Earlier quoted context omitted.
work toward what should be Ay, there's the rub: what should we work toward? This issue almost never gets discussed, except by implication. We hear over and over how we "need more women in tech". But even if everyone agreed that we do, how much more is enough? Should we stop after reaching 33% women? 50%? 60%? Often we hear the vague assertion that the percentage of women in tech should be close to the percentage of w…
Ay, there's the rub: what should we work toward? The first thing is, as always, to think about the current situation, and analyze its politics. See who the parties are. What their interests are. Whether their interests are authentic, or merely a result of many years of social pressure. What power is in question? Who has it? Who doesn't? Why? Once you understand the politics (which isn't easy because we often confuse…
Thoughts on YC's Female Founders Conference
51–58 of 58 posts
Re: Thoughts on YC's Female Founders Conference
#52It's expected that every word anybody said during that conference will be scrutinized beyond what's appropriate, simply because it's such a touchy subject. That's probably the reason why the video of the conference was already taken offline today while I was watching it (edit: it's not, see below). Generally I think it would be more productive if judgements weren't done on a hair trigger, because that's what makes th…
That's probably the reason why the video of the conference was already taken offline today while I was watching it. No, we took the video offline because one of the speakers hadn't realized the talks were being filmed. It will be back once we edit that one out.
That's an understandable (and appropriate) action on your part, but it makes me wonder: what would that speaker have said differently if they had known they were being filmed? And why?
Re: Thoughts on YC's Female Founders Conference
#53It occurred to me recently that if the goal is to eventually get to gender equality, female focused tech groups should set the proportion of their tickets available at x% female, y% male where x and y are the inverse of their proportions at some equivalent male dominated group. Over time, this policy should pull men and women together instead of apart. What good is it if women only know other women and men only know…
Nothing is wrong with your point, but you are applying a 1->N scaling strategy to a 0->1 problem. That is to say, this type of event is brings people together because n=small, and the act of concentration brings more scaling effects that a larger act of dispersion. Over time, this will shift...and your preferred methods will make more sense in a context where dispersion is more important than concentration. But it is…
Lets say a given women in tech event is phenomenally successful, that means that men are now precluded from attending a key event. Whether consciously or unconsciously men understand this and have a discentive to making the group phenomenally successful. The more successful it is, the worse the world becomes for the average man's career.
When it is x%/y% it puts things into a different category. In x%/y% all success is shared.
1) Men interested in attending these female focused events would have a vested interest in increasing both the size of the female event (-> more male tickets) and increasing the % of women at other events (-> more male tickets). If I, as a man, wanted to attend the YC female founders conference as it was just held, there is no way I can - so it isn't worth me spending any time on. If however, the event had an x%/y% structure, one of the ways I could gain admission would be to actively bring women into tech (I assume this would be a large part of the selection criteria by which the small number of men get admitted). Everyone's interests are now aligned.
2) The connections formed between the small number of men and the large number of women at x%/y% female events are connections that will act as a bridge to getting more women at the regular events. It's well demonstrated in organizational behavior that even small amounts of conscious cross department interaction leads to greater sharing of ideas and follow on connections in both groups.
2b) I'm concerned that most female focused groups are only creating in-group connections. Meaning the approach they're taking leads to B0->B1 and eventually B1->BN (where the existing tech scene is already at AN as a boy's club). Which is to say, they're creating a silo of connections. We shouldn't be looking at the problem as "How do we create the best shadow tech scene for women." But rather, "how do we make the tech scene gender neutral."
3) By making these groups x%/y% you put men in the tech scene in a more acutely aware state. "You can't go in there, it's women only" is easy to parse as a group of 'others.' Human psyches are pretty good at dealing with blanked exclusions -- its a rival tribe, which is fine, I have my own tribe. The situation of "You could go in there, but it's very hard to get in because they only let in x% men" makes the problem tangible, evaluative, and solvable. Long story short on this point, I think with x% men, men feel the exclusion in a stronger and more productive way. Men would feel excluded in a way that is more productive for society if events were x%/y%. In the current state of affairs, nobody can write a blog post titled "How I hacked my way into a men's ticket to the YC women's conference."
