Skirts and Ladders 'Computing is too important to be left to men' — Karen Spärck Jones

“DailyCandy’s subscriber list can be taken as the Holy Grail of e-commerce” – NY Magazine

I was recently introduced to DailyCandy, when a friend forwarded me an email with the subject Lower Eastside Story. It informed us that the Lower East Liquor Bar and Bistro had opened in Canary Wharf, where we happen to work. The review was short, frivolous, mouth-watering and even included a 50% off offer. We were sold in seconds.

I'm one of those people that never knows where to go for food, always finds out about a sale after the clothes that would actually fit me are gone, and loves cultural things but finds that keeping up to date on them takes up too much time. So a newsletter-style website emailing me the tidbits of information I need sounds like a good idea - it's like GOOP, but useful.

(Not that I have anything against GOOP, of course. But when even Gossip Girl is mocking Gwyneth Paltrow's creation, you have to wonder what exactly she thinks she's providing. I'm all for women learning to leverage the power of the internet, but it's all about the product.)

Nevertheless, I am for successful businesswomen, so I went to find out more about DailyCandy's. It was founded by Dany Levy, a former New York magazine editor, with a stellar background of private school and Ivy League education. DailyCandy went from Levy generating all the content herself from her bedroom in 2000 to a $125 million purchase for Comcast in 2008. The staff has grown, as DailyCandy has expanded from New York to a range of cities across the U.S. and even across the ocean to London.

Unfortunately, it seems that even with a woman at the helm, some stereotypes persist. New York magazine published an article about the company in April 2006 with the following quote:

The Website depicts a comely staff of 28 (all three forlorn-looking males hold IT positions).

A quick check shows that not much has changed in over three years. The number of men in the organisation has risen, with them holding finance and administration positions, but they haven't let go of the title of web developer in the process.

Not that it's theirs to let go: it's DailyCandy's to hire. Still, I have to wonder why this happened as it did.

• Perhaps there were only male applicants.
• Perhaps the women that applied weren't good enough.
• Perhaps DailyCandy hired through networks and so the type of woman that is employed to write for such a magazine doesn't tend to have technically minded friends.
• Perhaps the average technical woman doesn't want to work for a website that is generally about the shallower things in life and doesn't even have a girly techy section to show off the latest gadgets.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Perhaps we'll never know why, but I fear that it's a mix of the latter points. We live in a society that is, unfortunately, an extension of high school: the girly girls go to Selfridges, the geeky girls go to the Apple Store, and ne'er the twain shall meet. The girly girls will assume that IT is a man's job because they don't have the inclination to make sense of it, and the geeky girls mock the women that can't have a conversation without bringing up clothes or men.

So it all comes back to diversity. After all, if women can't succeed with women at the helm, then we really don't stand a chance with men.