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Female Founders

paulgraham.com

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Re: Female Founders

#161

Post by derefr »

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 .

Basically, the difference is between, on one hand, having friends who are black and that being an orthogonal characteristic unconsidered in the friendship; and, on the other hand, having friends despite their being black.

Re: Female Founders

#162

Post by matthewmacleod »

MrZongle2 wrote: post #107
evincarofautumn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Smarter” is too blunt a point. Your average young woman is probably more risk-averse than your average young man.

Or perhaps a sizeable number of women simply don't find the idea of starting a business as interesting as other endeavors. Less than 10% of nurses in the United States are male. Why isn't there a hue and cry about this gender imbalance? Is it even a real problem ? And guys, what could the nursing industry do to make it more welcoming to you ? Anything? Or are you simply not interested in it? Could women in technology…

Less than 10% of nurses in the United States are male. Why isn't there a hue and cry about this gender imbalance? Is it even a real problem?

There is, but you're probably not that exposed to it often by dint of (presumably) not being part of that industry. But if you look into it, there's concern about the lack of male nurses and a concerted effort to improve diversity (the same for other professions with traditionally female-skewed demographics, like teaching).

Re: Female Founders

#163

Post by jlees »

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/

Technovation: http://iridescentlearning.org/programs/technovation-challeng...

MIT: http://swe.mit.edu/outreach/

There are also several great organizations for women working in computing, who you could reach out to for mentors. PyLadies, DevChix, Systers, Anita Borg, etc... And local tech companies, at Google there were several folks working with local high schools who would put out internal calls for people to go and speak about the cool stuff they worked on.

Speaking of which, Google's Women Techmakers is also shaping up to be a great collection of women doing cool stuff in tech: https://developers.google.com/women-techmakers and https://plus.google.com/communities/100202454944694552166

Re: Female Founders

#164

Post by Crito »

DanBC wrote: post #94
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…

One reason sexism stories get flagged off is because they attract hateful sexist idiots who spew vile nonsense. They are unrepentent and relentless. Flagging the threads is the only way to defend https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments from horrible halfwits.

They also tend to have a poor comment:upvote ratio, which apparently is used to detect poor quality discussions and penalize them.

Re: Female Founders

#165

Post by frandroid »

daleharvey wrote: post #84
jiggy2011 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those threads always turn into flamewars that spill out into other threads.

Whereas the latest NSA disclosure, facebook privacy setting etc etc leads to a rational though provoking discussion that stays on topic and within its own thread?

It's fairly hard to produce hate speech towards the NSA. It's much more likely to happen when the topic of sexism is brought about.

Re: Female Founders

#166

Post by noblethrasher »

pyrocat wrote: post #72
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'd say it's more like "I'm not racist! I adopted a black kid." The second paragraph was mostly fine but it did come off a little... unhumble. And humility is usually the tone you want when talking about how your company is doing good for X cause, but it could be doing more.

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

Re: Female Founders

#167

Post by _dps »

kn0thing wrote: post #143
pshin45 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(On behalf of the same friend) "That's good to know - I wasn't aware of that. I'm happy to hear this isn't the case, but I've heard this from YC founders many times which is why it was my perception."

Jessica is the reason Steve + I got into Y Combinator. It was her decision to give us a second chance after we were rejected (reddit would end up being one of the first breakout hits from YC). I wouldn't have just told Charlie Rose "All Hail Jessica Livingston" if her role were just "founder relations" -- without going into the roles all the partners (male and female alike) play in YC, that simplification is way off.…

... and lest anyone think this is limited just to (the extremely helpful and insightful) JL, we (a recent-batch YC company) have been repeatedly and substantially helped on important strategy matters by KN and CL. Reducing their roles to "taxes" and "legal" misses the point completely; they are more like "finance strategy" and "legal strategy". Both have advised us on important structural decisions we made early in our company's life.

Re: Female Founders

#168

Post by comicjk »

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 favor? Or are you just asserting that we shouldn't?

> I believe it is analogous (pun) to running pure sound through one equalizer that distorts it and then through another that tries to bring the sound back to true by using your ear. It sounds plausible, but it can never work.

OK, interesting metaphor, but you could say with equal gravity that it's like veering to the right and then correcting by turning left. The metaphors are a way to describe the truth we know, not derive it out of nothing.

Re: Female Founders

#169

Post by frandroid »

gaius wrote: post #130
a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #43

Why is pg engaging with these trolls? Does anyone think they truly care about women succeeding in business or software? No, this is about making a stink and attention whoring. The appropriate response is to flip these weenies the bird.

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?

Re: Female Founders

#170

Post by jedmeyers »

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,"

It only works if you consider quantity to be the only measure of representation.
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