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Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

femfosec.com

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Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#701

Post by fy20 »

nitemice wrote: post #465
ksdale wrote: post #239

I agree completely with the premise that most people don't appreciate just how fleeting fertility can be, but I think rather than freezing eggs, the solution is for people to normalize having children at a younger age and designing work and home life around children existing and even being present in certain work contexts. Obviously freezing your eggs is something that you can do as individual without society's input…

But it's not just about work/home balance. It's also about being in a financially sound position, in a strong enough relationship with the "right" person, to be able to have a child. And that's increasingly hard for young people today, with the cost of living being higher than ever, wage growth hitting a wall, and attitudes towards relationships changing. Having a baby isn't as simple as deciding to do it. The proble…

> being in a financially sound position

As a newish parent (nearly two years), the only real costs I see are for childcare. Yes clothing and food costs something, but it's not that much (and plenty of people will give you old clothes if you ask). We share a bedroom, and it's not a problem. This can be solved by having the right support structures in place by the state. I live in an EU country, but my country doesn't do very well with this.

Although my SO does not work (they were studying before our child was born), we do not have family living nearby that can help with childcare, which seems to be how most people cope here. Ideally the state would provide free childcare to all families, regardless of whether parents are working or not. It should be at a high enough standard, that state childcare is the norm (like schools), not the exception.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#703

Post by gnicholas »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #695
gnicholas wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was under the impression people had kids to build a family together, not to compete with their partners for achievements. I don't think at all the situation you described is bad in any way. In fact, it would be a huge step forward. I wasn't indicating that the spouses were in any way competing with each other. I was pointing out the inequity that results among professors who are fathers and their colleagues who a…

So your solution to these iniquities is to punish potential success by sex through the denial of equal treatment in child-related leave? Leave alone the fact that this would be illegal discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, how would this work for non-heterosexual relationships? Wouldn't non-childbearing lesbian professors also have this advantage while their SO is nursing their newborn? Ultimately,…

You seem to have read a lot into my comment that wasn't there. I wasn't advocating for a specific policy, only pointing out that giving the same thing to everyone doesn't always result in outcomes that are equal.

Also, I never suggested anything that would violate Title VII. At most law firms (including the one I worked at for many years), a parent who birthed a child received much more leave than the other parent.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#704

Post by StavrosK »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #576
StavrosK wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly, but I don't find the fault to be with the statement, but with people. Our inability to separate "inconvenient general fact" from "specific, personal insult to whole swathes of people" is one of the banes of modern discourse.

Unfortunately, you're communicating with other people. Unless you find a way to magically stop people getting triggered, it's best to avoid certain trigger words and be careful when expressing certain points.

When you're the author, yes, absolutely. When you're a reader, absolutely not, you need to consider what the author is saying rather than what your personal feelings make you think he's saying. Each party must be responsible for their part, and while "he could have been more tactful" is valid criticism, "he shouldn't have offended people" is not.

Just to be more tactful, I don't remember exactly what had happened with this whole thing, I'm only talking about this specific fact.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#705

Post by readams »

sokoloff wrote: post #635
paledot wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wage stagnation has nothing to do with immigration and everything to do with the obscenely rich being permitted to get obscenely richer. It's disappointing that your friends have fallen for that lie.

Nothing to do with it is a strong claim. Do you believe that labor is a market that does not generally behave like other markets in terms of supply and demand for price discovery? Do you believe that immigration did not increase supply by more than it increased demand? I’m trying to tease apart and understand your certainty that there is no downward pressure on wages from immigration.

Immigrants also grow the economy and so create jobs. They participate in the economy as consumers and as entrepreneurs. Maybe a way to think about it that might help is to imagine a country containing only you. Would your job be safe?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#706

Post by cutemonster »

drakonka wrote: post #693
cutemonster wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a TD? > The replacement producer was simply moved to work on another project. I wonder about the theoretical situation when the replacement did a significantly better job, and you needed just one person for that job role. Then, I wonder if there could be some resentment when the original less talented person returns and "kicks out" the more talented one. Maybe a solution is to not be too attached to the compan…

> What's a TD? TD = Technical Director Yeah, our replacement producer was great! She was great enough to go straight to just leading a different project. I did not sense any resentment or disruption in our original producer coming back though, and she was also great. Of course there was a proper handover etc as well. I think when you assume competence all around and hire competent people this becomes largely a non-is…

> when ... and hire competent people this becomes largely a non-issue to be honest.

