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Female Founders

paulgraham.com

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Re: Female Founders

#181

Post by msandford »

pyrocat wrote: post #155
lancewiggs wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case are clearly not under represented if you reflect that PG also says they wield genuine power at YC.

Uh, pg straight up states that they are under represented. "While 3 out of 12 is not 50-50,"

And men are under-represented in nursing (at 6%). Human beings bias themselves in addition to the biases that society puts on them.

http://www.discovernursing.com/men-in-nursing

As long as the ratio isn't much worse than 3:1 (men or women are at least 25% of the workforce) either way I'd argue that it's a pretty balanced work environment all things considered. Shooting for 50/50 equality would potentially make more inequality problems than it solves, just for a different subset of the population.

In other words in nursing if you paid men 2x what women make you'd sort that shit out it quite a hurry and get a bunch of dudes helping take care of people. I'm not sure you could find anyone who would agree that it's an equitable or desirable way to achieve the "right" outcome, though.

Re: Female Founders

#182

Post by derefr »

Helianthus wrote: post #172
oskarth wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or perhaps he want women to apply because it's good for YC, you know, business-wise. You seem to be looking at this through a lens of hate. May I ask why?

Not hate, cynicism. Talk's cheap and tends to benefit the speaker. The rhetorical arc of the piece is public self-exoneration. I don't think you can reasonably argue otherwise. PG isn't required to give a deposition of his thoughts on the matter. He could remain silent and continue working on what's important to him. Or more interestingly, he could launch YC initiatives to get girls coding, shift resources towards so…

I find that a very strange definition for cynicism. Usually cynics tend to assume that people are, more often than not, consequentialists: pursuing means for their ends.

PG's ends, in this case, are his business; he wants to make more money. This piece, seen as a consequentialist act, would be a gambit played to calm a possible negative tide in feminist circles toward YC, that might have resulted in YC getting fewer (qualified!) female applicants... which would be bad for business.

I think your problem might be in assuming PG cares about his personal reputation, rather than about YC's reputation. Only one of those two things will make him money.

In other words: this is part of "working on what's important to him." Playing the politics of business brand-image is just as much a part of "business" as building your product, as far as profitability goes.

Re: Female Founders

#183

Post by LekkoscPiwa »

parfe wrote: post #26

I find myself disappointed by this blog post. The second paragraph amounts to a sexist version of "I'm not racist! I have black friends!" Then he follows up with statistics comparing YC to the general VC market. Fine, you do better than most. However, not the worst does not mean not bad. He comes closest to saying anything of substance with the paragraph: So how would you cause there to be more female programmers? Th…

Lenin would be proud of you Comrade! We are all equal after all.

Re: Female Founders

#184

Post by gaius »

frandroid wrote: post #169
gaius wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I have noticed is female journalists, who chose not to do CS themselves, but feel very strongly that other women should go into CS. Not even that they wish they themselves could go back in time and get into BBC Micros. It's a curious phenomenon and I wonder if it's really driven by anything other bandwagoneering.

Do you not root for your country's athletes at the Olympics, and wish that more people would enroll in X so that your country would have a shot at a gold medal?

I don't think that's a scalable analogy. Programmers aren't an elite, really, among professionals. Anyone smart enough to be an accountant or a doctor or a civil engineer is smart enough for 99% of programming jobs, and many of them, for any programming job. Even someone who ended up as a journalist could probably handle the helpdesk or doing QA or websites.

Re: Female Founders

#185

Post by pchristensen »

michaelochurch wrote: post #95

I really despise the way HN is moderated-- there are childish vendettas, there's filtering of inconvenient truths to the VCs and the startup world-- but I never thought PG was sexist or racist. In fact, I hate the fact that, despite being more progressive than most VCs (and willing to discuss these issues rather than equivocating) he's become a lightning rod. What The Information did to PG was almost criminal. The pe…

"...childish vendettas..."

Michael, you have a lot of insightful comments, but you of all people should never, ever point out someone else's childish vendetta.

Re: Female Founders

#186

Post by zorpner »

Crito wrote: post #153
zorpner wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And while it's possible for women to be sexist too, if you think Jessica, Kirsty, and Carolynn are sexist, I'd like to see you say it to their faces. That... is not an argument? There's ample evidence to show that members of underrepresented groups within individual companies/industries experience unconscious biases in hiring/ranking/etc, even towards groups of which they're a member.

What evidence is there that these particular women are sexist? You are judging particular people based on statistics that you think you know about groups of people . I don't think I have to explain the irony here.

I'm not judging particular people (I have no opinion on the individuals mentioned), and I honestly haven't kept up with this whole narrative so there are certainly no statistics I can cite. I'm saying that stating that someone belongs to a class is entirely insufficient to demonstrate the assertion that they are not biased against that class, particularly in a context where that class is systemically biased against.

Re: Female Founders

#187

Post by Crito »

dragonwriter wrote: post #110
MrZongle2 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'The second paragraph amounts to a sexist version of "I'm not racist! I have black friends!"' Tangent: if I am attempting to prove that I am not bigoted against group X and by doing so I point out that I have members of group X amongst my friends, haven't I made my point if they really ARE my friends? Or is it up to the mob to define what "friendship" is?

> Tangent: if I am attempting to prove that I am not bigoted against group X and by doing so I point out that I have members of group X amongst my friends, haven't I made my point if they really ARE my friends? No, having friends that are members of group X does not disprove prejudice against group X. Finding specific people of group X meet your bar from friendship, no matter how high that bar is, does not mean that…

Surely however that sort of defense against specific manifestations of bigotry can be evidence (assuming proof is practically unobtainable). For instance, if I were accused of hiring practices that are biased against black people, pointing out that I have only hired black people would be evidence (if not proof, in this hypothetical and silly black and white example...) that the accusations are false.

Re: Female Founders

#189

Post by krsmith35 »

jlees wrote: post #163
krsmith35 wrote: post #82

"So if we want to get more girls to become programmers, we should give them more examples. Ideally in person..." I am volunteering with a local "Code Club" to teach programming to 8-14 year olds. We have just tried to be open and gender neutral, ending up with between 10-25% female depending on the week. Purely subjective opinion, but Jessica Yuen from the Khan Academy ( https://www.khanacademy.org/talks-and-intervie…

The SWE K-12 outreach ( http://aspire.swe.org/ ) is probably close to what you're thinking of, though if you meant more of a peer-to-peer "dial a mentor" service I don't think I've seen one. Not that it couldn't exist. Some other great organizations helping set examples and mentor high schoolers: She++: http://sheplusplus.stanford.edu/ MentorNet: http://www.mentornet.net/ MentorSET: http://www.mentorset.org.uk/ Techn…

Wow these are all great resources! Thank you. My club is in the Phoenix AZ suburbs, but thank goodness for webcam. I've patched in colleagues from my company (in MA) before. Of course the kids all wanted to know what video games they have made, and how much money programmers get paid :)

Re: Female Founders

#190

Post by Crito »

zorpner wrote: post #186
Crito wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence is there that these particular women are sexist? You are judging particular people based on statistics that you think you know about groups of people . I don't think I have to explain the irony here.

I'm not judging particular people (I have no opinion on the individuals mentioned), and I honestly haven't kept up with this whole narrative so there are certainly no statistics I can cite. I'm saying that stating that someone belongs to a class is entirely insufficient to demonstrate the assertion that they are not biased against that class, particularly in a context where that class is systemically biased against.

PG is asserting that these particular women, Jessica, Kirsty, and Carolynn, are not sexists.

Responding with statistics about women in general, rather than relevant information about those particular women, is problematic.

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