Stop Telling Women To Do Startups • Hacker News Board

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#161

Post by drumdance » Mon, Dec 12, 2011, 12:33 AM UTC

colevscode wrote: post #96

araneae wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is the 21st century. Are we really still talking about "natural imperatives"? I do think that "imperative" is a little strong. But males are biologically different from females in all species, and in all species this translates into behavioral differences. There's no such thing as a species where males and females don't show behavioral differences, and in particular in regards to mating behavior and reproductio…

The biology argument is an affront to the spirit of entrepreneurialism. There's nothing natural about starting a company. Often it requires ignoring social needs and occasionally one's health. What about the need for sleep? I don't often read comments compelling founders to heed that biological requirement.

He's not saying that women are doomed to fail. He's just pointing out that they often make different choices than men, and that many of those choices are likely rooted in biology.

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#162

Post by einhverfr » Mon, Dec 12, 2011, 12:36 AM UTC

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.

I didn't read it that way at all. I read her as saying "we know we can do it, so if we aren't doing it, we don't want to be doing it, so leave us alone."

One thing I have noticed in open source work is that men tend to be willing to take on more risk than women when it comes to projects. Computer development personnel are, in the corporate world, about 1/3 women but less than one out of fifty developers in open source is a woman. Those women who are in open source tend to get there through a paying job, while for men, we tend to possibly find a job through work in open source.

What this tells me is that women are choosing different approaches and different paths. It's not that they can't. It's that they don't want to.

Another complaint I have heard over and over from women in open source is that there is nothing more annoying than being asked over and over "so what do we need to do to attract more women into our field?" There is a similar sense of frustration expressed in the article.

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#163

Post by drumdance » Mon, Dec 12, 2011, 12:38 AM UTC

neilk wrote: post #19

AznHisoka wrote: post #2

I love Penelope Trunk and her political incorrectness. Her advice may always be controversial, but she's never afraid to speak her mind. And she's right too about women. Their natural imperative is to raise children and nurture them - not to do startups. Most also want the social companionship from friends/family as they raise children (which is missing today as most people don't live near extended family), but they…

This might have been just a poor choice of words, but beware the naturalistic fallacy. Trunk believes that more women are choosing not to do startups. That's not exactly the same thing as saying it's their "natural imperative". Because then those who choose otherwise are being "unnatural". Also, the "natural imperative" thing implies that our current state of affairs is somehow the only possibility. Maybe the way inv…

Yes, but she addresses this by pointing out that women now outperform men in many measures, including college, law school, med school and even income in their twenties. Is it possible that many women don't choose startups for the same reason many men don't choose nursing?

It's demeaning to suggest that women who choose not to do startups lack free will.

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#164

Post by einhverfr » Mon, Dec 12, 2011, 12:42 AM UTC

russell wrote: post #112

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #70

There are a lot of hidden prejudices both in this article and in the entire discussion around women in technology and the startup world. I have a startup. I love startups. So should everybody else love startups too? Not at all. A more direct question: roughly 50% of people are females. Should 50% of startup founders be female? I don't think so, but I find it difficult to continue the conversation past this conclusion…

In this discussion startup = hi-tech/software/web. But if you step back and think profit making business, women are not under-represented. An article linked to in the original post says that 44% of all business are partially ow wholly women owned. If you include part-time profit making business, I suspect most are women owned. Some anecdotal data points from my family: my ex runs a daycare that provides her a nice in…

Agreed. In fact I would argue two things at least historicaly in the US:

1) Men tend to take risks more than women.

2) Women tend to focus more on family than men.

Additionally, I would add, that it's likely that the bulk of businesses owned at any given time in history, counting part-time businesses have always been owned by women. Indeed the great influx of women into the work force in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had to do with industrial processes undermining their businesses!

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#165

Post by roguecoder » Mon, Dec 12, 2011, 12:51 AM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #119

djtriptych wrote: post #72

The reason we need women doing startups is (as corroborated by the author's own argument) that women think differently than men do in many ways, and we need all kinds of ways of thinking amongst people who are creating on the web.

Are female entrepreneurs more successful than males? What does that imply about what is in undersupply?

http://www.illuminate.com/whitepaper/ explores this question, and finds that though they have fewer resources than man-led start ups, woman-led start ups have lower rates of failure. A complete answer probably depends on what definition of "success" is adopted.

