s day in and day out these little things that are happening. Can you prove that? No, it s really hard to prove.
Photo: Robin Hauser Reynolds, director of the documentary CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap. (From documentary website)
