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Female Founders

paulgraham.com

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Re: Female Founders

#441

Post by heterogenic »

Dewie wrote: post #434
heterogenic wrote: post #425

You know what I'd love to see the next time one of these inflammatory gender-related posts comes up? One thread that only women are allowed to post to. No men to challenge them, play devil's advocate or otherwise defend their privilege. Just one place for us to say our piece without being downvoted into oblivion, where our voice can be heard (in all its glorious heterogeneity). Because that's what's missing in this c…

Sure, but how would that even work in practice? Ban every poster that seems like a man from that specific thread? Invite-only?

Not saying it's easy or even plausible (though just asking nicely would probably do it for verification). Just that it'd be nice.

Re: Female Founders

#442

Post by ceol »

wanda wrote: post #402
debacle wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men learn at a certain point that we are not, in fact, women. We have different values, priorities, and hormones than women, and given the same scenarios we're likely to come to a different conclusion than a woman. So why would Paul try and talk from his zero years of experience as a woman and explain how to get more women in coding? Why not simply state "Please stop calling me a sexist, I don't like it, here's some…

>You're looking too deeply into this, I think. That's what HN does. I dunno. Allow me to share some thoughts as a young woman. I had no problem getting into computer programming when I was young. I had no problem getting accepted to a high-ranking university and graduating mathematics. I had no problem completing a master's in computer science. I had no problem finding resources for programming because they're alread…

> Couldn't the low number of female computer scientists be due to the fact that not many girls are actually interested in such things?

That really doesn't help anything. Why are they not interested? Are you saying something in the core of being a woman makes them not want to code?

> spoon-fed by liberals.

Something something true colors.

Re: Female Founders

#443

Post by bzbarsky »

gizmo wrote: post #224
bzbarsky wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

Ah, OK, it sounded like you'd picked Princeton in particular.

And yes, there are substantial differences between the Ivies, and between other "otherwise prominent" institutions. And even within a single school it can fluctuate widely, whether due to trends or chance. For example, http://web.mit.edu/ir/pop/students/diversity.html shows a pretty wide range in African American enrollment numbers at MIT over the last 4 years (ranging from 5.3% to 7.7%) and similar fluctuations for Latinos (but at a much higher base level).

Another confounding factor here is that even though the applicant pools and matriculating classes for these schools have gotten much more national than they used to be, the matriculation demographics still tend to skew somewhat local. MIT, for example, has a disproportionate number of undergrads from Massachusetts: according to http://web.mit.edu/registrar/stats/geo/ there are 340 of them out of 4080 US students total (8%) this year, while the population of MA, at 6.6 million, is only 2% of the US population. Similarly, http://www.princeton.edu/admission/applyingforadmission/admi... says Princeton has 204 students from NJ this year, but only 38 from MA, while the population of NJ is only 1.5 times that of MA at most.

Since different parts of the country have different racial breakdowns (MA is 7% African American, not 12%, for example) this complicates any analysis of the goings-on at such schools. :(

Re: Female Founders

#444

Post by emmelaich »

MrZongle2 wrote: post #120
dragonwriter wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

'No, having friends that are members of group X does not disprove prejudice against group X.' Perhaps you and I have different definitions of the word "friend", then. I'm talking about the pre-Facebook version, where they were earned .

Indeed; it seems people are not even aware of the origin of this 'defence'.

The man accused described his black golf caddy as a friend. Of course, he was no such thing no matter how cordial their relationship.

Re: Female Founders

#445

Post by jlees »

FeeTinesAMady wrote: post #420
jlees wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lemma: Women-led companies are desirable. Vivek Wadhwa is doing a bunch of research into the data. I don't have his report at my fingertips but fundamentally, not investing in women is not a rational move. Here's the media headline version: "Women-led private technology companies are more capital-efficient, achieve 35 percent higher return on investment, and, when venture-backed, bring in 12 percent higher revenue th…

Hypothetically, that could be completely accounted for by women being more realistic of their chances of success at starting a company. So those who wouldn't have succeeded never bothered in the first place, skewing those statistics.

Not all women-led companies were started by women, too.

