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Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

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Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#151

Post by DaniFong »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #139
zasz wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a horrible and illogical assumption to make. Stereotype threat is shown to exist for white males. There is a stereotype that white people are less athletic than black people. If you prime white males by reminding them of the stereotype that they cannot perform well athletically, they will do worse. Source: pages 8-11, Whistling Vivaldi, by Stanford professor and stereotype threat researcher Claude Steele. Ste…

There is a stereotype that white people are less athletic than black people. All else held equal, this would indeed make white men inferior athletes to black men, as I acknowledge in my response to danifong. I didn't declare women as having "universally inferior psyches", I declared women as being potentially inferior in job-related tasks on the assumption that stereotype threat applies to those tasks in addition to…

Yeah, sure, a group performs worse under discrimination; must be something wrong with them...

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#152

Post by sunahsuh »

Mz wrote: post #150
sunahsuh wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an inadequate measure, and what I meant is that in that dimension, men still have it better (I suppose in my attempt to be pithy, I opened myself up for misinterpretation). Economics is a metric that's relatively easy to measure as opposed to personal happiness and so it's a yardstick we can look at that's not unrelated (as a grad student that left a good tech job for school, I can say not having to stress abou…

It's a complex topic, which I suspect cannot be done justice in a post on HN. I am currently being evicted. My mother has informed me that due to my father's medical situation, I am not welcome to come home again. My two adult, unemployed special needs sons still live with me. I am deeply in debt and in very serious trouble. In some sense, I suppose I probably look like "the poster child" for all the financial issues…

Thank you so much for sharing your story. It's never simple and every story is unique and rich in its own details.

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#153

Post by drumdance »

jp_sc wrote: post #45
yummyfajitas wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of what you say is specific to women. As a former academic, I was told that a startup is a legitimate career path precisely once (in a grad student seminar, by Stephen Wolfram). Plenty of men are stuck in the same treadmills you describe, and there are many complaints that the grad school and finance treadmills also have too few women. I don't think Trunk is asserting that encouraging women to do startups "co-op…

Because she think women are more happy by marrying and having kids. She is happier that way so she assume all women are the same.

She has written very candidly about how uneven her personal life is. In particular she's written about the research arguing that having children lowers overall happiness for both men and women (but particularly women).

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#154

Post by drumdance »

roguecoder wrote: post #135
Cl4rity wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"However, the fact that the patterns of behavior aren't random does clue you in that there are systemic factors involved, which can be analyzed and tested." That's exactly what I was going to say. With regards to the article, everyone can bash Penelope Trunk all they want, but the fact remains that she's right. As an entrepreneur and adviser, she is correct. People are always complaining about the lack of women in ce…

Expecting women to serve as brood mares sounds pretty sexist to me, no matter how you want to dress it up.

Troll. He didn't say women should be brood mares. He did point out that biological differences aren't just physical. They extend to include the desire to have children.

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#155

Post by DaniFong »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #138
DaniFong wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't follow at all; and is phrased in a completely insensitive way. If you want to have a civilized conversation, stop that. Boys/Men are also susceptible to stereotype threat. The priming with race is well known. They are also especially susceptible if they are primed with an "immutable talent" over "hard work = success" lesson, and then undertake a very difficult task. Boys struggle with this, and perform m…

That doesn't follow at all; and is phrased in a completely insensitive way. If you want to have a civilized conversation, stop that. Demanding that certain ideas be phrased in a politically correct way only serves the purpose of making it more difficult to express those ideas. If your goal is to suppress dissent that is valuable, but not if your goal is to find the truth. What is your goal? If men are prone to stereo…

If your goal were to find truth your arguments would be more well reasoned. I can't ascribe your phrasing to anything other than sloppiness or a desire to incite controversy.

To my knowledge we haven't found a single demographic group immune to stereotype threat. I suppose one could argue under your tortured semantics that they are all inferior to one another under different forms of discrimination, but what is the point?

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#156

Post by drumdance »

Mz wrote: post #123

It's highly likely that I will regret posting this, but I just find this woman annoying (and her ideas stupid -- and this is not the first piece of hers that made me feel this way). I don't view myself as a "feminist". To me, "feminist" means "women who want to pursue career/personal fulfillment at the expense of their children ". I wanted a career but when push came to shove, I ended up doing the full-time mom thing…

Your story begs the question: why didn't the father rise to the occasion instead? You give excuses for him, but is that not free will too? Would he not also have liked both family and a career?

And BTW Penelope has special needs kids too.

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#157

Post by [deleted] »

danilocampos wrote: post #133
Mz wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very much an "out of the box" thinker and rarely fit in. So I don't think that explains it. To me, sheer stupidity is a likelier explanation. Combined with not understanding how fortunate she is. I've spent quite a lot of time over the years reading books on "feminist"-related topics, etc. I fundamentally disagree with the strong emphasis put on promoting women's careers (at the expense of children -- America is…

> To me, sheer stupidity is a likelier explanation. I mean, I was trying to make that point obliquely (and somewhat more charitably), but yeah, basically. > Combined with not understanding how fortunate she is. To be sure, Penelope seems a bit oblivious to her privilege. It's nice when you have an ex-husband who's stand-up enough to do his share of the parenting. It's extra-nice when you can hoodwink the investors of…

[deleted]

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#158

Post by drumdance »

danilocampos wrote: post #133
Mz wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very much an "out of the box" thinker and rarely fit in. So I don't think that explains it. To me, sheer stupidity is a likelier explanation. Combined with not understanding how fortunate she is. I've spent quite a lot of time over the years reading books on "feminist"-related topics, etc. I fundamentally disagree with the strong emphasis put on promoting women's careers (at the expense of children -- America is…

> To me, sheer stupidity is a likelier explanation. I mean, I was trying to make that point obliquely (and somewhat more charitably), but yeah, basically. > Combined with not understanding how fortunate she is. To be sure, Penelope seems a bit oblivious to her privilege. It's nice when you have an ex-husband who's stand-up enough to do his share of the parenting. It's extra-nice when you can hoodwink the investors of…

She was also repeatedly sexually assaulted by her father. Some privilege.

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#159

Post by drumdance »

kenjackson wrote: post #68

Why doesn't her advice apply to men? Why isn't the title of her article, "Stop encouraging young bright males interested in SW from doing startups"? It's just interesting that it's fine to push men into potentially lucrative careers, but do the same for women and then there's tons of controversy. She tries to offer a counterargument w/ what she's thinks is absurd: "Men could change the world by staying home with thei…

She's written similar things. For example, that Silicon Valley is overrated, grad school is overrated, New York is overrated and especially that pursuing art over commerce usually sucks.

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#160

Post by einhverfr »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #31
DaniFong wrote: post #21

There are many women, myself included, who have directly benefited from the message that I could (if not, should ) do a startup. I was previously on an academic treadmill. It was more or less assumed that if you were capable, you wanted to be a professor. It took awhile before I could really see the pros/cons of tying my research to that particular structure. I think a lot of women -- highly competent women -- are st…

I would really love to see some research on this topic, because I would love to know if that is really that different from men. Growing up, I was told many options about what I could do: Founder was never one of them. It wasn't until I took stock and looked around at my corporate career that I decided it wasn't working for me. And that doesn't sound too different from your experience. I want my daughters to have ever…

Growing up, I was told many options about what I could do: Founder was never one of them.

I agree. I don't want to founder ;-) But most businesses fail when founders founder, right?

Sorry for the tasteless play on words. But who knows maybe it inspires someone somewhere.

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