XX Combinator

XX Combinator
terezan.tumblr.com

This is more about "Y Combinator for non coders" than it is about "Y Combinator for women". This is something I see a lot of - people with some experience that want to start a tech startup but want to hire out some developers to build it for them. Not that there is something inherently wrong with that - there just isn't anything gender specific about it either.

The problem, as the author mentioned, is primarily that the number of women taking up coding is disproportionate to the number of men that take up coding. Y Combinator's heavily male population is a reflection of the problem, not a cause.

I think the idea that women are somehow less capable of doing the "3-months in Silicon Valley" is harmful. I think that the (not directly) implied idea that it would be easier for men (men with families even) to do the startup dance on a string budget is harmful.

I think the idea that women just don't mature into people who are ready to tackle a startup until their 40s is harmful. I think that the idea that men are much more ready to tackle a startup in their 20s is harmful.

This whole article smacks of the idea that there is something fundamentally different about men and women and their capabilities at different points in their adult life. I think this idea is harmful.

I think these things are harmful, because I'd like to see the eradication of gender inequality as a social norm.

I suspect that while said differences may exist at this point in time, that they are cultural rather than physical in nature, and that if the goal is social equality, things like this do little more than reinforce cultural stereotypes about women and men.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very aware of the skew towards males in the tech world. There are a lot of reasons for that, almost all -- if not all -- of them cultural.

I assume that while only 7 founders have been female, that this isn't happening with 50% of applicants being female.

Perhaps doing a Y-Combinator style seed-funding ramen-profitable thing is only really appealing to people who are young. Perhaps we could use something like that for people who are older and have families and can't do the "drop everything for a few months in pursuit of this idea".

Perhaps.

  This whole article smacks of the idea that there is 
  something fundamentally different about men and women and 
  their capabilities at different points in their adult life. 
  I think this idea is harmful.

This whole article smacks of the idea that there is something fundamentally different about men and women and their capabilities at different points in their adult life

Men and women are fundamentally different, and research from a wide variety of fields continues to support that. I find it ridiculous to believe that even though evolution has so completely obviously shaped our bodies differently, the male and female minds are the same, despite mounds of evidence to the contrary, both scientific and experiential. A researcher would be mocked for making the claim that men and women have the exact same body, but since the mind is murkier and not as well understood, it's fine to claim that they're the same. This seems analogous to religious claims of miraculous healing, which always seem to affect something like cancer or headaches or something we can't see or touch. They never restore lost limbs or raise the dead. It's always in intangible areas we don't fully understand, and it seems for now that the belief that men and women aren't fundamentally different in their mental and psychological processes can enjoy the same safe haven.

Sorry for the rant, but it's always just struck me as the perfect example of starting with your conclusion (driven by political correctness), and then trying in vain to make the evidence fit the theory. I don't see how any honest researcher could just follow the evidence and determine that men and women are "fundamentally" the same.

Now, I agree that the eradication of gender inequality (in the sense of value) as a social norm is a worthy goal, but starting from the foundation of falsehood is the wrong approach.