Re: Female Founders

#446

Post by emmelaich »

derefr wrote: post #174
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…

I think a major argument against this, in the field of programming in particular, is that most of those other field-related imbalances are culture-neutral . You'll find more male sanitation workers, construction workers, plumbers, etc. everywhere from the US, to Brazil, to China, to Russia, to Pakistan. (Controlling, of course, for the more general inequities in employment-by-gender that those cultures face.) But the…

I think it's more about first world culture and career opportunities.

Programming (or anything with a keyboard) is not really seen a manly profession in developing countries. Or, to be frank, in the first world countries either.

The difference is that in the first world, the pay increase and quality of life is much greater between say carpenter or fireman vs computer programmer.

I've been in conversations in with high level execs where the disdain for the 'tappy tappy' crew is clear.

Re: Female Founders

#447

Post by jlees »

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…

I linked some mentoring resources further down, specific to connecting high schoolers with female role models. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7039716)

RailsBridge (http://www.railsbridge.org) is aimed at adult women beginners too.

Technovation Challenge (http://iridescentlearning.org/programs/technovation-challeng...) is a worldwide program for high school girls to develop engineering and entrepreneurship skills. I was a mentor for this locally and it was great fun. Super smart girls.

Little Miss Geek (http://littlemissgeek.org/) runs great workshops in London high schools. A 14 year old girl built an app thanks to inspiration at this workshop and now speaks out publicly about how fun it was. Fantastic role model. (http://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/15/b...)

Edit: Also, if you're searching for this topic, "girls in STEM" (or SET, SETI, SEAT, etc) is another great source of resources aimed at encouraging girls in science.

I'm not a parent or teacher, so I'm not in touch with what high schoolers find interesting these days. But imagine if there were a program backed by top VCs getting startup engineers, especially ensuring visible minorities among the bunch, into high schools to break down how their popular apps or games du jour work. Rather than "I want to learn to program, ok, let's print out 'Hello World'", outline the systems thinking behind the apps and services that the audience uses every day. Maybe it could even be effective as an online video series. Maybe it already exists.

Still: There are things we all can do if we actually care about helping change mindsets early on. Even many smart teenage boys (so I am told, see disclaimer above) don't want to go into engineering because it's nerdy and unpopular. We need diversity on the inside, not just on the outside.

Re: Female Founders

#448

Post by skylan_q »

kudu wrote: post #85

I'm a bit disappointed by the fact that this blog post gives perhaps the most obvious and common "politically correct" answers to the question of female representation in the software industry, without actually tackling any controversial subjects like reduced training costs for women.

It's unpalatable. PG says nothing more in this post than he did in last one where he really didn't need to explain himself anyways. The more he writes about this, the more he'll have to write about this to defend himself.

Re: Female Founders

#449

Post by philwelch »

crassus wrote: post #282
Zikes wrote: post #146

Judging by the comments on this article, it would appear that once you've been labeled a sexist it is downright impossible to dispel. I'm not sure what people expect, exactly. Is pg supposed to give up all his worldly goals and possessions and live as some sort of equality monk? Should he know of and contribute to every one of the many groups and organizations involved in gender equality? And what exactly is wrong wi…

Accusing others of being witches shows off your own moral purity. It also gives a feeling of power, a critical mass of the American tech crowd comes from the PC left that is large enough to set off a mob. The ultimate feeling of importance comes when a witch is burned (fired from his job). PG is a poorly chosen target in some sense, since he will be extremely hard to fire - although public humiliation is also satisfy…

> One of the classic phenomena of witch hunts is when the hunt comes back to bag an original instigator.

Like Robespierre?

Re: Female Founders

#450

Post by HaloZero »

bzbarsky wrote: post #443
gizmo wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

Ah, OK, it sounded like you'd picked Princeton in particular. And yes, there are substantial differences between the Ivies, and between other "otherwise prominent" institutions. And even within a single school it can fluctuate widely, whether due to trends or chance. For example, http://web.mit.edu/ir/pop/students/diversity.html shows a pretty wide range in African American enrollment numbers at MIT over the last 4 y…

That's an interesting factor that I never thought about in admissions of universities. Location and ethnic makeup of a state might have impact on the enrollment of minorities, though I don't think it's substantive it might have an impact.
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