HRpedia: 'The Dave Rule'
As long as you have as many women as you have Daves, you're doing well in techThe Dave Rule, n.
An interesting addition to the management vocabulary, and one that will increasingly be used by anyone with an interest in diversity and inclusion. As reported in a recent article in The Guardian, it’s a Silicon Valley neologism that reflects some pretty shocking gender statistics in tech teams stateside.
Journo Rory Carroll spells it out:
Managers in Silicon Valley call it the “Dave Rule”: to assure proper gender balance you must have at least as many women on your team as guys named Dave.
On one level, it’s pretty funny: but on a more important level it’s quite the opposite. Depressingly, US tech firms are almost entirely male, and almost entirely white and Asian. Specifically:
[In] May Google published its first diversity report, revealing that 70% of its global workforce is male. Of its US staff, 61% are white, 30% Asian, 3% hispanic and 2% black. Facebook, LinkedIn and Yahoo! followed suit, revealing similar disparities.
This isn’t news to anyone on either side of the Atlantic who’s been trying to hire women into any STEM-related role. Hence the concentration on the so-called Stemettes – females students of science, technology, engineering or maths who are so prized by graduate recruiters with an eye on gender equality.
The Stemette website talks compellingly about the movement’s desire to ‘inspire the next generation of females into Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) fields by showing them the amazing women already in STEM via a series of panel events, hackathons, exhibitions, and mentoring schemes.’
The aim is to increase the amount of women in UK STEM positions from 13% to 30%.
Back in the US, this article in Forbes by Joscelin Cooper staunchly points out what’s going wrong and what can be done to help. Cooper says:
The technology industry has the room, and indeed the responsibility, to lead the charge toward gender parity. In recent months, Silicon Valley has been indicted repeatedly for being bad for women: from industry conferences dominated by childish, sexist pranks, to Bustle’s much sneered-at launch, to increasingly loud complaints about the culture of ‘bro-gramming’, and frat-house antics at tech companies.
Unfortunately, for much of the last three decades, the numbers of women in tech have been on a steady decline. Though there has been a hopeful upsurge since 2009, we’re still far from having an equal voice – let alone equal access to the code, platforms, and products that are helping to shape society.
Used in practice:
‘I’m sorry, Mr Ulrich, but we’re going to have to kick you off our advisory board. Since we appointed Mr Beckham and Mr Hasselhoff, our ‘Dave Rule’ quotient’s gone right out of the window. Don’t forget to hand in your badge and car sticker on the way out.’
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