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Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

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Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#91

Post by saraid216 »

einhverfr wrote: post #69
Volpe wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tech is supposed to be meritocracy. You can't have a proper meritocracy if the prospective field don't have access to the same level of opportunities. Women get ostracised from I.T. fairly early on (i.e before education has finished).

> You can't have a proper meritocracy if the prospective field don't have access to the same level of opportunities. Agreed but how do you define the same level of opportunities? Suppose the opportunity is "work hard, every day, 12 hours every day from when you are 20 until you are 40 and then retire as a billionaire." There is nothing stopping women from taking that opportunity. But women who do lose something that…

> There is nothing stopping women from taking that opportunity.

There's societal misogyny. The number of women I've met who refuse to try to do something technical because they're female or blonde has long boggled my mind. That's probably not the tech industry's fault.

But it does mean there aren't the same level of opportunities. If someone whacks your shin with a crowbar before you do your figure skating, that just ain't a meritocracy, no matter how fair the judges are.

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#92

Post by konstruktor »

staunch wrote: post #24

If women founders are being underserved by existing investors that would represent a market opportunity. Someone should exploit it out of pure self interest.

Making this even more of a "put your money where your mouth is" situation. Women in tech fund, where are you and your gigantic returns?

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#93

Post by saraid216 »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #51
roguecoder wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We address this is every gender thread on hacker's news. Yes, it is a problem. Yes, people are trying to fix it. Yes, including creating male-only nursing scholarships and spaces and community groups. None of which has anything to do with programming. I don't know if you think you are being clever or if you are just repeating a talking point, but either way it's a derailment that has been addressed a hundred times be…

This entire conversation has been said 100 times. It's interesting how the original article throws something at least kinda new into the mix, but this whole thread just heads right back to the same old grounds.

That's because it's not new. Read the comments on the original article. If a magic solution was enough, it would have been fixed already and no one would bother talking about the non-issue.

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#94

Post by einhverfr »

saraid216 wrote: post #91
einhverfr wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't have a proper meritocracy if the prospective field don't have access to the same level of opportunities. Agreed but how do you define the same level of opportunities? Suppose the opportunity is "work hard, every day, 12 hours every day from when you are 20 until you are 40 and then retire as a billionaire." There is nothing stopping women from taking that opportunity. But women who do lose something that…

> There is nothing stopping women from taking that opportunity. There's societal misogyny. The number of women I've met who refuse to try to do something technical because they're female or blonde has long boggled my mind. That's probably not the tech industry's fault. But it does mean there aren't the same level of opportunities. If someone whacks your shin with a crowbar before you do your figure skating, that just…

That's true. And anyone who doesn't believe that needs to read "Birth as an American Rite of Passage" by Robbie Davis-Floyd. What she covers will boggle the mind and challenge what folks think about gender issues generally.

>But it does mean there aren't the same level of opportunities. If someone whacks your shin with a crowbar before you do your figure skating, that just ain't a meritocracy, no matter how fair the judges are.

That's true too, but what I am getting at is that when we talk about women in technology startups (which is really the subject of the article and many discussions here on HN) I don't think that's what's really going on.

Rather I think that what is going on is that in the area of startups, the entry fee is much higher for women, and the lifestyle demands sacrifices of a sort that men don't have to make. The bigger question in my mind is how we solve that structural problem.

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#95

Post by saraid216 »

nandemo wrote: post #64
darren wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Impact of Gender Composition on Team Performance and Decision-Making: Evidence from the Field http://www.econ.upf.edu/~apesteguia/Gender_Teams.pdf "Looking across the performance distribution, we find that for undergraduates, three women teams are outperformed throughout... For MBA students, at the top, the best performing group is two men and one woman." http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-t…

> I think the evidence is pretty clear. Uh? The 3 excerpts you quote say 3 different things.

Could you show me the differences? Those three excerpts seem to be saying the same thing to me.

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#96

Post by saraid216 »

gms wrote: post #57
roguecoder wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We address this is every gender thread on hacker's news. Yes, it is a problem. Yes, people are trying to fix it. Yes, including creating male-only nursing scholarships and spaces and community groups. None of which has anything to do with programming. I don't know if you think you are being clever or if you are just repeating a talking point, but either way it's a derailment that has been addressed a hundred times be…

Actually my intention was neither; I simply asked a question I am curious about the answer to. Why is it a problem that nursing is dominated by women?

That's not a problem.

The problem is that people believe nursing is supposed to be a woman's job, and that a male nurse is thus unmanly for freely choosing to become one.

These beliefs are wrong. They are sexist. Full stop.

An indicator of the prevalence of these beliefs is the dominance of women in the nursing profession. This is hard, factual, statistical data that we can point to; it's easier to parse than qualitative data, such as stories of males laughing at male nurses for their profession.

It is a chicken-and-egg problem. Are blacks more likely to be criminals, or does the expectation that blacks become criminals increase the number of blacks being investigated for crime, leading to a higher rate of discovery? Is it because blacks are systematically discouraged from getting an education, which tends towards lower incomes and higher likelihoods of becoming criminal?

