

The Depressing Gender Gap at the Nation’s Top 71 Venture Capital Firms - Ataub24
http://betabeat.com/2012/05/female-partners-venture-capital-firms-fem-kleiner-perkins/

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tjic
Why is a gender gap considered "depressing" ?

Women have a bellcurve of capabilities, inclinations and skills.

So do men.

So do people born inside Route 128.

So do left-handed people.

Ideally any given person with skill set X should be allowed and encouraged by
society to participate in career field Y.

...but the average height of people born in New York is not the same as the
average height as is found in Tokyo. The average amount of fast twitch muscle
fiber in Kenya is different than that in Chicago. The average enjoyment of
sales calls is different among introverts than extroverts. The average
enthusiasm for long hours is different for men and for women.

If a woman has the skills and desire to be a VC, great.

...but why should I be depressed if this is not the case?

There's an implicit unspoken axiom behind all of these sorts of arguments,
that all demographics are identical in the distribution of traits.

That's false.

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RyanIyengar
Speaking of implicit assumptions, your "not the case" is contrasted with your
statement of "skills and desire", so you're basically implying that you
wouldn't be depressed since this is just a normal occurrence, some women just
don't measure up. That's cool.

But that's not what gender gaps talk about. No one is fighting for a female
domination over any particular industry. What is being claimed, at least in
the suit, has more to do with claims of sexual harassment, and a continuation
of sexism and oppression that really was around and quite common until
recently. It's less common now, but that doesn't make it any less important to
be aware and cognizant of, so you don't fall into the easy trap of assuming
that women aren't in positions of power just because they don't want to.

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tomp
What about the depressing Gender Gap in the Olympic Boxing competitions?!?

Some people just don't get it, that men and women have different interests
(some of which are most definitely caused by nature, not society, e.g.
different hormonal levels in our bodies), and therefore choose different
options in life.

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chollida1
> If you think gender diversity is important, a low FEM is bad and a high FEM
> is good.

This is just plain wrong. If you think gender diversity is a good thing then a
FEM of around 50 would be good.

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RyanIyengar
Which compared to the highest percentage cited at 24%, is quite high.

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jilebedev
What a poor article.

That there exists an unequal amount of men and women in a certain profession
means nothing on its own.

That there exists a systematic bias against a group of people in an industry,
wherein the defining quality of that group has no relevance to success within
the said industry, is something worth discussing.

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rscale
Flagged because nothing good will come of this discussion and it won't help
anybody launch anything today.

