‘Silicon Valley’s biggest fraud’: What’s sex got to do with it?
Edit: On the 4th January 2022 Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty of fraud.
Elizabeth Holmes is the infamous ex-businesswoman and founder of Theranos, once hailed as a visionary of the tech world but now on trial for “Silicon Valley’s biggest fraud”. Once renowned as a disruptive genius, Holmes is accused of deceiving investors, doctors and patients when the technology she invented to transform blood testing was found to be completely inadequate.
Stories of corporate fraud in the male-dominated tech world are not new, and neither is the backdrop of the Silicon Valley hype and culture which plays a crucial role in this tale. However, Erin Edeiken, who produced the 2019 documentary, ‘The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley’, which chronicles the rise and fall of Theranos, makes clear: "You can't avoid the topic of gender with this story because it was very much a part of her meteoric rise to fame and success. [Holmes] definitely used her gender to her advantage in building her story and her own myths — I think she then used her gender as an excuse to why the spotlight was put on her when it all fell apart."
In this article I will examine the commentary surrounding Holmes’ rise and fall in order to gain some insight into how Holmes being a female has impacted this story’s narrative.
Victim of sexism, or beneficiary?
Holmes had a privileged start in life. Her family was well off and provided her the best opportunities with private school. Whilst she had a younger brother who had none of her drive, she did have parents who had high expectations of their daughter and nurtured her ambitions.
Despite a privileged start in life, many have commented how Holmes’ rise to fame was partly due to being in the right place at the right time. In his book Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, investigative journalist John Carreyrou states: “As much as she courted the attention, Elizabeth’s sudden fame wasn’t entirely her doing. Her emergence tapped into the public’s hunger to see a female entrepreneur breakthrough in a technology world dominated by men. Women like Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg had achieved a measure of renown in Silicon Valley, but they hadn’t created their own companies from scratch. In Elizabeth Holmes, the Valley had its first female billionaire tech founder.”
Gillian Tett, a British author and journalist at the Financial Times, met Holmes at a conference. Tett had tried to talk to Homes but had repeatedly been brushed off. Tett said later: “In hindsight, one reason I did not heed the half-ringing alarm bells when she brushed me off at the Aspen dinner was my own biases; after a lifetime of writing about male entrepreneurs, I was eager to believe in her story.” Tett goes on to say that she was not alone in this type of thinking and believes that “If Holmes had been just another Silicon Valley male geek touting a then-unproven medical innovation, she probably would not have graced the cover of Forbes magazine. Nor might she have pulled so many luminaries on to her board, sucked in so much investment”. She goes on to say, “while we need to decry sexist discrimination, we also need to recognise that the rarity of women sometimes has the opposite “halo” effect: they can be excessively glamorised and/or praised as well.”
An article in Rolling Stone Magazine discussed how it may have been possible for Holmes to continue defrauding investors. The article listed others scandals that had gone undetected for a long time, such as Fyre Fest founder Billy MacFarland claiming: “The only difference is that Holmes was a woman, and while that does not make her any less guilty than the names previously mentioned, it does mean that she was able to hide behind the trappings of a relatively new archetype — the Silicon Valley Ladyboss — to conceal her fraudulent behavior.”
Of course, there is also the view that Holmes was on the receiving end of a culture of sexism towards women and that she was being treated unfairly. In fact, this is a view that Holmes herself put forward on many occasions. As negative press was increasing against Holmes and her company, she decided to present herself as a victim of sexism saying in an interview with Bloomeberg Buisnessweek: “Until what happened in the last four weeks, I didn’t understand what it means to be a woman in this space … Every article starts with,’A young woman.’, Right? Someone came up to me the other day, and they were like, ‘I have never read an article about Mark Zuckerberg that starts with ‘A young man.”
The journalist who exposed the Theranos scandal John Carreyrou writes about the strategies that Holmes and her communication consultants discussed for how to hit back against his reporting: “One approach she favoured was to portray me as a misogynist. To generate further sympathy, she suggested she reveal publicly that she had been sexually assaulted as a student at Stanford.”
Jessie Deeter, producer of The Inventor, a documentary about Theranos, shared a five-hour dinner with Holmes and commented: “she felt she’d been maligned because she was a woman. She felt that men in Silicon Valley were allowed to fail, over and over, and because she was a woman, she was not being allowed to fail. She went on and on and on, so….”
There are others however who stand firm in Holmes’ corner. Venture capitalist Tim Draper was not only a family friend of Holmes but was also one of the first investors in Theranos. When asked by a CNBC news anchor back in 2016: “you don’t think she is the victim in all this?”, Draper replied: “absolutely … she has been totally attacked”. He went on to say: “Elizabeth Holmes is a great example of maybe why the women are so frustrated. She is a woman entrepreneur who built a fabulous company, did great things for consumers and she got attacked,”.
Draper is not on his own. During a debate titled ‘Why have male CEOs, who promised the moon and failed, not been prosecuted?’, the former CEO of Reddit, Ellen Pao, who now works to fight gender discrimination in tech, offered her view on Holmes and says sexism is partially to blame: “So when you see which CEOs get to continue to wreak havoc on consumers and in the market, it's people who look like the venture capitalists, who are mostly white men”.
