Could you copy a few links here on articles about YC founders that particularly focus on their being male, what it is about the masculinity that is relevant, etc., rather than just mentioning them as people? I'm not sure I've ever read such an article.
I'm fascinated to see what they discuss? The choice between fatherhood and career, the preconceptions to behave in a particular fashion, the unfair dresscodes and lack of paternity rights?
Because an article is about people, and those people happen to have a joint characteristic, that doesn't mean that the article is about that characteristic of those people. To recapitulate, if I right an article about people who inspired me growing up and it mentions Ronald Reagan and Michael Gorbachev that doesn't mean the article is about "light skinned males" any more than if it were about Margaret Thatcher and Germaine Greer it would be about "light skinned females".
FWIW the OP doesn't really touch on being about being a female founder except in one para:
>"We got an interesting variety of responses when we asked the women whether being a female was advantageous or disadvantageous in their roles as founders."
And in that the response appears to have been "it didn't make any difference".
Well if being a male and female founder is practically the same it does rather demand that we ask the question, so why are YC focussing on the sex of these particular founders then, what's it got to do with anything.
There is this bit of unexplained sexism:
>"And as YC has grown, so has the number of female partners. Now there are four of us and we are not tokens, or a female minority in a male-dominated firm. At the risk of offending my male colleagues, who will nevertheless understand what I mean, some would claim it's closer to the truth to say that that we run the place."
In what way is it fine to pick out that "we run the place" and specifically note that's related to being a particular sex? How is that cool. Maybe those people do run the place, but is that really because they're a particular sex rather than because that's the role they were hired for, or fell into, within the firm?
Why is YC so keen to maintain an actively demarcated line between males and females rather than just say Alex here is office manager, rather than noting first which sex Alex is. Baffles me how this is presented as progressively non-sexist.
> And in that the response appears to have been "it didn't make any difference".
> Well if being a male and female founder is practically the same it does rather demand that we ask the question, so why are YC focussing on the sex of these particular founders then, what's it got to do with anything.
I think the idea was that said females didn't find founding a company any more difficult, given they had already chosen the founder path. This is because once you go down that path, the most significant factor is drive. So Jessica "not really touching on being a female founder" may have been intended to convey a welcoming sense of gender-equality by not actually focusing about gender (like you say it shouldn't be). But on the other hand, we can't ignore the up-stream barrier-to-entry that must exist for the demographics to look so skewed.
> we run the place
Yeah, I agree. That particular line (in an otherwise fine article) may have been written with good intention. But it also felt pretty jarring. Reading "we (us women) run the place" gives me vibes that sexism is something to be inverted rather than neutralized. I think the article might have been better received had Jessica said "The 4 of us, who happen to be women, play key roles" or "It's nice to see a female majority at the top for a change".
For this reason, yes, it is important to mention that Alex is a woman, so as to make potential female women less scared of approaching YC. In a perfect world it wouldn't be necessary, but because the climate in the industry is one of harassment against every woman, it is necessary to point out successful examples of females in tech and in YC.
You're right in a way in that it should be gender neutral.
But the problem is there is far more encouragement towards men being entrepreneurs (especially in the technology space) while women typically get discouraged to do things outside of the stereotypical "female role". A mechanism to help correct this is to cater more content for women versus men. It won't correct it, it's not perfect and I think we'd all rather not care about gender, race, etc but the reality of today is if you're not a white male you're discouraged in many environments from attempting the same thing.
You are assuming that discrimination in favor of males and discrimination in favor of females are like vectors that are parallel and opposite in direction. Under that assumption, overall equality could be achieved by selecting and titrating an appropriate magnitude for your own bias, based on the observed bias in the system.
I believe the assumption is flawed. There is a perpendicular component to those vectors, such that any decision to discriminate, at any magnitude, can result in a decrease in fairness for everyone. Thus, the only way to ensure that you are not actually making things worse is to not discriminate based on irrelevant factors like founder gender at all.
If you want to show off the experiences of women founders in YC, make your random sample size large enough that several of them will be represented. Narrowing the pool by eliminating one gender or the other is cheating. So adding "here's 40 male founders" would actually just be making it worse.
