Uber leadership is scrambling to react this week to the sexual harassment allegations of former employee Susan J. Fowler, whose blog post on her experience at Uber has gone viral. Fowler describes how she was repeatedly sexually harassed and discriminated against yet every time she made a report to her managers or to human resources, she was dismissed. Fowler’s story throws a spotlight on sexism in an industry that loves to paint itself as forward thinking and inclusive, and her experience was not an isolated case–as Fowler’s blog gained traction, women from a range of companies began sharing their experiences with sexual harassment in the tech world.

Uber’s reputation already took a hit this winter when #deleteUber began to trend after Uber failed to condemn the Trump Administration’s immigration ban and continued sending cars to airports during a tax driver protest. After Fowler’s blog post, the deleting trend is back in full force. With rival Lyft picking up some of the client base that was once so loyal to Uber, the company’s reputation–and financial success–could begin to crumble.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has stated that he was disturbed and shocked by Fowler’s experience and within a matter of hours had hired former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to conduct a review of sexual harassment claims at the company. This will be Holder’s second venture into creating a more inclusive Silicon Valley brand. After Airbnb received widespread complaints of discrimination from hosts, Holder and Laura Murphy, former head of the ACLU, were hired to craft an anti-discrimination policy for the company. Airbnb now has hosts accept its anti-discrimination rules before they can become part of the Airbnb community, and while there have been arguments that the rules are not actually effective and that they don’t go far enough, the new rules were at least a step in the right direction. Holder has always been a staunch advocate for civil rights and was fully committed to women’s rights during his tenure as attorney general–but is he truly being asked to overhaul Uber’s culture or simply being brought on for publicity reasons?

There are doubts that Holder’s team will be able to defeat sexism in an industry where women are rarely given a seat at the table within a nation where sexual harassment has gone unpunished for decades and where the sitting president has bragged about assaulting women. Uber, like most companies across Silicon Valley and around the world, prioritizes results over respect for women in the workplace. Multiple interviews from current and former Uber employees have revealed that the work environment can be very hostile but that no one reports it out of fear of retaliation.

Now that Fowler’s case has shone a spotlight on a reality that we often ignore, Uber has at least taken steps to acknowledge the problem immediately, both by hiring Holder and by issuing a message that acknowledges Fowler’s case when users try to delete the app. However, over the coming weeks as media attention shifts, Uber may have minimal incentives to improve its sexual harassment policies. Uber is still an exciting company for any young developer to work at, and while Fowler’s case may give female programmers and engineers pause, there is little reason to think that many male candidates will choose not to work at Uber because of Fowler’s story.

The most effective boycott would be taking #deleteUber a step further–don’t work for Uber. If Uber takes a hit in its hiring pool, that is when it will truly feel the pressure to reform. It is the responsibility of young, qualified candidates who are working in Silicon Valley to turn down offers at companies that subscribe to a toxic work environment that devalues female voices. Holder will be working to create new policies and investigate past offenses, but his investigation will be futile if we continue to ignore the results and sign up for Uber just the same.

Jillian Sequeira

Jillian Sequeira was a member of the College of William and Mary Class of 2016, with a double major in Government and Italian. When she’s not blogging, she’s photographing graffiti around the world and worshiping at the altar of Elon Musk and all things Tesla. Contact Jillian at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com

The post Why Eric Holder Can’t Save Silicon Valley Alone appeared first on Law Street.

People cite it all the time: women make 77 cents to every dollar men make. We use it as a linchpin in arguments about equal pay, feminism, glass ceilings. We offer it up as proof–because mind-bogglingly, we still need to “prove it”–that feminism is a necessary thing.

But the whole 77 cent thing? Not actually true.

Because that statistic is assuming that the default status is whiteness. But really, Black women make 64 cents to every white man’s dollar. Latina women, 53 cents. Native American women, 60 cents. Similarly, women with dis/abilities (race wasn’t specified, as far as I could find) make 67 cents to men without dis/abilities’ dollar, and 87 cents to what men with dis/abilities earn. Queer women? Especially queer and trans women of color? Similar story.

But even that, even complicating the wage gap narrative we offer as “concrete proof” that sexism is, you know, a thing, is not enough. Because sexism at work manifests in way, way more than just pay differentials. It’s more than straight-up (pun intended) discrimination.

Workplace culture is a massive part of the misogyny of the job market (in so many more ways than I have space to discuss here). As Anne-Marie Slaughter, president of the New America Foundation, wrote in 2012 for The Atlantic:

The culture of “time macho”—a relentless competition to work harder, stay later, pull more all-nighters, travel around the world and bill the extra hours that the international date line affords you—remains astonishingly prevalent among professionals today. Nothing captures the belief that more time equals more value better than the cult of billable hours afflicting large law firms across the country and providing exactly the wrong incentives for employees who hope to integrate work and family.

But let’s even put aside “family” for a moment–because some women wanting (or needing) time with their families (implication: their kids) isn’t the only reason that “time macho,” as Slaughter calls it, is a misogynist expectation.

“Time macho” is misogynist because it places value on a kind of masculinized “endurance” that is simply unhealthy: the burden of being first in the office in the morning and last to leave at night disproportionately falls on women of color, queer women, women with dis/abilities (and combinations thereof) because we have more to “prove” in this society.

“Time macho” is misogynist because it defines “production” as the primary value while feminizing self-care as weak, as less “tough,” as less competitive. It places short term over long term, and it promotes disdain for those of us who try to take care of ourselves.

“Time macho” is misogynist because it is yet another way that women are not permitted to say “no” without consequences: the rape culture of the working world, “time macho” creates workplace cultures in which women have to say yes to the extra night shift, to the additional project, to the seven-day work weeks in unhealthy and unsafe environments, to the 10:00 PM conference call.

Because if we don’t, we know there are plenty of men (or other token women) waiting in the wings to get paid more than we get paid to do the same thing we do; plenty of men (and women, because we get sucked into this, too) waiting to give us less-than-stellar recommendations about us being “not a great fit” in the office, being “disagreeable” or “confrontational” because no, nope, actually, my health is more important than your misogynist expectations.

Jennifer Polish

Jennifer Polish is an English PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center in NYC, where she studies non/human animals and the racialization of dis/ability in young adult literature. When she’s not yelling at the computer because Netflix is loading too slowly, she is editing her novel, doing activist-y things, running, or giving the computer a break and yelling at books instead. Contact Jennifer at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post “Time Macho” is the Rape Culture of the Workplace appeared first on Law Street.