Not (necessarily) dudebros.

For a number of reasons, last week’s Twitter-propelled implosion of former Business Insider CTO Pax Dickinson was fascinating to watch. While Business Insider hasn’t suffered much from its decision to let Dickinson be a part of its team, his tenure and long history of purported “performance art” is just one example of how dudebro culture has powered—and stunted—the tech industry for the past decade.

What, exactly, is a dudebro? Definitions vary. In the tech industry, dudebros are the loudest guys in the room, the ones who lead meetings and close VC deals. They tend to be labeled by their peers (often aspiring dudebros) as “mavericks,” leaders with extreme vision and passion. They make things happen. They get stuff done.

But they do it, in part, by marginalizing everyone who isn’t a dudebro: showcasing and defending culturally insensitive apps at conferences, turning a blind eye to the clear and persistent gender disparity in the industry and, at their dudebro-iest heights, insisting that the American tech world is a meritocracy when it clearly isn’t. This mindset is accepted—and encouraged—in all aspects of tech, from product creation to programming (or brogramming). And it’s a problem. Because although the tech industry is seemingly steered by dudebros, it includes women whose opinions, work and innovations are diminished by it.

But as our cultural landscape changes, tech’s consumers and its drivers of industry are changing as well. If left unaddressed, the myopia of dudebro culture may damage more than an industry’s reputation—it has the potential to hurt its bottom line.

The art of marketing tech to women

Consumer tech is big business, but it’s even bigger for women: an article appearing on The Atlantic last year lists women as leading tech adoption in Internet usage, GPS, e-readers, Skype and all Internet-enabled devices. Women are using more devices, making more buying decisions for themselves and their families, and communicating with more people—including women—with their tech.

So how are tech marketers capitalizing on their biggest consumer demographic? Not gracefully. According to the tech world, women use their email accounts primarily to chat about knitting, dates and mani-pedis; and women who might be looking for the right laptop are little more than computer-illiterate moms who just need an Internet machine. It’s tough to imagine women creating ads like these; it’s even tougher to imagine women at Google or Samsung allowing ads like these to represent their brands.