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Female Founders

paulgraham.com

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Re: Female Founders

#221

Post by msandford »

comicjk wrote: post #168
jasallen wrote: post #109

I think Paul nails it. And I think there are a lot of really misguided social engineers in these comments. Treat people well and fairly, all along and throughout life, and let nature take it's course. Are things imbalanced right now? Absolutely. Is it because of unfairness in the past? Absolutely. Can we speed things to being better by being unfair the other way now? Absolutely not. We create a Frankenstein of a 'bet…

> Can we speed things to being better by being unfair the other way now? Absolutely not. Do you have any evidence for this? Because prima facie, reaching out to women does get some of them into tech fields, and we know that young women who grow up around women in tech are more likely to become such themselves. Are you claiming that we can't actually influence the number of women in tech by discriminating in their fav…

I think the argument is that a society which is constantly discriminating against people one way or the other for "arbitrary reason X of historical importance to group Y" isn't the right way for society to work.

You might be able to get the ratio of men-to-women for a particular career field more even, or get more blacks through college, or whatever goal you feel is important accomplished. That's absolutely true and I won't argue with that.

But do the ends justify the means? Some people might argue no while I believe you would argue yes. The person you replied to was arguing no, at least as I read it.

Re: Female Founders

#222

Post by melindajb »

mikeleeorg wrote: post #213

My main takeaway from reading this article and the comments here is: The awareness of this problem is still very nascent and more & more solutions are emerging, as are criticisms of people who are beginning to acknowledge this problem. To hopefully steer this in another direction, and because I have a little girl, what are some resources you all have seen that can help girls become interested and go into technical di…

Nicely done, Mike, hope others see this and upvote you.

Re: Female Founders

#223

Post by Crito »

cgore wrote: post #204
noblethrasher wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be more like saying "I'm not racist because my spouse is black".

I'm not sexist because my wife is a woman?

That does not work due to fundamental differences in how racism and sexism typically manifest.

Up until about the 70s or so, racists campaigned heavily against interracial marriage. Most racists likely still hold these views, though after 1967 they are no longer relevant so you don't hear about it very often.

I do not recall any sexist groups ever campaigning against heterosexual marriage. Now, sexists have campaigned against laws that would equalize the rights that people in marriages have.

Therefore "I am not sexist because I believe that my wife and I are equals and should be treated as equals by the law" would be an analogous statement.

Re: Female Founders

#224

Post by gizmo »

bzbarsky wrote: post #219
gizmo wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oppressed minorities have historically been excluded from highly desirable fields. As a consequence even today you see few black people in, say, Princeton or investment banking. This is most certainly not because black people (or women) think differently. The status quo just takes a long time to improve, especially when people pigheadedly deny there's a societal problem.

I can't speak to investment banking, but Princeton student demographic data is available at http://www.princeton.edu/pub/profile/admission/undergraduate... and the numbers actually surprised me a bit. Looking at the hard data from 2012-13, we have 10.7% international students. So of the US students, 7.4/.897 = 8.2% identified as African American. It's true that this is under-represented compared to the 12.2% of the U…

I wasn't picking on Princeton specifically. I used Princeton as a placeholder for an Ivy League or otherwise prominent institution.

There are also substantial differences between Ivy League schools: http://www.nationaljournal.com/thenextamerica/education/ivy-...

Re: Female Founders

#225

Post by Helianthus »

Rylinks wrote: post #209
Helianthus wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose I was looking for double jeopardy. The nature of this kind of discussion is always going to be hyperbolic and emotionally charged, which is why gender discussions here get nuked. That's what I find so amusing about PG's foray today: PG could write the most innocuous treatise imaginable, and he'd still be getting into trouble, and deservedly so. Ask yourself: what happens after this? Is YC going to be the sh…

If pg would get in trouble no matter how innocuous the essay, why should we pay any attention to whether he does?

Because by engaging the toxic, he's cementing his role in the toxic.

Dude actually wrote: 'by pointing out the degree to which women run things at YC it's closer to saying "I'm not racist! I'm black."'

Comedy gold. You just don't say stuff like that.

I mean, maybe he's got some semblance of a good point in there somewhere, but you can't hear it over the kneejerk outrage.

And maybe that's where I have a problem with this. PG ignores the flamewar unless by touching it he can get something he wants--the appropriate reputation amongst moderates. And he can't (and won't) get away scott free.

