#StrengthinDiversity: Why Twitter Would Benefit From a Woman on Its Board

By Cate Matthews

The early years at pioneering tech start ups can be messy, as perhaps best evidenced by the Oscar-winning film The Social Network’s depictions of Mark Zuckerberg’s (male) inner circle. Katherine Losse’s The Boy Kings further described the early business environment as an unwelcoming “fraternity” and said that before the arrival of current COO Sheryl Sandberg, harassment often went unaddressed. And despite the fact that the majority of Facebook users and social networkers in general are women, there was not a single woman on Facebook’s board when it went public. (This was rectified six months later with the addition of Sandberg, at least partially due to external pressure.)

Twitter is not Facebook, in culture or in practice.  But there are significant similarities. The world’s second largest social network experienced a number of Edward Saverin-like oustings early on, and two weeks ago engineering manager Jill Wetzler tweeted this photograph from a women’s restroom in Twitter HQ

        But more importantly, Twitter, a major player in Silicon Valley with over 600 million dollars in projected 2013 revenue, is, like Facebook before it, preparing to go public with an all-male board. (The board, incidentally, is also all-white.) This is unacceptable.

        Losse described the world of her former employers as something out of Mad Men, and she’s supported by the data: for every dollar men earn in Silicon Valley, women earn pocket change: 49 cents. Women comprise only 6% of the top 100 tech companies’ chief executives and 16.6% of Fortune 500 board seats (and that number is falling).   Efforts have been made to address the situation and Scientista is proud to be part of the charge, but women in tech and in the world are too often treated like a special interest group or, in the words of Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, a “box to check”.

        Mr. Costolo, if I may: women are not a box to check. We are fully one half of the population and fifty-three percent of your userbase. But you know this. You’re a numbers man, and no doubt up to your ears in demographic data, so here’s some more:

        One study by the Credit Suisse Research Institute discovered that over a period of six years, the stock prices of small or mid-size companies with at least one female board member outperformed those without by 17%. Larger companies with a market capitalization of $10 billion or more and at least one female board member outperformed by 26%.

        A 2004 Catalyst study found that the Fortune 500 companies with the highest percentage of female board directors outperformed those with the least by 53% return on equity, 42% return on sales, and 66% return on investment capital.

        Companies are more profitable with female board members. Why? Because diversity drives innovation. When faced with a problem, a board of seven men of similar backgrounds will come to a similar conclusion. In comparison, a heterogenous board, a board with men and women all of different backgrounds, will come up with a diversity of creative solutions. Solutions that must be had if the company in question and the world at large are to continue to innovate and thrive.

        One hundred and forty characters is the new meter to which presidents fit their rhetoric and protesters style their chants. Twitter was the birthplace of both the Arab Spring’s spread of idealism and served as a safe haven for the proud defiance of Occupy Wall Street. Hashtags gave the world its first indication that after ten years in hiding, Osama bin Laden was dead, and the @replies that followed fostered a whole new kind of national conversation.

        Today, Twitter is no longer just the medium carrying that national conversation. It is at its center.  Women are underpaid and underrepresented in technology, and this serves to hurt not just them, but the future success and innovations of the industry itself. As it has so many times before, Twitter should and must lead the way and ensure that women are also offered a seat at the table. We are not just a box to check, or a focus group appease. We are here, we are ready, and we have a lot to offer.

Cate Matthews is an avid writer and social media enthusiast with a direct IV line hook up to her RSS feeds. She loves articles about science, social justice, and tech in particular and considers herself a blossoming Scientista. When not quoting Neil Degrasse Tyson or experimenting with JavaScript (and sometimes even when), she can be found at @cateematthews.

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