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Female Founders

paulgraham.com

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Re: Female Founders

#391

Post by crassus »

theorique wrote: post #353
kyro wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PG is high profile. His companies and their founders are high profile. For as long as I can remember there's been a thick thread of schadenfreude woven throughout this community's reactions to various stories that have come out about YC, from Dropbox to Airbnb to PG's supposed racism and now sexism. Trying to defend yourself or setting the record straight is almost useless when everyone's already made up their mind b…

pg is neither a racist nor a sexist, but because he does not jump to support every pet cause of every self-described "social justice jihadi", he is lambasted as such. Well, guess what? pg is his own person. He's just a guy who invests in startups, not some sort of idol upon whom you can project all your transformational, social-justice dreams for the tech industry. Is there racism and sexism in tech? Sure. Is that pg…

Everybody is a little racist and sexist. It's quite normal for you to react differently depending on the visible characteristics of a person you are talking to, it's ingrained through millions of years of evolution. What's important is that you're not a dick about it, and you give people a fair shot in situations where those characteristics shouldn't matter.

The cashier at the local taco shop speaks to people in Spanish or English depending on whether or not they look Mexican. Is that a problem? I don't think so.

Re: Female Founders

#392

Post by funthree »

pg wrote: post #40
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…

The second paragraph amounts to a sexist version of "I'm not racist! I have black friends!" Actually by pointing out the degree to which women run things at YC it's closer to saying "I'm not racist! I'm black." 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. And I do know something about groups working on getting gir…

Good job.

Re: Female Founders

#393

Post by rhizome »

gohrt wrote: post #388
rhizome wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come back when black women run the Federal Reserve and have corrupted it to their own benefit. Then, maybe , we can talk about "backfiring."

Your comment is insinuating that Asian, Indian, etc women and men have corrupted it for their own beefit, and that this corruption somehow benefits a mutual-aid society of white males. Is that what you intend to claim?

I don't think so, but I can't quite make out what words you're trying to ascribe to me.

Re: Female Founders

#394

Post by sieva »

The biggest problem is from the age of 2-13. The world's culture is still "coding isn't cool for girls". Look at the difference between the ways boys play in a room vs girls. Girls are encouraged to play princess and house...yes...still!! Boys on the other hand are more likely to invent games, or build things. My sister is 13 and laughs at the idea of learning programming as a girl. She's a super smart girl, but the social pressures are too much to overcome. By this age most of you successful programmers already had some sort of "builders" mindset.

I say we need to address the problem at it's roots. Mentorship, and shining the spotlight of success on women like Adora could potentially be the most important part of our battle here. GO ADORA!!

Re: Female Founders

#395

Post by duaneb »

kens wrote: post #267
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…

Based on my daughter and her friends, involvement in Lego Mindstorms robotics and First Lego League competitions is another great way to get girls interested in programming and technology.

I can second this—I am not a woman myself, but my dear sister got into programming that way. (I did too.)

Re: Female Founders

#396

Post by kaitai »

joyeuse6701 wrote: post #357
prayag wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that you don't understand what racism is. Racism isn't just treating someone differently because she belongs to a different race. Racism has more to do with power dynamics than with color of a person's skin. For example, just because a college has different standards of admission for different races to promote diversity is not racism but to give preferential treatment to the group of people who have mo…

erm, it is a potentially racist organization, here's why: BlackGirlsCode is specifically geared for one power dynamic, black girls vs white girls. While they may be attempting to level the playing field between white and black which is politically and socially acceptable, they are furthering the gap between black and (pick an underrepresented minority). This exclusivity is exactly how every power came into power and…

No: Black Girls Code is focusing on

black vs white (dominant paradigm in US)

female vs male

young vs old

It's attempting to do successful intervention & marketing, essentially, by focusing on a specific demographic. As we all should know, focusing on a specific demographic is a fine way to produce a product targeted to that demographic's needs. Young black women have different pain points in tech than Zuckalikes or male first-born children of Chinese immigrants. It is obvious that other organizations with mainly white or male constituents are not effectively serving the market and it's no surprise that something better for this target group has come along.

The rest of your comment is pure silliness. Every power that came into power, to repeat your phrasing, did so by claiming they were the best and then grabbing the money. When I see the black girls of code claiming they are racially and morally superior to everyone else, and making tons of cash, I'll consider believing you.