3b) Right now 90% of the tech scene has no skin in the game for getting in more women. Some may have philosophical beliefs or take a very long term view and thus work towards female events happening anyways. But, x%/y% would mean we can a much larger portion of the 90% working on the problem in a way that has tangible near term benefits for everyone.
Finally, we as a society only really permit discriminatory subgroups like this when the size of the subgroup is very very small. "Men in teaching," "Women in tech." By setting up "women in tech" groups as permitted discriminatory subgroups we are betting against these groups ever achieving parity. Because, when they do achieve anything even approaching parity they'll have to reconstitute. Think League of Women voters -- they're now a league of concerned voters of all genders, but their historical permitted discriminatory subgroup focus hampers their activities to this day. x%/y% means the group will never have to go through an identity crisis or a period where it is in the grey area of whether it is still acceptable to keep their historical membership barriers.
Re: Thoughts on YC's Female Founders Conference
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing is wrong with your point, but you are applying a 1->N scaling strategy to a 0->1 problem. That is to say, this type of event is brings people together because n=small, and the act of concentration brings more scaling effects that a larger act of dispersion. Over time, this will shift...and your preferred methods will make more sense in a context where dispersion is more important than concentration. But it is…
I disagree slightly with your categorization of the problem. I think your characterization, while accurate in itself, is missing the "otherizing" and "in-grouping" that happens if we only foster no-boys-allowed special interest groups. Lets say a given women in tech event is phenomenally successful, that means that men are now precluded from attending a key event. Whether consciously or unconsciously men understand t…
This is quite a different argument from lowering standards or affirmative action or whatever you want to call it. In fact, it is precisely the strategy YC used to bring its co-horts together. Back in 2005, VCs did not back many founders without an advanced degree (MA/PhD or MBA). As a result, it made sense to bring together (concentrate) a cohort, because the general peer group of VC backed CEO's would not have much in common with a 22 year old with no job experience. By bringing folks together that face similar challenges, you are not (per-se) giving these people special treatment or lowering standards; you're just providing a level os support infractructure that lets them "self-help" there way through many problems. It is actually critical that you don't "dumb down" standards, for this to work.
Re: Thoughts on YC's Female Founders Conference
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree slightly with your categorization of the problem. I think your characterization, while accurate in itself, is missing the "otherizing" and "in-grouping" that happens if we only foster no-boys-allowed special interest groups. Lets say a given women in tech event is phenomenally successful, that means that men are now precluded from attending a key event. Whether consciously or unconsciously men understand t…
Lets actually look at a more realistic example. Women in CS and Engineering today might be ~10-20pct of FTEs. That means, in a medium sized shop, where there might be 20-30 engineers, you have a situation whee how many are women? 2-6? That sounds about right. Now, if you are in this position...the issue is that the guys have 18-24 FTEs amongst their co-hort. In order for the girls to get the same type of network-dens…
I think we are talking about a fairly different types of things. I'm talking about low-touch high n networking as you find in events, conferences, and meetups; I am not talking about high touch networking like accelerators and degree programs. Whether my suggestions are valid or not in the high touch scenario you're discussing, I don't know, as I haven't considered that case in sufficient depth.
Your suggestion of there being value in a separate network hinges on, I think, there being a fundamental incompatibility between the groups. 22yo vs 32yo MBAs have real structural differences in their lives that make divided self help a plausible solution. I just don't buy that the differences we're talking about are significant enough to create fundamental incompatibilities. "The female tech network" vs "The tech network" smacks of separate but equal to me.
I have no problem with female focused accelerators, but remember that YC doesn't systemically exclude MBAs to create a network of 22y.o.s.