The only way to make it better would be to include a representative sampling of founders, chosen without using gender as a consideration.
But the article was motivated by the same premise--that opposing biases can cancel, so that is why it was created with an obvious gender bias. I doubt the intent was malicious, but the results may not be as expected.
The problem with that line of thinking is the singular focus on stereotypical male profession, while ignoring gender distribution in highly sought after female professions.
It might come as a surprise, but most of the top 10 most sought after professions (based on the applications for university level classes) are female dominated. Men get equally discouraged to do those things outside of the stereotypical "male professions", and there is no mechanism to help correct this. The idea to create male only conferences, universities or network groups for psychologists and veterinaries is seen as a bad joke that no one would ever take seriously, yet those professions has similar or significant worse gender ratios than that for entrepreneurs or technology professionals.
I suspect that we would see much less critique of gender equality mechanisms if those mechanisms were equally used in handling both male and female stereotypes. The result otherwise seems only to reinforce the gender stereotype of women as victims, and ignoring the underlying problem of gender stereotypes discouraged people from picking their own destiny.
The idea to create male only conferences, universities or network groups for psychologists and veterinaries is seen as a bad joke that no one would ever take seriously,
That is absolutely false. Yes, there are a number of professions dominated by females (the ones you mention as well as school teachers and nursing) and there are numerous examples of support groups, outreach groups, and scholarship programs that are trying to attract males students and applicants. You are looking for a double standard where none exist.
Conferences are social events so linking to the numerous examples should be an easy task. I could not find male only conferences for psychologists or veterinaries using google.
Actually, for any of the top 10 most sought professions, I could not find any examples of support groups, outreach groups, and scholarship programs directed at males. school teachers and nursing has it, but those are not even close to the top 10 list.
But feel free to prove me wrong. please link one of those numerous examples.
Here's two. Sorry I don't have time to find more right now. In any event, you admit that outreach exists for female-dominated fields, that would appear to go against the notion that [support] groups for other female dominated fields would be "seen as a bad joke that no one would ever take seriously."
We were talking about male-only conferences, and those links are about diversity outreach programs that focus on African-American, Asian, Hispanic, Latino, LGBT and males (listed in that order on both links). The very first successful example they bring up is an African-American woman.
There exist diversity programs in almost all professions. What does not exist is conferences, universities or network groups that only allow one group in the name of diversity. The linked example are what people that dislike affirmative action points at as good example of outreach in stark contrast to actions which only invite one group and exclude everyone else from participation.
But maybe if you had more time, you could locate all those numerous male-only conferences.
Specifically you mentioned "male only conferences, universities or network groups", and I mentioned "support groups, outreach groups, and scholarship programs." You're right, I haven't had a chance to find any male-only conferences for psychologists and veterinaries (but for that matter, I can't find any "female-only" conferences in other fields like tech), but I did find examples of outreach/network groups. And as I mentioned, the fact that they do exist for fields like nursing and teaching is evidence that if these outreach groups don't exist for veterinarians and psychologists, it's not because they're seen as a "joke."
in stark contrast to actions which only invite one group and exclude everyone else from participation.
You are asking for example of meeting places which are women only? That is not a hard thing to do but so its odd question to ask here on HN given the numerous articles and discussion on that particular subject.
https://women.com/ ? Describe by YC as the "the go-to place where women can speak honestly with each other online, deliberately away from the male gender".
There is a numerous number of exclusive hacker spaces which are women only. Men are not only excluded, they are explicitly not welcome and barred from entering. Geek Feminism Wiki has the list if interested.
For education, we got Ada Developers Academy as the google #1 hit. An exclusively "for women" education. There are others like Hackbright Academy, but the list would go long if I listed them all.
While its common for conferences to have women-only meet ups and exclusive areas, there are also a few that are also exclusive. Female founders conference comes to mind - an event just for women as per the description text.
