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Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

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Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#171

Post by gruseom »

roguecoder wrote: post #141
gruseom wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Submissive" is pejorative. You might as well say "bitch" (edit: almost). I mightn't have picked up on this if he hadn't also said " everything difficult and challenging". I actually agree with the point about feminism being to some extent a prejudice of its own that makes some women feel bad about wanting what they want. But they're figuring it out. We're, what, 50 years into this? That's lightning-fast change. It's…

The problem is that we gave women more options without actually dismantling patriarchy. We just gave them the option to join in men's crappy patriarchal bargain, which still kind of sucks. If feminism had succeeded as many men as women would want to stay at home in a D/s relationship and raise the children, though I think there would also be Doms who'd want to stay home and raise children. As long as we think of "Sta…

I don't really agree. As many men as women will never want to stay at home and raise the children, unless the whole thing really is culturally constructed and biology has nought to do with it, which I think is naive and ideological.

If by D/s you mean domination and submission - I'll take love between equals, thanks.

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#172

Post by munin »

mml wrote: post #30
fennecfoxen wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. What's a startup business, or even a traditional career, going to get you in the end? Admiration? Adulation? Money money money? As most people with children will be able to tell you, all of those things are vapid and empty compared to spending time with your children . Perhaps many women choosing to stay home raising families instead of pursuing careers have found something more rewarding to do with their time.

You hit the nail on the head. My wife gets the dismissive smile and nod from career women whenever she answers their obligatory "what do you do for a living" question. This makes her feel bad for raising our children. This only lasts until I point out that these career women get the awesome privilege that men have enjoyed for hundreds of years: slaving away for some overseer, pushing paper in a cube and staring blank…

wow. if that's the world you live in, why have any children? :(

seriously, do you think that maybe different people are made happy by different things? i know men and women who have no interest in having a romantic relationship, let alone raising a family. do they occupy some horrible THX1148-style monochrome existence for fulfilling their lives by doing things?

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#173

Post by prodigal_erik »

mjijackson wrote: post #87

"If you are worried that women don’t feel capable of doing whatever they want, you can stop worrying." This comment from the article gets at the heart of what the author is trying to say. Behind the desire to single out women as a group that needs a special invitation to pursue a career doing startups are two assumptions: 1) that women actually want a career doing startups and 2) that they do not feel empowered to pu…

This is the thing that always bugs me about encouraging anyone (not just women) to become founders. The relentlessly resourceful, the ones who are equipped to succeed, were not waiting for encouragement or an invitation. (And no, I'm not claiming to be one of them, merely tempted while bereft of ideas with legs.)

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#174

Post by wpietri »

im3w1l wrote: post #115
wpietri wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come now. We know there's inequality, and we know there's bias. The question is always "is this particular outcome due to bias or some intrinsic difference?" When we honestly can't tell and the outcome is important, I think it's reasonable to proceed as if the problem is bias. First, because to just assume it's natural differences and be wrong means you're screwing up people's lives and supporting an unfair system. A…

Wouldn't the prudent thing be to give everyone equal opportunities, and then require solid science for every step away from that. For instance if you want to go on a campaign to specifically encourage women to make different choices than the ones they currently make, you should be pretty sure that what you are doing is helpful.

Sure. If it were easy to give everyone equal opportunities, that would be the right place to start.

As it is, we have a history of millennia of oppression of women. When my grandmother was born, women weren't even allowed to vote. Men and women didn't enroll in college in equal numbers until '87. Achieving equal opportunity is going to take a while. Until then, doing nothing isn't being fair, it's supporting an unfair system.

What makes it especially tricky is that outcomes influence opportunities. Female legislators and CEOs are still seen as anomalous by many, and that will continue until there are more of them.

A lot of women believe that they have been frequently discouraged from STEM jobs and leadership roles (see, e.g., http://people.mills.edu/spertus/Gender/why.html), so a counterbalancing public encouragement might go a long way to solving the problem.

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#175

Post by wpietri »

gruseom wrote: post #84
look_at_me wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now please excuse Thomas while he repeatedly hits refresh on his EVERYTHING stats until he gets his daily dose of narcissism. All comments Copyright © 2009, 2010, 2011 Thomas H. Ptacek, All Rights Reserved.

