Crosscut Festival

It’s no secret that the industry that props up the Seattle metro area's gangbusters economy is largely staffed by white males. In some cases, this has had disastrous consequences, from creating biased products to forcing out talented employees. Nationally, women make up less than 30 percent of the employees at tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook. That number drops even further when you look at the percentage of women in leadership roles. And the number of Hispanics and blacks working in tech are vanishingly small. We’ll hear from one of the women caught up in the infamous “Gamergate,” and talk about how local businesses and government are tackling this problem, and what more they could do.