The harmless 'boys' club' rules that are secretly destroying women's careers

A line drawing by Prince Israel Art on Facebook depicts two women dressed in similar attire. They sneer at each other in pidgin. “Who be this one?” A parallel picture has two men in equally resembling attire. They celebrate each other as they bump their fists. “Guy how far”.

Comments observe that a woman who sees another in similar dressing will experience a severe mood swing, feel despised and depressed, may go and change, will lose her sense of uniqueness, could burn the dress or stop wearing it altogether. She will deride the other as wearing a fake and cheap version.

For the men, wearing similar outfits is taken positively as a demonstration of affinity in superior taste.

The male attitude captures what is called the Bro Code, described in the internet as a “humorous, often exaggerated collection of ‘rules’ that men are said to follow to maintain loyalty, respect, and camaraderie among friends”. Examples include respecting the other’s romantic territory, covering up for one another, helping out in crisis and not betraying or embarrassing a bro.

But while the rules sound like harmless expressions of social solidarity, feminist scholars see them as cultural mechanisms that sustain sexism. Cracking the Bro Code by Coleen Carrigan, published by theMassachusetts Institute of Technology last year, does exactly this.

Also read: Man Talk: Is the bro-code to blame for why men don't stand up against violence?

Described as a “landmark ethnographic study that explores how the Bro Code operates within computing cultures, particularly in tech workplaces and academia”, the work focuses on the nexus between sexism and racism in computing, revealing the systematic values, norms and policies that “marginalise women, non-binary people and people of colour”. The central thesis is that computing culture requires to be transformed by dismantling the Bro Code to equalise the tech world.

The prologue describes the author’s arrival at a computer tech conference and initial observation of a male dominated space ranging from guards to technical employees. In three meetings, she observes “over 15 people in each one and not a single woman!” As she searches for a bathroom, the author encounters a fourth meeting with only one woman among nine men. Then she encounters “a woman running frantically through a hallway” who looks at her anxiously as if to say, “here is another woman”.

The author narrates an encounter that exemplifies what is called “mistaken identity” in gender parlance. When she and other techs (all men) meet, one (Dick) refers to her as the other colleague’s wife, implying that he could not fathom that a woman could be a technical peer. This produces “an awkward silence”. Dick tries to offer an apology, explaining that since she sat next to Jason, he assumed she was his wife. The author aptly replies: “Yes, because I am married to everyone I sit next to”. She recognises Dick as “an adherent of the Bro Code” and invites the reader to inherit this as everyone’s problem, and one that needs to be broken.

Racial groups

The study “unearthed several core values driving culture in computing production, including precision, abstraction, aggression, a love of machines, and a disdain for behaviours or ideas that may threaten the marriage between masculinity and technical competency”. She classifies these tendencies as “Bro Code,” operationally defined as “the performance and norms of gender enacted by straight cisgender men from dominant racial groups in computing organisations and values that privilege masculinist identities, instrumental rationality and binary thinking”.

The author describes the book as an examination of “the intellectual challenge that women face navigating and persisting in computing culture, despite the contradictions between their lived experiences and the performative philanthropic heroism performed by their bosses”. It argues that “technologists have the potential to provide leadership critical to ameliorating these harms”.

She contends that “computing culture reinforces gender violence…through a combination of bias, discrimination and harassment” in the broader culture” and then advances a theory of the Bro Code built on five arguments. One, women in the industry have “the potential to transform, institutionally and interpersonally, unjust social relations”.

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Two, workplace rituals “reproduce the ideological union between masculine ideals and competency” thus “serve to indoctrinate computing workers”. Three, the women’s experiences in the computing cosmos represent a paradox of navigating privilege and marginalisation. Four, the women’s aspirations to create social change “may ignite feminist consciousness in women computer scientists, which can lead to collective action in pursuit not only of equality in computing but in broader cultural domains”. And five, such change would be beneficial to the whole society.

As this book shows, the Bro Code is not just a harmless set of social rules but one that underlies and reinforces patriarchy and discrimination. By solidifying solidarity among men, it tightens masculine boundaries for greater exclusivism.

The writer is a lecturer in Gender and Development Studies at South Eastern Kenya University ([email protected])