It’s a crying shame that an issue like inadequate representation of women in the top echelons of a company can cause a flame war on a social networking website, but here we are. Twitter turned into a bit of a battlefield when CEO Dick Costolo and a bevy of users led by Vivek Wadhwa went up against each other over an article by the latter. The topic, of course, is being the lack of women in prominent positions in the company. A piece in The New York Times, at the centre of the storm, quotes Wadhwa, a Fellow at Stanford’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance, who is also writing a book on women in tech saying, “This is the elite arrogance of the Silicon Valley mafia, the Twitter mafia. It’s the same male chauvinistic thinking. The fact that they went to the I.P.O. without a single woman on the board, how dare they?”As the article hit Twitter and Costolo started to be mentioned in tweets regarding it, Twitter’s CEO ended up taking a swipe at Wadhwa instead. Writer and consultant Anil Dash jumped up to oppose Costolo before the man of the hour, Wadhwa himself, joined the fray.
@rich1 Vivek Wadhwa is the Carrot Top of academic sources.
— dick costolo (@dickc) October 5, 2013
Sorely disappointed to see @dickc respond defensively to criticisms of industry sexism. Why not just lead, as Twitter does on free speech?
— Anil Dash (@anildash) October 5, 2013
.@dickc No Dick, it isn't about checking a box and you didn't do enough. You have a social responsiblity. You have to lead--not make excuses
— Vivek Wadhwa (@wadhwa) October 5, 2013
Besides the occasional name calling, the bizarre conversation went on for a bit before it looked like Wadhwa had the last word about it. Costolo, despite sort of admitting that the lack of women in some of the top positions in Twitter’s administration is a problem, sounded reluctant to talk about this topic.
@wadhwa ah, I think you do a disservice to the broader issues with the hyperbole. It's easy applause, sure, but gives everyone an easy out.
— dick costolo (@dickc) October 5, 2013
It isn’t the first time that not enough women in Twitter’s management has made people stand up and take notice. AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher wrote a piece on the topic pointing out that it has led to jokes within the company. A board member made a “naughty joke” about Twitter needing to expand its governing body beyond “three Peters and a Dick”. The people here referred to the all-white, all-male board consisting of Peter Currie, Peter Chernin, Peter Fenton and Dick Costolo. While this exchange between Wadhwa and Costolo raised important points on both sides of the fence, the likes of Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg from Yahoo! and Facebook would be tut-tutting their way to their boardrooms.
(Cover image credit: Getty Images)
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