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#166

Post by pilgrim689 » Mon, Dec 12, 2011, 1:01 AM UTC

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…

I have never seen someone encouraging young bright males specifically into starting a business. The words we hear target "bright people", "bring minds", sure, but never "bright males" or "bright men".

We either see people saying "people should try running a startup" or "women should try running a startup". Thus, the author's point is that the latter is unnecessary because the former covers both bases.

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#167

Post by einhverfr » Mon, Dec 12, 2011, 1:02 AM UTC

roguecoder wrote: post #131

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…

Any feminism I could subscribe to would include valuing childcare, teaching the skills early to everyone explicitly, and eventually re-integrating children into day-to-day life. I get incredibly frustrated with all my friends who hate ever being around children, such that I can't have over my fiends with kids and my friends without at the same time. I was always around children growing up, and it was a part of life.…

eventually re-integrating children into day-to-day life

What's not to like about our current approach of factory farming children?

In my view the future (and I hate to say this on a VC's site) is in family-run micro-businesses, not startups. Both parents work from home at least part of the time (one or both may have part or even full-time jobs elsewhere), integrate child care into the realities of this life. Sure this won't work in every field but it will work in many.

The thing is by integrating everything as you put it, this tradeoff doesn't have to happen. However making that integration happen requires challenging our ideas of the role of capital and labor in our society.

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#168

Post by Mz » Mon, Dec 12, 2011, 1:05 AM UTC

drumdance wrote: post #156

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.

I am not "giving excuses for him".

I was sexually abused by two relatives as a child. So I was not easy to deal with when I was younger. For one, I did not manage to be faithful to the man. He knew that and put up with my shit for two decades anyway, in part for the sake of the children. He never threw that in my face. He was very decent and compassionate about the whole thing. Plenty of men would have assaulted me for it.

His devotion to his career was not somehow all bad. He was career military and we never lived in fear of him being RIFFED at a time when a RIF was ongoing. Our marriage ended up being very traditional, a throw-back to the 50's. I would have preferred something that gave me more freedom, but I did always appreciate that he was a good provider, he was not a drug addict or alcoholic, and he never hit me. That may sound like a low standard, but it beats the molestation, rape and being slapped around by a drug addict that constituted parts of my childhood.

I have taken a class on homelessness and done volunteer work at a homeless shelter. The kind of intractable problems I have and my children have are exactly the kind of thing that leads one to homelessness. My spouse's military career, with excellent free medical benefits, was a big part of why we had a relatively stable middle-class lifestyle in spite of me and our oldest son having a life-threatening, very expensive medical condition which went undiagnosed for many years.

Feel free to talk trash about me, as I am here and choosing to air my dirty laundry. Please refrain from jumping to ugly conclusion about my ex. He is a decent man and he is not here to speak for himself. It's a rather ugly tactic.

Also, the odds are really high that Penelope Trunk's children are not half as challenging as mine. It's why I have a parenting site: For some years, my advice on how to deal humanely and effectively with extremely challenging children was valued in some circles, circles that included Harvard graduates and the like who still found themselves at wit's end. There is a lot more support for that on the web these days, but when I was actively engaged in such online communities, I was frequently the only individual in the discussion that had much in the way of meaty, substantive feedback for the most challenging situations.

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#169

Post by yummyfajitas » Mon, Dec 12, 2011, 1:09 AM UTC

DaniFong wrote: post #155

yummyfajitas wrote: post #138

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. 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 p…

...we haven't found a single demographic group immune to stereotype threat.

This is a straw man. I never claimed any group was immune to stereotype threat.

You claimed stereotype threat affects some groups more than others in some areas. Your specific example was women are affected by it in math. I pointed out that if this generalizes beyond the GRE, and if men and women's abilities are equal absent stereotype threat, the result is that women would be inferior to men in math-related jobs.

You can claim my arguments poorly reasoned all you want, but you still haven't pointed out any flaws in them. All you did was demand I not be "insensitive" and attack straw men.

I just realized I've had this conversation before, not going to waste my time further. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3256492

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#170

Post by yummyfajitas » Mon, Dec 12, 2011, 1:14 AM UTC

DaniFong wrote: post #151

yummyfajitas wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

According to you, the simple non-discriminatory act of putting "Select one: Male [ ] Female [ ]" on a math test is sufficient to reduce female performance.

The value judgments ("something wrong with them") are something you fabricated, not something from my post.