Goldman Wrongly Punished for WECode Support

This past weekend, the Harvard Undergraduate Women in Computer Science hosted a free inaugural coding conference that drew more than 300 attendees from over 40 schools. The convention was sponsored by Google, Intuit, Facebook, and Microsoft, among others, and gave out thousands of dollars in scholarships. The event received coverage by Boston.com, VentureFizz, and the Harvard Gazette.

However, none of this information made it into the New York Times's coverage. The only detail that caught the reporter’s attention was an Instagram photo of the cosmetic mirrors Goldman Sachs gave away as swag. The title ran “Goldman Handed Out Cosmetic Mirrors and Nail Files at Women’s Coding Event.”

In its haste to lambast Goldman Sachs once again, the New York Times completely overlooked the company’s generosity and commitment to the noble goal of encouraging women in computer science. Goldman Sachs was the most generous sponsor for the event and also provided key chains and T-shirts.

The Times neglected to mention that Google offered lip balm and Facebook gave away copies of Sheryl Sandberg’s bestseller, “Lean In.” Instead, the Times conspicuously singled out Goldman Sachs. This selective coverage demonstrates the report’s priority to demonize Goldman Sachs over lauding the conference or even fairly reporting the news. The article is concerned less with what swag is being given out than who is giving it, much less why they are giving it.

Soon other publications ran similarly inflammatory headlines. Jezebel ran the sensationalist title, “Goldman Sachs Lures Women To Coding With Beauty Accessories.” Aside from merely being misleading, the title insultingly implies that women can be so easily manipulated as to be won over by beauty accessories.

This is not even to mention that nail files and mirrors are not necessarily gendered products. Perhaps this comes as a surprise to the editors of Jezebel, but males also possess fingernails and reflections.

The conference, entitled Women Engineers Code or WECode, (rather obviously) was never intended to be gender neutral. In fact, the sponsors were encouraged to provide swag that would appeal to the women attending.

A recurrent trend in these articles is to caricature some Goldman exec, leaning back in his chair, and thinking aloud between cigar puffs: “Well, we want our women to look good, so we’ll give ‘em makeup as swag.” All these caricatures suggest that swag must advocate something. Last I checked, Google does not offer potential employees key chains to suggest they own more keys.

In the hunt for click-bait articles, the Times would rather confirm the scorn of its readers for Goldman than publish a story that challenges those views. Honest reporting is merely a paperweight to keep articles from being completely untethered to reality. For the journalists of these publications, the Goldman Sachs brand is nothing but a buzzword synonymous with patriarchy.

Where it might have been reported that Goldman brought one of its female partners as a keynote speaker, these reporters chose instead to manufacture controversy over nail files. It defies all logic that the highest sponsor of a female coding conference is charged with sexist tactics for providing useful swag for women after being encouraged to do so by the female leadership of the conference. In fact, it practically defies the law of the conservation of energy that these headlines have managed to create a scandal where none was.

The screeching chorus of sensationalist newshounds and bottom-line editors drowned out the achievements of the women who attended the conference. The winning group at the conference’s hackathon designed an app to notify college students via text of free food or goods on campus. Second place went to a website called, “MommaCoder,” designed to encourage friendlier code assistance than the currently used site, “Stack Overflow.” Third place went to a Facebook application that automatically notifies selected friends of the user’s expected whereabouts and what they were wearing in case they didn’t return home safely within a specified time. Luckily for us, change is driven by bright young minds such as these and not the likes of those who choose how to report it.

Sarah R. Siskind ’14 is a government concentrator in Adams House. Amy M. Yin ’14 is a computer science concentrator in Adams House. She is co-founder and external relations chair of Harvard Undergraduate Women in Computer Science.