It worth recognising that former prosecutors have given several reasons why Holmes’ case is distinct in relation to other disgraced CEOs. It’s argued that her behaviour was particularly shocking: “she had a miracle machine, and prosecutors say it barely did anything at all,” and that “being a biotech company in the health care world raised the stakes.” … “Another reason Holmes was charged was prosecutors say they have evidence that she acted intentionally, which is sometimes hard to find in a fraud case.”
Female Icon or Female Anti-hero?
Holmes had dreams of a purposeful life – one where she could become rich whilst making the world a better place. She found herself as a high-profile woman in a male–dominated arena, so it’s to be expected that her climb to the top would have provided an encouraging boost for other females.
Holmes saw herself as a positive role model for young girls. In 2015 she won Glamour magazine’s Woman of the Year Award, and in her acceptance, speech said: "I wanted to take a minute to say, especially to the young women in the room here, do everything you can to be the best in science, in math, in engineering. It's our actions that will determine this new stereotype around women being the best in science and technology and engineering. And it's that that our little girls will see when they start to think about who do they want to be when they grow up."
Michal Lev-ram writing for Fortune magazine comments on Holmes’ attendance at the TechWomen event: “she used the spotlight to launch a new Twitter campaign, called #IronSisters, and to call on every woman in the room to commit to helping 100 other women upon return to their home countries. …Her inspiration? None other than the Iron Lady herself—one of Britain’s most polarizing figures, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.…’Every time you see a glass ceiling there’s an ‘iron woman’ underneath it,’ Holmes told the women at the summit.”
On considering Holmes as a mentor, former Theranos employee and later company whistleblower, Erica Cheung, said: “In a way I idolized her, based on the little I had read — for being a woman in the sciences, being a woman in tech, the fact that she started her own company — that really got me excited … She was a really good idol to have.”
The fall of Holmes appears to be having an impact on how women are perceived in relation to high profile professional work. Journalist Ann Friedman lamented: “At high-profile conferences and in dozens of glowing write-ups, Holmes was held up as a model for what happens when ambitious businesswomen gain an unprecedented level of investment and trust. To our great detriment, because of the charges against her, the world may have an answer: They fake it. And now it’ll be that much harder for the rest of us to make it.”
In an article titled, ‘When will investors stop asking female founders about Elizabeth Holmes?’ Julia Cheek, a female founder said: “with so few women running venture-backed companies, one "bad actor" can loom large.”
Writing for the The New York Times Erin Griffith, commented: “One thing I heard over and over was just disappointment that this person who was held up as such a shining example for women in tech turned out to be an accused fraud. Everyone wanted the next Steve Jobs to be a smart young woman so badly that a lot of them overlooked obvious red flags. The impact of that is still being felt.”
Kira Bindrim, editor for Quartz At Work, said: “Yet Holmes never stopped being captivating, first as a visionary, and later as a rare public example of a female leader brought low by her ego. There is something spectacular about watching her ignore, override, or shout down dozens of male voices (offering measured, valuable advice) in favor of steamrolling ahead. There is something fascinating about seeing her break through the glass ceiling by using others as battering rams. To be sure, Holmes is no role model—she’s more like the Cruella de Vil of Silicon Valley—but her chutzpah does command a certain dumbfounded respect.”
Marianne Cooper, a sociologist at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, says the story of Holmes: "can actually serve to reconfirm broader cultural beliefs that are out there that women aren't quite the right fit for senior leadership or certain kinds of senior leadership positions."
Final thoughts
Some writers prefer to play down the gender aspect. Writing for Forbes, executive coach Hanna Hart states that Holmes’ “story tells us more about the toxic myth of individualism, greed and hubris than it does about women in leadership.” However, quoted in Elle magazine, author Maria Konnikova, suggests “Female con artists are incredibly underreported … Insofar as people don’t want to admit they’ve been taken advantage of, they never want to admit to having fallen for a female con artist.”
In her article, Hart signed off saying: “The remedy is not to stop calling out the behavior of women. At its best, feminism, gender parity and fairness are not about holding women to lower standards, but about holding everyone—women and men—to a high standard of behavior.”
It has been put forward that Holmes’ behaviour is an example of “noble cause corruption” because she believed that her lying was for the greater good. As her trial comes to its conclusion, it’s difficult to escape the fact that Holmes being female is an important part of this story. Whilst being a female in a male-dominated area no doubt comes with its challenges, it’s fair to say her rise to iconic female businesswoman and STEM hero seemed to benefit greatly from the cultural desire to see a female Steve Jobs. Holmes encouraged young women: “to be the best in STEM” to determine “new stereotypes around women”. She is now looking at up to 20 years in prison. Be careful what you wish for.
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Disclaimer: This article is for information purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy, legal advice, or other professional opinion. Never disregard such advice because of this article or anything else you have read from the Centre for Male Psychology. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of, or are endorsed by, The Centre for Male Psychology, and we cannot be held responsible for these views. Read our full disclaimer here.
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