Re: Female Founders

#397

Post by Dewie »

pyrocat wrote: post #228
msandford wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

First, it's not only a question of paychecks but about how it affects society as a whole. That you want more women leaders because you want the decision makers to have less biases and blindsights, on average. Perhaps you also want more men elementary school teachers because you want more male role models for children, and perhaps less chances of biased behaviour towards schoolchildren based on gender. Not just because you want the men who are already wanting to be elementary teachers to have an easier time. These two seem more important on the societal level than bringing more women in to tech and more men into nursing.

Secondly, this looks similar to the argument that 'men are over represented in positions of power, so men are better off as a whole'. This assumes that men are a collective soup that automatically benefits from being collectively better off. Perhaps by assuming that more men in positions of wealth and power means that all men have an easier time getting into it, ignoring that men come from different backgrounds and social classes and may not ever get a shot at something like that, anyway. I doubt that many have the conundrum of becoming a big-shot CEO, or taking on a high-risk fisherman job because he needs the risk premium (yes, you've probably already read about men being over-represented in some jobs that aren't really featured items on 'career day'. They come up often enough in these threads). Another assumption behind this is that men necessarily benefit from other men being in power. That's a problematic assumption. Why would all men necessarily benefit from that? In fact, assume that a man in power things of women as inferior, and only think that men are a threat to his position of power; then he has a motivation to keep men down, or at least the swaths of men that aren't immediately useful to him.

Re: Female Founders

#398

Post by diydsp »

gizmo wrote: post #138
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…

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 agree history has been shitty.

But please tell me honestly how you feel about the fact that RIGHT NOW, anyone can look up "investment banking" in the library and start learning about it? They can open trading accounts and start doing it right away without permission from anyone. Would you disagree that the playing field is not level because of this?

I feel people who want to be coders should not wait to get acceptance from incumbent coders, but instead, go to the library and learn to code from books and websites.

Bosses want people with abilities, so if people get abilities, they'll be employable.

YC is probably a great way to start a company, but it is far from a requirement. If females want to found a company, why not start it right now, right away? Why waste time focusing on anything outside their goals?

Why fight to persuade someone that you can make customers happy and then give them back a portion of your work? Why not simply begin to make customers happy right now? This is the best time in the world for doing this, yet so many people are wasting it away by focusing on convincing other people that a minority of people are wrong.

Even if they get everyone to agree with them, they'll still need to do all kinds of hard work to learn to code/be a vet/dancer/founder, etc. So, why not start NOW to do that hard work for one's self?

Re: Female Founders

#399

Post by kaitai »

stephp wrote: post #284
pg wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second paragraph amounts to a sexist version of "I'm not racist! I have black friends!" Actually by pointing out the degree to which women run things at YC it's closer to saying "I'm not racist! I'm black." 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. And I do know something about groups working on getting gir…

I've been considering what interested my 11-year-old {female} self about programming. The question keeps popping up, and the only answers I've seen are so vague that I feel something of a moral obligation to offer my own specific insight. To put my experience in context, I didn't know a single soul interested in programming IRL. So the only way I could have come to it is from a deeply genuine place. In my adult life,…

This is an interesting and original comment. Thank you. And the linked article was also a fresh read.

Re: Female Founders

#400

Post by wpietri »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #360
SamBoogie wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey I'm a white dude and I've worked with Black Girls Code on a few workshops. Just FYI girls of any race are allowed, it's just that this particular group caters primarily to black girls. I'd say from the outside looking in it is a thorny subject, but in my observance BGC are good people who care about their community and are giving back to it through the knowledge and resources they've accrued.

Thanks for your comment and your work - beta is one of the tools being used at BGC isn't it¹. More power to your arm! [or firings to your synapses or whatever]. > my observance BGC are good people who care about their community It's such a shame then that they promote themselves as only caring for the part of their community that has a particular colour of skin. ¹ - http://betathegame.com/

It's such a shame then that they promote themselves as only caring for the part of their community that has a particular colour of skin.

I honestly can't tell if you're trolling here.

In case you aren't: that is not what they are doing, and it also isn't a shame. Helping out people who are historically disadvantaged and face current discrimination is nothing to be ashamed about. The goal is to level the playing field.

As a white guy, I got plenty of people helping me out for no good reason: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-th...

And I am not the only one who has noticed this. E.g.: http://pgbovine.net/tech-privilege.htm

As somebody who financially supports BGC and aims to mentor at some of their workshops, I think they're doing great stuff.

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