The director’s reply was blunt. “If we women really wanted equality, then we should realize we were getting equality by not getting the leather jackets,” she was told. In the director’s mind, making special accommodations for women demeaned them, undermining the meritocracy. The director would do the same thing if the roles were reversed and men were the ones to miss out on the jackets; it didn’t occur to him that, in male-dominated Silicon Valley, that scenario would never occur.
