What Stops Female Founders?
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What Stops Female Founders?
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Re: What Stops Female Founders?
#2I wonder if this is more a symptom of having few women in the field of computer science / software engineering [1] than a lack of women who want to be founders [2]. It isn't too surprising when you consider only a small percentage of people in computer science decide to become founders, and then a small percentage of that pool ends up being women.
[1] I am assuming that most people in startups are computer science types. Which isn't entirely (or very) accurate. Certainly when you add in fields like design and business/marketing this really changes.
[2] Of course, being a founder doesn't require restricting oneself to starting a technical business.
Re: What Stops Female Founders?
#3It's pretty much the lack of technical ambition (programmers, engineers, etc). I reckon 1% of technical people will attempt to try starting something.
This is an issue in gender-dominated industries. I bet there's a similar article for child care: "What Stops Male Founders?"
Re: What Stops Female Founders?
#4[deleted]
Re: What Stops Female Founders?
#5The vast majority of people are not founders.
So, instead of asking "what stops 99.99% of women from founding [ ... and 99.98% of men ]", I think it might be more productive to ask "what causes 0.015 of people to become founders".
Re: What Stops Female Founders?
#6"Duh. Of course no one should live beyond their means. But I’d never thought about the implications of that when I was 25."
I read a while ago that 40% of American households spend more than they make in post-tax income. I imagine this has gone down a bit, but it's still astounding. People are really good at convincing themselves that their "ship will come in" and they'll be able to wipe that debt clean.
Re: What Stops Female Founders?
#7When the author writes out all the sacrifices needed, it makes it look incredibly hard. And, in fact, starting a startup is in general a very long slog. What makes it worth while is the prospect of asymmetric returns (either in money or in future freedom).
If you had asked my mom at age 30 (before she had me), "What would you do if you had enough money that you didn't have to work?". She would have probably said something like: "Well, I would have kids and stay at home and take care of them. As they grew up, I would love to work more with the catholic church, because that means a lot to me." And in fact, my mom ended up not needing to work, and doing exactly that. But she did not need to make the sacrifices Jessica lists above, nor did spend four years schlepping away at a startup. Instead she just got married to solid, hard working fellow who was happy to be the primary breadwinner.
So perhaps one reason women don't do startups as much, is because they do not need to. It's still far more socially normal for the guy to be the primary breadwinner, and many guys are very willing to work and have their wife stay at home. Since women have a greater ability to leave the workforce or opt out of lousy job (since their family is less dependent on their pay check), women have less of a need to pin their hopes on a risky startup in order to escape the rat race.
Re: What Stops Female Founders?
#8[deleted]
differences in future-time orientation between men and women
I am skeptical as to whether future-time orientation is the issue. Even if we assume it is a personality issue (rather than simply the tech gender ratio), it is more likely that the likelihood of success estimation is at the root.
Future time orientation generally refers to your ability to say "Suffer now for 100% guaranteed success in 5 years" - for example, save now for retirement.
Founding is not like that. Founding is "Suffer now for X% guaranteed success in 5 years". The question is what you tell yourself X is. If Group A think it is 50%, they are more likely to found that Group B, who think it is 1% and are who will probably give it a miss.
But I doubt any of it is relevant. It's worth remembering that something like 40% of small businesses in the US are owned or co-owned by women. It's going to be hard to find an intrinsic reason that applies to the tech industry that does not apply to other types of business.
Re: What Stops Female Founders?
#9The women founders that I know would answer very simply: 'absolutely nothing'.
To top it off they're collectively much further ahead than the men, even if there are far fewer of them.
Most women that I know balk at one simple item: loss of security. They like their paycheck and the lack of worries that come with it and they see running a company as going to war. And it's been traditionally the men that go to war.
But when women do decide to go to war they do so with gusto and the female founders that make a go of it typically take no prisoners, they're good at what they do and they'd give any guy or girl a run for their money.
What works for one will not work for all, that's the same in the male as well as in the female world.
JL is not just talking to her past self, she's talking to all the potential female founders out there and her words ring true, only, would she have taken her own advice at the age of 25? That's a thing we'll never know, but lets hope that YC will see a higher number of quality female applicants to prove that these words did not fall on deaf ears.
Re: What Stops Female Founders?
#10It's pretty much the lack of technical ambition (programmers, engineers, etc). I reckon 1% of technical people will attempt to try starting something. This is an issue in gender-dominated industries. I bet there's a similar article for child care: "What Stops Male Founders?"
Ambition is not the whole story. Women that do have ambition (technical or not) are dissuaded by a whole series of subtle and not so subtle social cues that that is not their place to be. Even when they're just as good as everybody else.