Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors • Hacker News Board

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#71

Post by saberdancer » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 2:06 PM UTC

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #38

adflux wrote: post #12

As long as there aren't as much women studying all kinds of engineering, you're going to see disparaties in the workforce. Lets stop trying to force equal distribution but rather equal opportunity. Funny thing to see is that as a country becomes MORE developed, women tend to be LESS inclined to attend STEM studies.

> Funny thing to see is that as a country becomes MORE developed, women tend to be LESS inclined to attend STEM studies. Stem jobs are relatively shitty jobs... paid well, but work schedule can be relatively screwed up. If you add enterpreneurship to that, it makes the work-life balance even worse. Women on average prefer better work-life balance, and men prefer careers where they can get higher and earn more. In som…

Exactly this, but this points toward the conclusion that equality is going to be hard to achieve as men and women have different goals and ambitions.

When you remove the "survival" aspect of going to highly paid STEM job you get women who choose less technical jobs and huge disparity in number of women in tech.

Personally I don't think that is an issue at all but I feel I am in the minority, at least when we look at the decision making level.

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#72

Post by Guthur » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 2:07 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #60

judge2020 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem - their results show a bias against white and/or male entrepreneurs in this study on gender and race, yet don't point this out and suggest that we should look for negative female/asian bias elsewhere. The results speak for themselves but the abstract and mindset is indicative of what they were really looking for in the first place.

> yet don't point this out and suggest that we should look for negative female/asian bias elsewhere I’m confused, the study does suggest we look for anti-female bias elsewhere. Indeed, the authors seem to argue that it must exist elsewhere, and more powerfully so in order to explain the gender gap.

I think the point is that there is a bias against males and white reducing the the chance of equity of opportunity, and this seem to be because the focus is consistently on equality of outcome.

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#73

Post by rin72ka » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

hkt wrote: post #13

msoad wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will get even more India focused because of the latest laws.

Which are? (non-american here so I don't know about your immigration system)

Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act - to eliminate the 7% per country-cap on green card applicants, among other things, which would have ended the painfully long wait for thousands of green card hopefuls.

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#74

Post by rosmax_1337 » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

This is not surprising to me. For all I've seen "non-white non-male" is generally given priority in all kinds of areas, certainly in start-up interest. It's considered "hip" to associate with these "non-white non-male" groups, irregardless of their actual performance in whatever area they were prioritized. (To a certain extent at least, they can't be completely nonperforming) Being able to show that you have included these groups in whatever way your organization works, gives you advantages in press situations foremost, but also in other ways such as meeting arbitrary quotas set by higher-ups and HR dept.s in your organization.

This is however, given two equal applications. Such as this study shows. I would be knocking down open doors to state that white men are over represented in the "STEM/Entrepreneurship" areas. What needs to be addressed is what the underlying cause is to this over representation. For all I see there are two potential causes:

1) Non-white non-males are given less ability to grow in the "STEM/Entrepreneurship" fields as students and/or children by society. 2) White men are able to outperform those other groups by some inherent quality.

Worth noting is also that simply stating 2) as a potential cause of this difference is more or less a hatecrime in most settings, and academia would do well not to touch in attempting to work with that hypothesis if they wish to keep tenure and funding. Nevertheless, 1) seems to be partially disproved by studies just like the one above, showing that white men are in fact given less ability to grow in "STEM/Entrepreneurship" areas, as by the bias shown towards the Asian and Female applications.

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#75

Post by michaelt » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

jari_mustonen wrote: post #31

From abstract: ” Female entrepreneurs received 9% more interested replies than males pitching identical projects and Asians received 6% more than Whites. Our results suggest that investors do not discriminate against female or Asian entrepreneurs when evaluating unsolicited pitch emails and that future research on investor biases should focus on networks and in-person interactions.” In other words: The preferred resu…

> The preferred results were not found (females are oppressed) so we ignore wrong-think results (males seem to be)

It's true that any discrimination in favour of one group would be discrimination against the opposite.

But as a middle-class white guy at a big tech company, whose boss is a middle class white guy whose boss is a middle class white guy whose boss is a middle class white guy whose boss is a middle class white guy whose boss is a middle class white guy whose boss, the CEO, is a rich white guy... I don't feel very oppressed.

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#76

Post by maccard » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 2:09 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #9

maccard wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly how science should work. You can't perform a study, look at the data and pick a result that suits your bias. You're supposed to suggest a hypothesis, and conduct your experiment. If the results contradict your hypothesis, it doesn't mean the opposite of your hypothesis is true, simply that your hypothrsis was false, and that's ok. It's also more impressive that they have simply published their results…

So what if they had found bias, do they say “look we found bias!” Or do they do additional studies to make sure it’s not an aberration or improper methods?

Both. They publish and say "yes, we found bias on X, and our next study will verify via Y"

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#77

Post by sanp » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 2:10 PM UTC

ArkanExplorer wrote: post #10

Same thing with job applications: "In an attempt to increase workplace diversity, the Australian public service implemented a .. trial removing all mention of gender and ethnicity from applications. It was found that removing gender from thousands of applications made women less likely to advance through the recruitment process compared to cases where gender was visible. The trial found that a woman's name on an appl…

Funnily enough, there is more gender diversity in Indian tech companies (or local operations of US tech companies). See https://go.451research.com/women-in-tech-india-employment-tr...

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#78

Post by maccard » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

bluecalm wrote: post #18

maccard wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly how science should work. You can't perform a study, look at the data and pick a result that suits your bias. You're supposed to suggest a hypothesis, and conduct your experiment. If the results contradict your hypothesis, it doesn't mean the opposite of your hypothesis is true, simply that your hypothrsis was false, and that's ok. It's also more impressive that they have simply published their results…

So you think the data is only relevant to the hypothesis you decided it's relevant for before you collect it? "Have you seen the fire sir?" "I have only seen smoke" "But have you seen the fire?" "It's irrelevant because I was only looking for smoke!". I mean I know they teach it in naive introductory experiment design in some soft science departments but c'mon it's neither smart nor correct. If you need a separate ex…

> So you think the data is only relevant to the hypothesis you decided it's relevant for before you collect it

No, the hypothesis is only valid before the data is collected.

> Have you seen the fire sir?" "I have only seen smoke" "But have you seen the fire?" "It's irrelevant because I was only looking for smoke!".

It's actually more like:

"Have you seen fire at x?"

"There's smoke at Y"

All that means is that something is true about Y, not that x isn't on fire.

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#79

Post by lightgreen » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

eruci wrote: post #52

6% is within the margin of error. We're spending so much time and energy to quantify various 'biases' ; only to find there is no bias. This is good. We're finally living is a post-racial society with no specific group discrimination. Now if western societies can move on from affirmative action policies and all the other nonsense at the top of their daily agenda while China leaves them all in the dust.

> 6% is within the margin of error.

No it’s not. The article has confidence intervals and findings are statistically significant.

Unless you have some nonstandard definition of “margin of error”.

While I generally I agree with you, let’s not come to correct conclusion using incorrect premises, this approach won’t help anyone.

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#80

Post by sanp » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

rosmax_1337 wrote: post #74

This is not surprising to me. For all I've seen "non-white non-male" is generally given priority in all kinds of areas, certainly in start-up interest. It's considered "hip" to associate with these "non-white non-male" groups, irregardless of their actual performance in whatever area they were prioritized. (To a certain extent at least, they can't be completely nonperforming) Being able to show that you have included…

What is your basis for "white guys outperform other groups" in this specific scenario (entrepreneurship)? Perhaps VCs know that women and Asians outperform white guys and hence this bias.