Welcome to the Broad Experience, the show about women, the workplace and success.

I'm Ashley Milne Tite.

This week we're looking at a topic that's being hotly debated at the moment,

women and technology and why so few women work in this sector.

Three quarters of the technology workforce is male,

yet women are avid users of technology, especially social media.

We start with Vivek Wadhwa in Silicon Valley.

Vivek began his career as a computer programmer,

but now heads academics and innovation at Singularity University

and as a fellow at Stanford Law School.

He studies entrepreneurship.

Two years ago, he was at a technology conference with his wife when she pointed something out.

She said to me, Vivek, do you notice that we haven't seen any women on stage?

And she was right.

There were only two women or three women who had been on stage, and one of them was a circus performer.

And it occurred to me that something is wrong over here, something is missing.

So he started researching the topic and writing about it.

He was not prepared for what came next.

A lot of men in the industry and the venture capital community were furious.

The personal attacks, the nasty emails, I mean, it was just a barrage of negative, nasty,

you know, horrible, you know, emails and commentary.

A couple of my VC friends told me about comments that their partners have been making, saying,

...