No, please no. Not the snide novelty swipe. You don't like something, have the guts to say it straight. But I do think TP was unfair to PT. She's saying things that a lot of strong, smart women I know would agree with. For example: For the most part, women are not complaining about the lack of VC funding in the world. They are complaining about the lack of jobs with flexible hours. That is so true of the women I know…

Most men aren't complaining about the lack of VC funding either, because most people don't care about doing a startup.

It's definitely not evidence that we've solve all gender bias issues in the high-tech startup world.

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#176

Post by wpietri »

kstenerud wrote: post #124
im3w1l wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the prudent thing be to give everyone equal opportunities, and then require solid science for every step away from that. For instance if you want to go on a campaign to specifically encourage women to make different choices than the ones they currently make, you should be pretty sure that what you are doing is helpful.

Right on! The last thing we need is more busybody do-gooders trying to fix something without sufficient evidence that it's even broken. What really gets my goat is how people willfully ignore or marginalize anyone in the "victim" group who doesn't toe the line. For example, look at the editor's note for this article: "Editor’s note: The following is a guest post by Penelope Trunk, writer and founder of Brazen Careeri…

You may not think there's sufficient evidence that there's something broken. In which case, you aren't obliged to help fix it. But unless you have strong evidence that things are working perfectly, then by your own standard you should stop interfering with people trying to fix the problems they see.

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#177

Post by wpietri »

burgerbrain wrote: post #24
JoachimSchipper wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [Women's] natural imperative is to raise children and nurture them This is the 21st century. Are we really still talking about "natural imperatives"? If nothing else, note that women are having fewer and fewer children, later and later - clearly, they are feeling this "natural imperative" less and less. Traditional gender roles are unfair to women wanting to have a career, unfair to men who want to stay home with t…

"Are we really still talking about "natural imperatives"?" I am puzzled by this sort of comment. There are certainly things that I do as a male that I consider to be built in behavior. I do not see any reason to think that women would not have similar.

What's natural isn't necessarily right; what's right isn't necessarily natural. Respectively those are the naturalistic fallacy and the moralistic fallacy.

The reason people object to the naturalistic fallacy in arguments on this topic is that it is typically used to argue for the status quo by people who benefit from the status quo.

If you would like to see an example of it in action, read the Texas Declaration of Causes of Secession and the Cornerstone speech. There you can see rich white people explaining how black people are natural slaves, unfit to any higher role in society. Which was certainly a convenient argument for them to make.

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#178

Post by natrius »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #97
DaniFong wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the cleanest experiments here would be those having to do with stereotype threat. For example, women asked to write down their gender (even just with a checkbox) before a math test at the GRE level score significantly worse. Asian women asked to also write down their race are inoculated against this effect. These women are "primed" with their stereotypes and it dramatically influences performance. Even asking…

It seems that if stereotype threat is real, and applies to more circumstances than just an examination, then this is truly compelling evidence that women really are inferior to men (in aggregate, individuals may vary of course). After all, a man and a woman of equal intrinsic ability may perform just as well under ideal circumstances, but the woman's performance is fragile. If the woman is reminded of her gender at l…

After reading through your other comments, I think I have an idea of what you're trying to say, and I think that you're correct. However, you've chosen an inartful way to phrase your argument that you know others will find abrasive. Tailoring your words to your audience isn't political correctness; it is communicating effectively, and it's something you should attempt to do if you care about getting your points across.

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#179

Post by DaniFong »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #169
DaniFong wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To be as explicit as possible: poor functioning as a result of discriminatory stereotypes is no evidence of innate inferiority, be it in women or men or whomever. It is evidence of discriminatory stereotypes, that is all.

Re: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

#180

Post by 127 »

gruseom wrote: post #121
rsheridan6 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you denying that there are women who want to be submissive and raise a family? Nothing the parent said suggested that all women want that. Agreed that raising a family is difficult and challenging.

"Submissive" is pejorative. You might as well say "bitch" (edit: almost). I mightn't have picked up on this if he hadn't also said " everything difficult and challenging". I actually agree with the point about feminism being to some extent a prejudice of its own that makes some women feel bad about wanting what they want. But they're figuring it out. We're, what, 50 years into this? That's lightning-fast change. It's…

I actually respect and admire women who enjoy the submissive role. Thus, when I say it I mean it as a compliment.
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