What has every example above in common? They are welcoming one gender, and aggressively excluding the other gender. Compare that to the two links you gave, and I find the differences in tone as stark as light and day. There is no "male go-to place where men can speak honestly with each other deliberately away from the female gender". Saying that sentence out loud feels like a joke. I could be wrong and maybe some people feel that would be a valuable concept, but to me it sound like the old-style boys club that went away when gender equality became a concept.
You're right and my comment was only directed to the topic at hand which is a stereotypical male profession. Naturally other professions may need a different solution to their problem.
Regardless I don't think this is something that is going to be resolved anytime soon.
Why do you care? Men don't need any champions in tech, we're doing quite well with the status-quo. Some organizations want to encourage a bit of diversity in their industry, why does that bother you?
Maybe if we pretend sexism doesn't exist it will go away?
We disadvantage women (and gender and racial minorities) without intending to and without being aware of it. When we just say "let's treat people equally and all will be solved" we ignore the fact that we don't know HOW to treat people equally. We have countless ingrained assumptions about men v. women that cause unconscious changes in how we treat them from birth.
"Let's just stop intentionally being sexist/racist/homophobic and everything will be hunky-dory" flies right in the face of all the science out there on human behavior, on every level, neurology up to sociology.
And to be truthful, we don't even Want to treat people equally. There's the biological part of it in there, like it or not. We're bred for the last million years with distinct behaviors toward one another that can't be trained out or argued away.
On the one hand, because women sort of run the narrative these days.
On the other hand, YCombinator is a private startup incubator and can do whatever the hell it wants. If they want to cater specifically to lesbian Alaskan Muslims, it is their prerogative to do so.
No I think he means in the wider society. And I don't necessarily agree.
That said a lot of us has grown up in places were women were (and are) given advantages at every point from kindergarden until they finish school. When I was younger it used to annoy me. Not so much anymore but it might explain his views.
Edit: enlighten me, what did I do to deserve downvotes so I can avoid doing it again?
I didn't downvote you, but you allude to vague advantages that women get over men, ignoring the fact that, well, all evidence is that we (men) are the privileged class.
Studies have shown that, as a man, I'm less likely to be interrupted in meetings, more likely to have my opinion listened to, will likely have a higher salary, and will less likely be driven out by an oppressive environment.
White male Christians think they're the most oppressed group. Studies typically find otherwise, though. If you want to argue that women have the advantage, you're going to need to provide some good evidence. Extraordinary claims, y'know?
> Studies have shown that, as a man, I'm less likely to be interrupted in meetings, more likely to have my opinion listened to, will likely have a higher salary, ...
Yeah, I guess the fact that I very clearly stopped after school didn't sink in with a few people.
This is of course correct and I welcome research into this and other specific pain points. As others have pointed out it means we miss out on talented people and it means good female enginners never gets the job they could have excelled at.
> If you want to argue that women have the advantage, you're going to need to provide some good evidence. Extraordinary claims, y'know?
Fine : ) I grew up in one of the Nordic countries and many of my early teachers would, very clearly, push girls first, make fun of boys, tell us how boys always woild get this or that wrong. Maybe what I expirienced was unusual but my understanding is it was quite common in those times and those places. Later in school girls would get extra points when they applied to university.
And maybe it is right, but it sure is discrimination, - the only question is whether it is a good thing or a bad thing.
(And, while my original post didn't include it it happens after you leave school as well. Around here after you get listed on the stock exchange you need to include 40 % women on the board. Which might be fine, then at least some people in the board will be chosen because of their skills and not because they are members of the big boys club. Also last year we had our first case where a man sued the military for sexism after he lost a job which he was clearly more qualified for because they wanted a woman instead.)
> White male Christians think they're the most oppressed group. Studies typically find otherwise, though.
Hehe, if any of us think that let them watch the news. A whole lot of the black and Asian Christians are having difficult times though.
That's a bit of an oversimplification. You, as a man, are also more likely to be physically assaulted or even killed, you're more likely to die at your workplace, more likely to be homeless, more likely to commit suicide, and more likely to have people say "man up" or ignore your problems if you ask for help. Also, you're much more likely to be conscripted, though I believe that that's one discriminatory policy that actually makes sense from a societal point of view, and hopefully it won't be relevant in the developed world ever again.
