In October 2018, Claire Stapleton, then a marketing manager at Google and a mother living in New York, helped organize what became known as the Women's Walkout — a protest over the company's handling of sexual harassment claims, according to her account in an adapted excerpt from her book Don't Be Evil published by WIRED. Stapleton described how a single Google Group she created became the organizing engine for the demonstration.
An Email That Started It All
Stapleton started a Google Group named "womens-walk." The Saturday after launching it, she woke at 6 a.m. and opened her laptop before her son Malcolm stirred, she wrote. Her inbox was filled with weekend emails from her manager, Marion, about a "big push" involving Article 13, a piece of EU legislation that would hold platforms liable for user-generated content. Stapleton, however, was consumed by the walkout; when she refreshed the Google Group tab, an "avalanche of names" had joined, most of them strangers, according to her account.
She typed an email from her own account with her name fully attached. It read:
From: Claire Stapleton Sat, Oct 27, 2018 at 6:46 am To: womens-walk rolls up sleeves welcome to ground zero of the google women’s walkout / a day without women (naming/branding tbd). couple of open Q’s for the group (200 of us and counting!) as we start to formulate the statement of purpose and next steps: what do you hope this collective action accomplishes (could be what we express/communicate to leadership, could be an action leadership agrees to take, could be a more existential cultural change we set into motion)? put another way: why are you here? thoughts on when we should do it? mindful of giving us enough time to make this as global, inclusive, and big as we can while also capitalizing on the rage-buzz-momentum we have flowing right now. there’s also the US midterms (a week from Tuesday) to consider. please forward to friends who’d be interested in getting involved. –claire
Replies came in all weekend, according to Stapleton. People wrote under their real names, and "the anonymity cloak was gone." The "I'm so fucking mad" emails gave way to discussions of culture and then strategy, she wrote.
A Five-Day Timeline to the Walkout
The group made its first decision almost immediately: the walkout would be Thursday, November 1 — just five days after the email. The US midterms were set for November 6, and waiting would "dilute everything, especially our greatest asset: rage," Stapleton wrote.
She described the next week as unlike any other at Google. Article 13 momentarily faded from her workload, replaced by "a slate of uninspired Halloween tweets" — special-effects makeup tutorials and a stop-motion pumpkin. The contrast between that work and the walkout planning, with its "electricity and urgency," felt "almost psychedelic," she wrote.
A Project Manager and the Hub-and-Spoke Model
A project manager named Tanuja reached out to help, according to Stapleton. They met in a conference room in her building. Tanuja was "hyper-organized" and "ready to project-manage the hell out of this," Stapleton wrote. In 45 minutes, they outlined a rough plan and built an internal site based on a "hub and spoke" model, with local leads in every office, each customizing the day.
Key Dates in the Walkout Plan
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Oct. 27, 2018 | Stapleton sent the organizing email; the group counted "200 of us and counting." |
| Oct. 27–28, 2018 | Replies arrived all weekend; the group settled on November 1. |
| Nov. 1, 2018 | Walkout date, five days after the initial email. |
| Nov. 6, 2018 | US midterms, cited as a reason to move quickly. |
Stapleton's excerpt also drew on her time at YouTube, where she said she learned that Google's lobbying against Article 13 was "counter to every brand goal" the company had set. "If Google wanted this law overturned so badly, Article 13 was probably good for the world," she wrote. The company, she argued, wanted "a frictionless, consequence-free internet" and the consolidation of power that came with it.
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