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.
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.