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How to Break Out of the 'Female Entrepreneur' Trap

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Re: How to Break Out of the 'Female Entrepreneur' Trap

#31

Post by mtrimpe »

Alex3917 wrote: post #26
jeff18 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am pretty sure that is actually illegal

People who attend conferences about women aren't a protected class. So it wouldn't be illegal unless you could demonstrate that filtering out people who attend conferences about women systematically discriminated against women. This would be fairly difficult at best, and almost impossible unless it were a large organization with an obvious gender imbalance.

IANAL but I expect that if that specific women read this comment she'd now be in a position to sue for discrimination quite effectively.

Re: How to Break Out of the 'Female Entrepreneur' Trap

#32

Post by omonra »

tgrass wrote: post #13

Ignoring reality does not make it go away. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/05/171196714/the-jobs...

It has been mostly debunked - and is attributed to choices people make:

Here is Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, explaining that the portion of the gender wage gap due to bias and prejudice is about 25% of the total gap. That is 75% of the gap is due to various career choices and career preferences that differ between men and women, and the remaining 25% is due to bias and prejudice. So if the wage gap is 24 cents on the dollar, the wage gap due to bias and prejudice is 6 cents. Still something to think about and work on, but a whole lot less inflammatory than 24 cents.

http://www.freakonomics.com/2008/05/01/robert-reich-answers-...

“Q: I’d be interested to know your thoughts on the feminisation of poverty and the male-female wage differential. How much of that is due to career choice?

A: Rough estimate: About 50 percent of the differential has to do with different career choices made by women and men. Twenty-five percent involves greater time women spend on care-taking of children and elderly relatives. The other 25 percent is due to bias and prejudice in the labor market.”

(citation - this comment: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2012/12/17/profit-opportu...)

Re: How to Break Out of the 'Female Entrepreneur' Trap

#33

Post by chacham15 »

tptacek wrote: post #29
chacham15 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Shelley Prevost has never been a startup operator. Her background is in psychological counseling, and she serves that role (in what looks like a team-coach or leadership-coach kind of role) at an incubator. > That doesn't disqualify her from having opinions about how women should handle gender-based bias, team dynamic, and motivational challenges in startups. But it doesn't automatically qualify her, either. These t…

I feel like I'm repeating myself. My point was that she wrote a piece that effectively relies on the authority of the author, and that authority was dubious. Think of it this way: if she was a reporter or science writer writing a sourced, reported piece --- or even if she was an essayist constructing a series of arguments for why women shouldn't be talking about their challenges publicly or attending symposia --- her…

>her authority would in fact probably be out of bounds.

This is exactly the question, why does her authority matter at all?

Re: How to Break Out of the 'Female Entrepreneur' Trap

#34

Post by tgrass »

omonra wrote: post #32
tgrass wrote: post #13

Ignoring reality does not make it go away. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/05/171196714/the-jobs...

It has been mostly debunked - and is attributed to choices people make: Here is Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, explaining that the portion of the gender wage gap due to bias and prejudice is about 25% of the total gap. That is 75% of the gap is due to various career choices and career preferences that differ between men and women, and the remaining 25% is due to bias and prejudice. So if the wage gap is 24 cent…

Your second citation only cites your first, which is not a debunking but a comment in an interview - which says 75% of the gap is due to career choice - but the link I provided shows gaps by career, making that distinction moot.

Re: How to Break Out of the 'Female Entrepreneur' Trap

#35

Post by tptacek »

ahoyhere wrote: post #24

I very much agree with the premise but she's not a very clear writer. I think she assumes the reader already knows what the problem is. My take is that the more people focus on identity ("female" "founder" "hacker" "HNer" whatever), the less they focus on results. Everything that happens in their lives gets viewed through this lens of identity. Unfortunately, that colors things in an unrealistic way: "This guy trolle…

I think the angry blog posts help. I think most of HN is not aware of how pervasive sexism and gender privilege assumptions are in Startuplandia. We're commenting on Hacker News, a site run by someone who's most famous essay says outright that he wouldn't want to work at an early-stage startup with a woman with small children. In other words, I think even the people pushing gender privilege aren't fully aware that they're doing it. The angry posts keep the conversation alive, and that's the only way the culture is going to change.

Women's conferences, no idea. I think the idea sounds silly, but then, I'm a guy.

My wife, also a developer, also a startup person, is probably more on your side than on my side. Ironically, we started out with the opposite conflict: I didn't buy that male privilege was a real issue, and trusted on meritocracy to sort all this shit out. Now that's become her spiel, and mine the opposite.