Re: Female Founders

#226

Post by glenra »

DanBC wrote: post #116
MrZongle2 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that there is no similar hand-wringing about the lack of women in the fields of sanitation, construction, plumbing or cartooning. Likewise, not much hubbub about the gender imbalance in the fashion industry. Could it possibly be that men and women think differently, and those minor differences are reflected in their career preferences? Could it be that these preferences play a bigger role in gender imbalances in…

> Note that there is no similar hand-wringing about the lack of women in the fields of sanitation, construction, Yes there is, and examples of programmes to get men into. Ursing or women into construction have been posted to HN before. Someone always always makes the same point as you and for some reason it always manages to infuriate me. I've had to re-write this 4 times because it was so vicious at first. But it do…

The fact that you know of programs "to get men into nursing or women into construction" that have been "posted to HN before" or have seen some claim "debunked" in the past doesn't mean the person you're writing to has.

FWIW, I read HN pretty regularly and had never noticed any programs to get more women into construction. Not to say that they don't exist, but I'd agree with your interlocutor that the level of hand-wringing on that subject doesn't seem at all similar to the level seen in tech.

As for whether that sort of claim is "easy to debunk with a simple websearch", it's probably much easier for you. Keep in mind that google tailors its results to return the sort of sites you've looked for before, so what you see in response to a given search is different from what others would see. (Not to mention that not knowing that something exists makes it hard to know what phrase one might google to find it.) So instead of saying "it's easy to debunk this with a web search", it's far more productive if you do that search yourself and provide an actual link to the references that YOU think debunk it.

Re: Female Founders

#227

Post by krstck »

eigenvector wrote: post #200
krstck wrote: post #76

I find the outrage over this so disingenuous. It looks to me like it's more about punishing someone for being a high-profile member of a hated, perceived-oppressor group than actually caring about women being programmers. To think that pg actually believes that there are no female programmers was the least charitable possible interpretation, and the only reason to have picked that one in particular was to confirm you…

An assertion that female behaviour or aptitude differs from male behaviour or aptitude in a way that casts women in a positive light is valid.[1] An assertion that female behaviour or aptitude differs from male behaviour or aptitude in a way that casts women in a negative or possibly negative light is evidence of sexism and something that must be fixed.[2] [1] http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-…

Usually when people are making the argument that "men and women think differently", it is an excuse for why the status quo should remain so. Yes, we all know that men and women have different brains and may not be interested in programming in the same percentages.

That doesn't mean that programmer culture can't often be hostile to women, and doesn't deserve scrutiny. But that also doesn't mean that pg and YC need to be crucified for not immediately ridding the world of all "Cowboy Developer" wanted ads.

Re: Female Founders

#228

Post by pyrocat »

msandford wrote: post #181
pyrocat wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Equality is definitely a goal, I think we should have more male nurses, but that's not really a priority when men are over represented in most of the higher paid fields (doctors, lawyers, CEOs .etc). Let's work on helping the more disadvantaged party first, yeah?

Re: Female Founders

#229

Post by tomasien »

parfe wrote: post #218
tomasien wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're reaching. Paul isn't talking about whether or not he is sexist, he's talking about whether YC is sexist. He's not saying HE has women FRIENDS he's saying YC is actually RUN in a large degree by women, one woman in particular - the co-founder of Y-Combinator Jessica Livingston. Not to minimize the other women involved, but it's just particularly relevant that the founder of YC could as much be said to b…

> Paul isn't talking about whether or not he is sexist, he's talking about whether YC is sexist. The first three sentences of his post disagree.

It's a clunky transition, but the transition goes from "I (PG) have a female co-founder" to "here is the makeup of YC as it applies to women" in the second sentence of the second paragraph.

He was accused both of being a sexist himself and of YC being sexist. I would say the "he is sexist" (for the sake of argument, let's assume that "sexist" means "particularly sexist" because it's hard to argue ANYONE is entirely innocent of being sexist) were pretty tenuous, but his attitude toward whether or not YC was biased toward men were pretty off.

This does a great job of explaining the latter, which I feel were a legitimate problem.

Re: Female Founders

#230

Post by gaius »

frandroid wrote: post #216
gaius wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So if it's not so difficult, and there are already a lot of women as doctors and lawyers, it's normal for women to say that they wish that the social barriers that prevent women from getting in the field from an early age would should be broken. It's not a question of bandwagon, it's a question of equity.

But what are these barriers? No-one seems to know, and in these articles, they always say it's because "geeks" have no social skills and poor personal hygiene and that drives women away. Which is nuts, to imagine a conspiracy of men to keep women out by the cunning strategy of not being "cool" enough (!) Not to mention sexist as hell.

And once again, they aren't wishing things were different so they could have done it...

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