I'm enjoying the discussion (minus the part where you try to dismiss my cases as unrealistic) as you're bringing up models and cases that I hadn't yet considered.
Is the goal to have two networks, or to achieve gender neutrality in the existing meta-network? I think our goal is gender neutrality.
Re: Thoughts on YC's Female Founders Conference
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ay, there's the rub: what should we work toward? The first thing is, as always, to think about the current situation, and analyze its politics. See who the parties are. What their interests are. Whether their interests are authentic, or merely a result of many years of social pressure. What power is in question? Who has it? Who doesn't? Why? Once you understand the politics (which isn't easy because we often confuse…
I'd like to add one more thing: you question whether having more women in tech is virtuous. I don't know if it is, but I can say this: the tech industry (unlike prison) yields a lot of power in our society. And when a certain group of people i largely excluded from a source of power, it stands to reason that there's a problem here.
This is one of the great unexamined claims of our time. It assumes that members of Group X are the best (or even good) advocates for the welfare of Group X. But if Group X is underrepresented in the halls of power, it does not follow that Group X would be better off if they had more influence. This is easy to see by setting Group X to minor children, whose representation in powerful positions is negligible, and indeed whose members are ineligible even to vote. But extending the franchise to five-year-olds isn't (to my knowledge) a top political priority, and rightly so. "Children's suffrage" would generally make children worse off, not better.
Rather than a dog-eat-dog free-for-all that pits Group X against Group Y and Group Y against Group Z, a sounder principle is this: for responsible government, the responsible must rule. Responsible rulers can balance the inevitably competing interests of different groups, using the time-honored but curiously unfashionable virtue of human wisdom. And while it is certainly the case that there are many wise and responsible women—and, indeed, not a few wise and responsible children—the assumption that all human subgroups are on average equally wise and responsible is completely unjustified. The trickery implicit in the phrase "excluded from a source of power" is thus revealed: just because a group is underrepresented in the halls of power, it does not follow that they are being "excluded" by anything.
How then to ensure that the responsible will rule? We arrive now at the key question. It is as yet unanswered. But it seems like a question worth working on...
Re: Thoughts on YC's Female Founders Conference
#57The first half sounds like an echo-chamber hugbox The second sounds useful, but mainly because the content was useful. Did any of the conference address what a female founder is specifically? I'm still concerned that a Female Founders Conference would exclude men or people of other genders. Yes it's great to have a platform to stand as a woman, but what about trans* or non-traditional genders? Where do they go then?…
>The whole idea of feminism is inclusion, which means including trans, queer and other genders and YES including men too.
Mainstream feminism doesn't agree, except for when someone wants to start an equal rights movement for another demographic, like men or GLBT. Then they start acting like patent lawyers.
I would suggest looking into egalitarianism, which lacks the gender supremacy aspect of feminism. You can continue to identify as a feminist, that's fine and 100% up to you...but you're going to spend more time fighting other feminists about what "feminism" means than doing anything else. :/
Re: Thoughts on YC's Female Founders Conference
#58The first half sounds like an echo-chamber hugbox The second sounds useful, but mainly because the content was useful. Did any of the conference address what a female founder is specifically? I'm still concerned that a Female Founders Conference would exclude men or people of other genders. Yes it's great to have a platform to stand as a woman, but what about trans* or non-traditional genders? Where do they go then?…
As a gender and sexual minority, I try to stay clear of feminists. (At least, when someone says they are one, I get wary.) They're some of the most GSM hostile people I've met. >The whole idea of feminism is inclusion, which means including trans, queer and other genders and YES including men too. Mainstream feminism doesn't agree, except for when someone wants to start an equal rights movement for another demographi…
The problem nowadays is that feminism has turned into a splinter pile of infighting groups who, honestly, don't know what feminism is. Feminism has nothing to do with female superiority, it was simply put forward (along with queer theory, post-colonialism) as a framework to analyze society.