"“I am teaching men to actively work to end patriarchy,” she says. “The point is to eliminate privilege and my approach is, hey, you believe that this is the right thing to do.”
There is a detailed primer on language – don’t use “girls” for women aged 18 and over – and a mechanism to ensure everyone gets speaking and listening opportunities. “We want to make sure people aren’t re-experiencing oppression,” says Aurora.
This is not the usual kind of training dished out by HR departments. Aurora says this kind of education has been missing in Silicon Valley, which is famous not only for its hi-tech products but for the low numbers of women and minorities involved in making them. Major tech firms have started publishing their diversity data over the last two years, which has only served to confirm that the industry’s employees are still overwhelmingly white and male. Women are twice as likely as men to drop out mid-career, often complaining of hostile work environments which are biased against their gender.
Aurora sees Silicon Valley’s most prominent efforts to increase diversity as backwards. Encouraging women to give the industry a try and exhortations to “Lean In” – a motto and accompanying book by Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg – wrongly puts the onus on those who are marginalized to change their own behavior, she believes...
“Training in isolation doesn’t lead to change,” she says.And rather than men per se it is middle managers – the vast majority of whom happen to be men – where she thinks extra effort needs to be directed because they have so much influence over an organisation’s culture and staffing. “I don’t think the sector has really solved the puzzle yet of truly engaging the middle,” she says.
Yet people who have attended Aurora’s workshops report seeing real change in their lives and workplaces."
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