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Women Don't Want To Run Startups Because They'd Rather Have Children

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Re: Women Don't Want To Run Startups Because They'd Rather Have Children

#52

The internet has actually enabled a whole generation of female entrepreneurs to 'do their start-up thing' and have children to boot. It's the perfect tool to have a company and be around the house all day long (or as long as you want to be), I'm not exactly female but I would have found it very hard to decide for children if I had been a person with a 9 to 5 job. If you and your spouse can work together on a start-up…

Agreed. If you have a husband with a job, you don't have to starve to death. Starting a start-up is safer.

Theoretically if you're a man with a wife with a job, you can do the same thing... except there are a lot fewer wives that are willing to do that than husbands.

Re: Women Don't Want To Run Startups Because They'd Rather Have Children

#53
post #8

As a woman (and someone who is friends with the Brazen peeps) this is highly insulting. It assumes that all women want to have children, that men are mostly absent/dismissive in their children's lives (if they have them), and insinuates that women just aren't biologically fit to run a company. I know Penelope has kind of made a name for herself in saying things that shock people, so I wouldn't doubt that this is in t…

Apparently it only took 16 minutes for the take-offense-out-of-context strawman to rear its ugly head. Did you even read beyond the headline? The author doesn't say "all women" to the point that a single counterexample disproves the hypothesis. Not only does the auther qualify statements such as "fewer women" but any such analysis is a statistical study of a group. It says something about a group and similar groups b…

The article says "And I’m not even going to go into the idea of women having a startup with young kids. It is absolutely untenable. The women I know who do this have lost their companies or their marriages or both. And there is no woman running a startup with young kids, who, behind closed doors, would recommend this life to anyone." How much more contet do you want?

Re: Women Don't Want To Run Startups Because They'd Rather Have Children

#54

I do wish women with a chip on their shoulders would stop getting all aggro about observations that are not prescriptions . You saying "that's not true" is just as globalizing as "this is true." There is just something about women and product businesses that's weird. I recently put on a conference about bootstrapping paying products only, and I looked for ages to find a single woman bootstrapper like myself. They can…

There are way more women running tech startups that have VC funding than there are with bootstrapping.

Really? I'm not so sure. Perhaps it is just hard to hear about the women that are bootstrapping tech companies. Companies that are being bootstrapped typically are pre-traction, and have not received the buzz in the tech media that comes with raising a funding round.

Re: Women Don't Want To Run Startups Because They'd Rather Have Children

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, women are more risk averse... but why is that? Is it possible it cycles back to the same instinctual genealogical pulls to continue the bloodline?

An evolutionary argument could be made that it's because a man that does extremely risky things (like, say, sleeping with every woman that he is able to) can spread his genes far and wide as a reward for such behavior (he'll have a lot of children). Whereas a woman engaging in the same behaviors can only be have one child every nine months, and for most of human history, every pregnancy carried with it a high risk of…

Also, aren't women the population bottlenecks? A population's growth is constrained by the number of fertile women, and so, it's prudent that, for the continuation of a species, that women be more risk averse to prevent the species from dying off altogether.

Re: Women Don't Want To Run Startups Because They'd Rather Have Children

#58
post #54

I do wish women with a chip on their shoulders would stop getting all aggro about observations that are not prescriptions . You saying "that's not true" is just as globalizing as "this is true." There is just something about women and product businesses that's weird. I recently put on a conference about bootstrapping paying products only, and I looked for ages to find a single woman bootstrapper like myself. They can…

There are way more women running tech startups that have VC funding than there are with bootstrapping. Really? I'm not so sure. Perhaps it is just hard to hear about the women that are bootstrapping tech companies. Companies that are being bootstrapped typically are pre-traction, and have not received the buzz in the tech media that comes with raising a funding round.

indeed. conider this:

- for the last several years women are lunching companies at twice the rate of men http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870468860457512...

- only 8% of founders in startups that get VC funding are women -- http://www.blackweb20.com/2010/08/10/women-only-8-of-interne...

Re: Women Don't Want To Run Startups Because They'd Rather Have Children

#59
post #10

I think this post is skipping the crucial factor in all this. It's not about children--at least not directly. It's about risk. Several years ago I read an article that analyzed the work preferences of the genders. It demonstrably showed that: - Men are more likely to do riskier jobs; - Men are more likely to travel further to work (including internationally); - Women tend to choose that are closer to home. Basically…

you're describing the stereotype about risk aversion, not the reality.

in actuality women have been starting up companies at twice the rate of men for the last several years http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870468860457512...

Re: Women Don't Want To Run Startups Because They'd Rather Have Children

#60

I do wish women with a chip on their shoulders would stop getting all aggro about observations that are not prescriptions . You saying "that's not true" is just as globalizing as "this is true." There is just something about women and product businesses that's weird. I recently put on a conference about bootstrapping paying products only, and I looked for ages to find a single woman bootstrapper like myself. They can…

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