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What it argues
Brotopia is Emily Chang's investigation into how Silicon Valley became dominated by men and why it has stayed that way despite decades of stated commitment to diversity. Chang, the host of Bloomberg Technology, spent years interviewing hundreds of people — founders, investors, engineers, and the women who've tried to build careers among them — to document the structural and cultural forces that lock women out.
The book's historical argument is counterintuitive: programming was not always a male profession. In the early decades of computing, women were well represented in software engineering. A shift happened in the 1960s and 1970s when tech companies began using personality tests to screen job candidates. Those tests, designed by psychologists who studied existing male engineers, defined the "ideal programmer" as antisocial and uninterested in people — traits that happened to match the men already in the field. The tests systematically excluded women and created a self-reinforcing feedback loop that defined coding as male work.
What it gets right
- 1.
Programming was not historically a male profession — women were well represented in early computing. The male dominance of tech was constructed, not natural.
- 2.
Biased personality tests in the 1960s defined 'ideal programmer' traits that matched existing male employees, systematically filtering out women for decades.
- 3.
Venture capital remains overwhelmingly male, and the informal networks through which deals get made reinforce exclusion even when formal policies aim at inclusion.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Emily Chang is an American journalist and television anchor who has hosted Bloomberg Technology since 2013. She has interviewed many of the most prominent figures in the technology industry, and her reporting on gender, culture, and power in Silicon Valley earned her widespread attention before the book was published. Brotopia drew on years of on- and off-record reporting and was released in 2018. Chang is based in San Francisco and continues to cover the technology industry for Bloomberg.
