#whitney wolfe
Whitney Wolfe at Tinder headquarters before leaving her job this April. (Ashley Terrill)
Earlier this month, Whitey Wolfe, cofounder of Tinder, filed a lawsuit against Tinder and its majority owner IAC/InterActive Corp on charges of sexual harassment and discrimination.
Tinder is a smartphone dating app that shows users a brief profile of a potential partner. Users swipe right or left depending on their opinion of the profile. If interested, they can message and meet in person. The app, commonly used for casual sex and hookups, is wildly popular in the US and globally, sparking Twitter accounts like Tinderfession.
Wolfe’sallegationsare plenty: Mateen took away her title as co-founder because it ‘makes the company seem like a joke’ and 'devalues’ it, CEO Sean Rad dismissed her complaints as 'annoying’ and 'dramatic,’ and Mateen called her 'whore’ at a company event.
Wolfe was an instrumental part of the company’s success: She came up with the name Tinder and orchestrated a marketing plan that took the user count from a few hundred users to 1,500. “I credit you 100% with the growth of Tinder,” said Joe Munoz, who developed the app, to Wolfe, “and I think that sending you around the US to visit sororities was absolutely the best investment we could possibly have made on the marketing side.”
According to the lawsuit, Wolfe was designated as co-founder at an internal company meeting in November 2012, around the time Mateen joined the company. However, “when Tinder-related articles appeared in more traditional business outlets, Wolfe’s name was often nowhere to be seen. When she would ask why only her name of the five founders was absent they would tell her 'you’re a girl.’”
Rad sent a memo to employees and suspended Mateen. “However, as many of you know, Whitney’s legal complaint is full of factual inaccuracies and omission,” he says. “We did not discriminate against Whitney because of her age or gender, and her complaint paints an inaccurate picture of my actions and what went on here.”
Whether or not her allegations are true, sexism in tech fields is hard to deny. Twitter had no women among its top officials until the fall of 2013. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg recalled a conversation she heard between two men in the industry: “The other said he, too, would hire more young women but his wife fears he would sleep with them and, he confessed, he probably would,” reported the LA Times. According to Catalyst, only 5.7 percent of employed women in the US work in the computer industry.
Having women in high-level positions at tech companies helps not only women, but the company as a whole. “Diversity benefits research, development and innovation, the heartbeat of Silicon valley. It also increases profit, something Twitter sorely needs,” reported the New York Times.
Granted, there aren’t many women in tech to go around. “There is definitely a supply-side problem,” said Adam Messinger, Twitter’s chief technology officer. Added Rick Devine, chief executive at TalentSky, “The issue isn’t the intention, the issue is just the paucity of candidates.”
Some refuse to believe that. Kelly M. Dermody, an attorney, said “despite the tremendous success of a few women in tech, the sad truth is that it is an industry plagued by gender stereotyping and bias.”
Was Wolfe’s story one of an office romance gone wrong, or a symptom of a sexist company and field as a whole? “In the meantime, please bear this in mind: where lawsuits are concerned, both sides of the story are rarely told at once.” said TechCrunch. “We’ve heard quite a bit from Wolfe, but Tinder and IAC haven’t had a chance to formally respond in court with their side of the story.”
