Ellen Broad is a technologist who is expert on policy, an ethicist who is an incisive thinker, a writer who has published an important and well argued book. She also, as it happens, is a woman. We all know that that last statement should be irrelevant to the preceding three. We all know that it isn’t.
But we can all too easily persuade ourselves that everything is more or less all right, that blatant discrimination is a thing of the past, that even though there are rotten apples, the barrel is sound. This article calmly and comprehensively demolishes that easy optimism. It is a very deliberate breaking of self-imposed silence, a discarding of the assumption that quiet compliance will somehow make things better:
If there is no “right” way as a woman to speak about gender issues — if there is no “right” way for a woman to take up space, to take credit — then silence won’t serve me or save me either. The only way forward from here is to start speaking.
In this essay, Ellen has spoken. She needs to be heard.