Good point.

Hmm, maybe one job interview question could be to get a project current status description, and then choose the next steps (as if one got to take over that project for a white)

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#707

Post by lasagnaphil »

arvinsim wrote: post #610
sizzle wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I never understood was if there are less female software devs simply because they genuinely value others things more in life than staring at pixels on a computer screen (e.g. raising a family) and if this is the case in other time intensive fields such as medicine and law? Biological clock and childrearing are well understood from an evolutionary perspective and are things that affect men disproportionately less…

The ironic thing is that the earliest programmers are women. I think I saw or read that the reason why there is such a gender disparity in programming is because programming was marketed as a male-oriented activity in the 80's. Sadly, I can't find the source for that anymore.

I suspected that the whole “geek culture” around computers started to grow around the time when video games were heavily marketed to young boys. And it’s natural that through video games these young boys would have grown interest in computers and eventually programming. I admit that this theory needs quite a lot more research though. (Maybe it’s the other way around, the prevalence of male geek culture changed the landscape of video game marketing? Or perhaps it’s not just cause-and-effect and more of a positive feedback loop.)

The funny thing is that at the start of the video game industry (I would mark that as the Atari era), TV advertisements for it really didn’t marketed it specifically for boys, it was more for “the whole family” and for both boys and girls. The heavily gendered marketing started in the Nintendo era (years after the Atari shock), around the late-80s to early-90s you see a large shift in style of TV video game ads. I don’t currently have links to the TV ad archives, but you can find lots of it on Youtube.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#708

Post by lhorie »

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #670
codyb wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we plan for the special needs children though? I mean, certainly, reprioritizing when you have one makes a lot of sense, and we should as a society invest to make sure these children lead fulfilling lives. But... bringing up special needs kids seems a bit disingenuous as a point when they're, I believe, a small minority of all children no?

There are a lot more people with "special needs" than people think. In Australia, the (reported) rate of Autism in the general population is 0.7%. That's pretty huge, over 170,000 people. That's Autism alone. My daughter for example has Type 1 Diabetes. It's much rarer than Autism. However, when you start adding all these up, it's significant.

I should probably qualify that I'm strictly talking about helicopter parenting (e.g. arguing with the daydreaming kid because they won't stick to a packed strict schedule). Special needs are, as the name says, special needs.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#709

Post by dTal »

astan wrote: post #67

Your whole blog resonates deeply with me. All this corporate grifting and women's empowerment months will do jack shit until we figure out how to make workplaces and lives more equitable for mothers and allowing for gaps, breaks and destigmatizing time off for parents of both genders. Instead, we talk about how sexism is the biggest problem. Sure, sexism might be annoying, but in the west, it is hardly something that…

You mention "destigmatizing time off for parents of both genders", but the rest of your post is structured to imply that time off for new parents is a primarily or exclusively female concern. What are these "different needs and desires"? Men like to spend time with their children too. It seems to me that, rather than any particular unfairness towards women, the issue is that children simply demand a lot of parental resources that are difficult to spare in a competitive marketplace.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#710

Post by imwillofficial »

ImprobableTruth wrote: post #264
imwillofficial wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that would violate the “I want to have my cake and eat it too” mantra. “I want to make massive life altering choices and suffer no 2nd order effects.” “I want to handicap others to compensate for my decisions” It’s selfish, unfair, and morally wrong. When did the smart way of doing things in alignment with nature, become old, antiquated, and dumb? I find the ignorant snobbishness of our modern world to be ins…

Because society actively punishes people who do so. If having a child in your twenties is career suicide, it's only natural that people who aren't willing to give up their career prospects to have a child (would you?) will try to postpone it.

No, I would not. Another few hours in the office isn’t worth endangering a child. That’s selfish and stupid.
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