Women in Silicon Valley has been a hot topic over the past year.   A group of influential women in tech initiated a site called www.elephantinthevalley.com to solicit a crowdsourced campaign to get at the heart of the issues directly from women themselves.   The site was created by a small sample of women including Trae Vassallo, Ellen Levy, Michele Madansky, Hillary Mickell, Bennett Porter, Monica Leas, Stanford University, Julie Oberweis, Stanford University.

Hear their stories.

According to the site the inspiration for this survey came out of the incredible conversation from the Ellen Pao & KPCB trial. What they realized is that while many women shared similar workplace stories, most men were simply shocked and unaware of the issues facing women in the workplace. In an effort to correct the massive information disparity, they decided to get the data and the stories. They focused on five main areas including: Feedback & Promotion, Inclusion, Unconscious biases, Motherhood, and Harassment & Safety.

They asked 200+ women focusing on women with at least 10 years of experience. The survey is largely bay area with 91 percent in the bay area/silicon valley right now. They heard from a a broad age ranges with 77 percent 40+ and 75 percent having children. Their respondents hold positions of power and influence with 25 percent are a CXOs, 11 percent are Founders, 11 percent are in venture. In addition to capturing start-up data, they also heard from employees from large companies including Apple, Google, and VMWare.

Here are some of the early findings.  I have received comments from women in Silicon Valley who say that this doesn’t represent the entire female viewpoints and some say that this is a small sample size.  When asked about the relevance they all say it’s consistent with some of their experiences.  One female executive who wanted to remain nameless said “this is great but be careful of folks promoting a certain agenda”.

The Results