These are statistical truths. Absolute? Hardly; they're still mere statistics, which always lie. But statistics are closer to the truth than the dubious anecdotes we had before. They can demonstrate the existence of bias, even if that bias cannot be causatively tied to sexism. And in the end, that demonstration is more proof than the inverse position, the position that the nursing profession should be biased towards women, which really only has the above-mentioned sexist beliefs to fall back on.

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#97

Post by tomwalker »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #72
einhverfr wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe men don't care about working at a beautify salon? More likely though Real Men(TM) don't want to be hairdressers! That's only for flaming homosexuals! Never underestimate the power of a good social taboo. Now, given that there aren't a lot of gender taboos against women working on Wikipedia or in technology startups, then it seems to me that at least the latter has to be a career choice issue. I think there are…

If hairdressing were a multi-billion dollar global industry and the foundation of almost the entirety of the future economy that would be more of a problem. Tech, however, is big, important, and getting bigger.

Medicine is a huge industry. Where I am from, women are 70 percent of entrants. They still get help with applications (women in medicine career days etc). They are more likely to take long career breaks and work part time. In the UK, where the tax payer pays for education + all treatment this is not cost efficient. I don't have a link but a recent bmj article showed over a career, 1.7 women cover the same hours as men excluding time off for illness.

If I was to suggest a "men in medicine" society I would be shunned for trying to make a new generation of 'the old boys club'. In fact, my club would probably be considered illegal due to discrimination. If I was to suggest that moves were made to make medical school 50:50 admission then I would be laughed at despite decades of pushing for increased female intake.

Men are often told we have the best of it but we also have the worst. Homelessness, drug abuse, assault, suicide, car accidents, alcoholism etc are all higher in men. When I did some time doing general practice (primary care) I realised that the amount of men aged 40-80 that live by themselves and are alone is huge in comparison to the amount of females.

Let's keep things simple.

Stop the social engineering. If more men go to school to be engineers then so be it. If a female is in your engineering class then she shouldn't be treated differently- she shouldn't have more chance of getting a job either if she gets the same grades.

If we "need" to push more women into tech then why shouldn't we push them out of other careers in the name of equality.

Edit: For clarity, I don't believe that we should 'rebalance' medicine, I was being sarcastic.

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#98

Post by saraid216 »

saraid216 wrote: post #89
[deleted] wrote: post #59

[deleted]

> As if women are so weak that they all they can do is just sit there at the door, sobbing "please let us in your industry". Aaaaand straw man. Citation please. You almost made it, too. The complaint has never been that there isn't gender parity; that's an indicator, not the substance. It's about as valid as Gallup polls are for political issues: which is to say useful for making large claims, but not useful for actu…

Also, I explain this a bit better down here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4264875

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#99

Post by Locke1689 »

rachelbythebay wrote: post #63
ajross wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite here on a tangent: are you really interested in taking a $5k check from an individual angel? Do startups (real ones, not just "I started a company!" startups) bother with that stuff? It seems that if you're a three-person YC gang that the effort involved in coming up with an extra week's (if that) worth of runway isn't even close to worthwhile.

No, I'm interested in building something useful for a reasonable amount of money. That's what I do: a simple exchange of currency for services rendered. Is this about women in tech, or is this some nebulous thing about startups? Because I'm all for the former, and don't really worry so much about the latter.

Is this about women in tech, or is this some nebulous thing about startups? Because I'm all for the former, and don't really worry so much about the latter.

Why don't you read the article?

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#100

Post by saraid216 »

einhverfr wrote: post #94
saraid216 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is nothing stopping women from taking that opportunity. There's societal misogyny. The number of women I've met who refuse to try to do something technical because they're female or blonde has long boggled my mind. That's probably not the tech industry's fault. But it does mean there aren't the same level of opportunities. If someone whacks your shin with a crowbar before you do your figure skating, that just…

That's true. And anyone who doesn't believe that needs to read "Birth as an American Rite of Passage" by Robbie Davis-Floyd. What she covers will boggle the mind and challenge what folks think about gender issues generally. > But it does mean there aren't the same level of opportunities. If someone whacks your shin with a crowbar before you do your figure skating, that just ain't a meritocracy, no matter how fair the…

> The bigger question in my mind is how we solve that structural problem.

Agreed. But I don't think that's a battle worth fighting just in the tech industry. There are rights for women that can be fought for in general: better protections against sexual harassment, better requirements for maternity (and paternity) leaves, etc. (Google found me this: http://www.now.org/issues/wfw/empledge.html )

Tech could strive to be a leader here: an industry that's more friendly to women than any other. But it would be setting an example for the rest of the nation, rather than making it a purely tech-industry-specific issue.

This doesn't solve the essential issue of Sexist Men Exist, but really... the only way to solve that is, ironically, conversation.

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