(Look, here's her disagreeing with me on this very thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5287829)

Re: How to Break Out of the 'Female Entrepreneur' Trap

#36

Post by danilocampos »

adsenseclient wrote: post #28
danilocampos wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let me be frank: I received a 1 page resume of a female computer scientist, where the word "women" was mentioned 8 times (organizations, etc). We did not interview that person, since frankly we were scared. I know this is usually verboten on Hacker News, but I find no other way to encode this thought... Boy, you guys sure sound like assholes. Sounds like she dodged a bullet. Y'know. Frankly .

I wrote "frank" because I frankly exposed the events that actually took place (receiving the resume, word counting in it, decision). What facts are you frank about? Would you like a resume where the word "men" appears 8 times? Or "whites"? Would you like to work with people who tout being white, Danilo Campos?

Wow. By all means – keep hanging yourself, this is fascinating.

Let's break down your profound false equivalence, here.

Men are an over-represented demographic in tech. Women are not. Women, in their under-representation, find comfort and camaraderie in the company of other women. The reasons for this are many but let's simplify to the most obvious one: women are the targets of sexism. By sharing company with other women, they can avoid hostility and discrimination based on their gender while still dealing with the subject of their passion: technology.

Further, the under-representation of women in technology is a problem. It limits the diversity of experience and opinions in this industry, which limits the scope of solutions that are discovered. It limits the pool of potential applicants for any given role.

Any individual who works to remedy these issues is a positive force.

Same goes for white people. The vast majority of powerful folks in any given western sphere of power are old white guys. They don't need any further help.

You've done a chilling job at justifying overt gender discrimination here. Those more classically trained in the academics of this villainy can do a much better job explaining it than I have, but boy – what a doozie.

And if you really thought you were in the right, you wouldn't be posting with a throwaway. If this were a truly defensible position, I'd encourage you to write up a hiring post on your company blog. "Why we don't hire women who care about advancing the cause of gender diversity in tech," you'd title it.

But we all know you're not going to do that.

Re: How to Break Out of the 'Female Entrepreneur' Trap

#37

Post by adsenseclient »

heliostatic wrote: post #11
adsenseclient wrote: post #5

Let me be frank: I received a 1 page resume of a female computer scientist, where the word "women" was mentioned 8 times (organizations, etc). We did not interview that person, since frankly we were scared .

Sorry, scared? Can you please elaborate? Were you concerned the candidate would be spending too much time at conferences? Or too much time... being a woman? I'm honestly not clear.

Scared of her being litigious (e.g. if she has performance problems and gets fired (like any other employee in our company), she would accuse us of discrimination)- stuff like that.

Re: How to Break Out of the 'Female Entrepreneur' Trap

#38

Post by [deleted] »

chacham15 wrote: post #33
tptacek wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I'm repeating myself. My point was that she wrote a piece that effectively relies on the authority of the author, and that authority was dubious. Think of it this way: if she was a reporter or science writer writing a sourced, reported piece --- or even if she was an essayist constructing a series of arguments for why women shouldn't be talking about their challenges publicly or attending symposia --- her…

>her authority would in fact probably be out of bounds. This is exactly the question, why does her authority matter at all?

[deleted]

Re: How to Break Out of the 'Female Entrepreneur' Trap

#39

Post by mediacrisis »

rdouble wrote: post #6
adsenseclient wrote: post #5

Let me be frank: I received a 1 page resume of a female computer scientist, where the word "women" was mentioned 8 times (organizations, etc). We did not interview that person, since frankly we were scared .

Women are scary to computer nerds.

Wasn't aware the two were distinct.

Re: How to Break Out of the 'Female Entrepreneur' Trap

#40

Post by Mz »

chacham15 wrote: post #19
tptacek wrote: post #4

Shelley Prevost has never been a startup operator. Her background is in psychological counseling, and she serves that role (in what looks like a team-coach or leadership-coach kind of role) at an incubator. That doesn't disqualify her from having opinions about how women should handle gender-based bias, team dynamic, and motivational challenges in startups. But it doesn't automatically qualify her, either. Meanwhile,…

"Saying that an author lacks the authority to write about a topic is a variant of ad hominem—and a particularly useless sort, because good ideas often come from outsiders. The question is whether the author is correct or not. If his lack of authority caused him to make mistakes, point those out. And if it didn't, it's not a problem."[1] [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

Thomas did no such thing. You are way out of line. I appreciated his observation because the piece in question gave me the impression "I can say this authoritatively because I am a very successful female founder." I mostly don't agree with the piece and was relieved to have it pointed out that she isn't any such thing.
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