On Monday, Melinda French Gates stepped down from the philanthropy organization she co-led with her ex-husband, Bill Gates.
Her departure is less surprising than the duration she managed to stay. The couple divorced in 2021. In August 2021, the charity organization told CNN it was undergoing a two-year trial period to assess if they could continue working together. They extended that trial by almost a year.
French Gates will exit next month, taking an additional $12.5 billion to focus on her lifelong work supporting women and families.
The Gates Foundation focuses on helping impoverished people, especially in developing countries, through initiatives like malaria and polio eradication and improving sanitation.
However, my focus is on advocating for those perceived as pampered, not impoverished. Female engineers in tech frequently face egregious mistreatment, prompting over half to leave their companies and often the industry, according to a recent McKinsey report.
The culprit is the tech industry’s notorious “brilliant jerk” or “bro culture” that grinds women down, even though it’s detrimental for all genders.
This culture was largely propagated by figures like Bill Gates, who was infamously harsh and impatient in his early years, to the extent that GQ once called him “an office bully.” Other famed tech moguls like Steve Jobs, Larry, and Charles also exhibited similar traits.
Women in Tech Are Bruised
In a 2024 Women in Tech survey, 72% of women reported encountering a dominant “bro culture,” resulting in microaggressions like being spoken over (64%) and being asked to provide food for meetings (11%). Other research highlights how women, regardless of their level, are frequently treated like junior workers, receiving less support, facing higher layoff risks, and fewer promotions.
Working in such an environment is bruising! A woman leading a hardware development team teared up recounting how she was excluded from a major meeting with her largest customer. She was asked to prep her male boss, who then repeatedly sought her input from an adjoining office without inviting her to the actual meeting.
On the Reddit sub r/womenintech, which has over 21,000 members, recurring themes include belittlement by male co-workers and constantly shifting promotion criteria. “I don’t feel any hope about my ‘career’ anymore. I love IT work but the perpetual boys club has cured me of my ambition and destroyed my mental health,” wrote one poster explaining her decision to leave the industry.
Many men share these sentiments about the tech industry culture. Giant discussions on Hacker News often discuss the misery expected in tech careers.
To be fair, transforming the tech industry (and corporate culture generally) beyond these entrenched, hostile roots has been part of French Gates’ work since 2017, when she began investigating why so many women leave the profession.
Through Pivotal Ventures, an organization she’s been leading for years, French Gates addresses root causes. Pivotal Ventures is part venture capital fund-of-funds, part philanthropy, part lobbying effort, among other initiatives. (Pivotal Ventures declined to comment.)
In her resignation statement, French Gates indicated that her billions would work across a broader spectrum for women, from body autonomy to investing in more women-led startups. For example, Pivotal partnered with Techstars for a Future of Longevity Accelerator supporting such startups. She supports women-led VC funds like Miriam Rivera’s Ulu Ventures and Promise Phelon’s Growth Warrior Capital.
She advocates for family leave policies, modern caregiving systems, mental health, and funds partners promoting diversity in tech and AI. She is also now focusing on helping more women win elections.
In a Time op-ed on that topic last year, French Gates wrote, “Ultimately, though, we can’t just keep pushing women into a broken system: We need to fix the system, addressing the full range of structural barriers that keep our government from looking like the people it’s intended to serve.”
This statement applies to corporate systems as well.
What More Can Melinda French Gates Do?
So, what more can she — or any interested billionaire — do with her extra billions?
It’s time for an employee bill of rights eliminating the harsh contracts most tech workers are forced to sign, even at startups.
Although Biden’s 2022 federal Speak Out Act renders many non-disclosure, non-disparagement agreements for sexual assault or harassment allegations unenforceable, all non-disparagement clauses should be abolished. Employees should be able to freely talk about their work experiences without fear of lawsuits or retaliation. Imagine how many more Susan Fowlers (Uber’s culture whistleblower) there would be if people felt free to speak. More importantly, consider how the fear of exposure might compel those in power to foster better cultures.
Another necessary change: abolishing harsh non-disclosure, non-disparagement agreements required for severance benefits.
Additionally, ending the secrecy around employee pay is another change that would empower women and all employees.
Indeed, this is a lot to ask of one woman, given all that she’s already doing. Even $12.5 billion might not be enough to make people kinder at work, because human nature is complex. However, the more leverage someone as influential as Melinda French Gates can apply to alter these structures, the better for everyone.
