
Stop Telling Women To Do Startups - kunle
http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/11/stop-telling-women-to-do-startups/
======
DaniFong
There are many women, myself included, who have directly benefited from the
message that I could (if not, _should_ ) do a startup.

I was previously on an academic treadmill. It was more or less assumed that if
you were capable, you wanted to be a professor. It took awhile before I could
really see the pros/cons of tying my research to that particular structure.

I think a lot of women -- highly competent women -- are stuck in similar
treadmills -- Law School, Finance, Consulting, Grad School. If they're not
presented if this alternate life path, it may take many more year for them to
get started.

And that may be when they have a family, and that may put a damper on startup
ambitions.

Absolutely people have the right to make their own choices, and it's possible
that different genders/families/ethnicities/what-have-you will make
statistically different choices.

But I really don't think we are doing such a great job with presenting women,
or the population at large really, with the full range of what's possible.
There are a lot more people out there who would be happier doing a startup, or
any kind of entrepreneurial endeavor focussed on something they are really
passionate about, than are actually doing one.

There's really a lot we can do in this arena, and I don't think this
industry's exhortations or encouragement really represents some kind of
dismissal of women's choices or co-opts free will.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
I would really love to see some research on this topic, because I would love
to know if that is really that different from men. Growing up, I was told many
options about what I could do: Founder was never one of them. It wasn't until
I took stock and looked around at my corporate career that I decided it wasn't
working for me.

And that doesn't sound too different from your experience. I want my daughters
to have every option available to them, from stay-at-home mom to founder. I
obliquely can't speak for the societal pressures of being a woman, but the
educational aspects between my boys and my girls has not been noticeably
different.

~~~
DaniFong
I think the cleanest experiments here would be those having to do with
stereotype threat. For example, women asked to write down their gender (even
just with a checkbox) before a math test at the GRE level score significantly
worse. Asian women asked to also write down their race are inoculated against
this effect. These women are "primed" with their stereotypes and it
dramatically influences performance. Even asking people to think about being a
professor increases their performance!

I don't know if there are any related experiments with priming subjects with
the concepts of "mother" or "feminine" or what-have-you, but it's a good place
to start.

Maybe priming women with a reading comprehension test involving a passage with
Marie Curie? Or Lynn Margulis? Or Sophie Germaine...

Also, this is indirect, but the study of highly talented women and men _here_
: <http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/Ferriman2009.pdf>

...shows a strong pull toward shorter hours/working from home for women over
men, and it gets stronger as women age from 25 to 35.

I think this indicates some of the pressures of motherhood.

To this end, I think it might be a good idea to have mixed age Montessori
schools _at_ places of business. Since it's an exploratory learning model, and
the place is set up to be a cool place to learn and play and be anyway, and
one of the biggest recruiting draws and factors in the choice of workplace is
often the school district, and a single teacher can handle the mixed-age
children of a small-mid sized company because they largely teach
themselves/each other, and because that's less expensive than private school
and the parents could participate more in their kids lives if they were
physically close to work, I think it could be a huge benefit to forward
thinking companies. Don't know, but it could help both men and women.

Bonus:

Check out the graph on page 477 here:

<http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/SexDiffs.pdf>

It plots surveyed personal importance for various issues, like "Developing my
intellectual interests" to "Part time career for a limited time". You'll
notice that the male and female responses almost entirely match, with the few
exceptions, and there it doesn't deviate by much!

~~~
yummyfajitas
It seems that if stereotype threat is real, and applies to more circumstances
than just an examination, then this is truly compelling evidence that women
really are inferior to men (in aggregate, individuals may vary of course).

After all, a man and a woman of equal intrinsic ability may perform just as
well under ideal circumstances, but the woman's performance is fragile. If the
woman is reminded of her gender at lunch, she might return from lunch and
perform "significantly worse".

(This does of course assume equal statistical distributions of intrinsic
ability between men and women.)

~~~
DaniFong
That doesn't follow at all; and is phrased in a completely insensitive way. If
you want to have a civilized conversation, stop that.

Boys/Men are also susceptible to stereotype threat. The priming with race is
well known. They are also especially susceptible if they are primed with an
"immutable talent" over "hard work = success" lesson, and then undertake a
very difficult task. Boys struggle with this, and perform much worse in the
next test, just as girls do.

Cultural factors are absolutely the dominant factors in which stereotypes are
threatened. Both genders respond negatively to threats. That's no
justification for claiming women are inferior!

An even more vivid example: Jane Elliott's Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes test:

"Steven Armstrong was the first child to arrive in Elliott’s classroom on that
day, asking why "that King" (referring to Martin Luther King Jr.) was murdered
the day before. After the rest of the class arrived, Elliott asked them what
the children knew about blacks. The children responded with various racial
stereotypes such as ignorance, unemployment, and common labels to those of
Native Americans or Blacks[citation needed]. She then asked these children if
they would like to try an exercise to feel what it was like to be treated the
way a colored person is treated in America, mentioning that it would be
interesting if there was segregation based on eye color instead of skin color.
The children enthusiastically agreed to try the exercise.[1]

On that day, she designated the blue-eyed children as the superior group.
Elliott provided brown fabric collars and asked the blue-eyed students to wrap
them around the necks of their brown-eyed peers as a method of easily
identifying the minority group. She gave the blue-eyed children extra
privileges, such as second helpings at lunch, access to the new jungle gym,
and five extra minutes at recess.[citation needed] The blue-eyed children sat
in the front of the classroom, and the brown-eyed children were sent to sit
the back rows. The blue-eyed children were encouraged to play only with other
blue-eyes and to ignore those with brown eyes. Elliott would not allow brown-
eyed and blue-eyed children to drink from the same water fountain, and often
chastised the brown-eyed students when they did not follow the experiment's
rules or made mistakes. She often exemplified the differences between the two
groups by singling out students, and would use negative aspects of brown-eyed
children to emphasize. Elliott observed that the students' reaction to the
discrimination exercise showed immediate changes in their personalities and
interaction with each other as early as the first 15 minutes.

At first, there was resistance among the students in the minority group to the
idea that blue-eyed children were better than brown-eyed children. To counter
this, Elliott used pseudo-scientific explanations for her actions by stating
that the melanin responsible for making blue-eyed children also was linked to
their higher intelligence and learning ability. Shortly thereafter, this
initial resistance fell away. Those who were deemed “superior” became
arrogant, bossy and otherwise unpleasant to their “inferior” classmates. Their
grades also improved, doing mathematical and reading tasks that seemed outside
their ability before. The “inferior” classmates also transformed – into timid
and subservient children, including those who had previously been dominant in
the class. These children’s academic performance suffered, even with tasks
that had been simple before.

The following day, Elliott reversed the exercise, making the brown-eyed
children superior. While the brown-eyed children did taunt the blue-eyed in
ways similar to what had occurred the previous day, Elliott reports it was
much less intense. At 2:30 on that Wednesday, Elliott told the blue-eyed
children to take off their collars and the children cried and hugged one
another. To reflect on the experience, she had the children write letters to
Coretta Scott King and write compositions about the experience.[1]"

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Elliott>

~~~
yummyfajitas
_That doesn't follow at all; and is phrased in a completely insensitive way.
If you want to have a civilized conversation, stop that._

Demanding that certain ideas be phrased in a politically correct way only
serves the purpose of making it more difficult to express those ideas. If your
goal is to suppress dissent that is valuable, but not if your goal is to find
the truth. What is your goal?

If men are prone to stereotype threat in some area, then they too are inferior
in that area. For example, if a "white men can't jump" stereotype prevents men
from performing well in basketball, then men are indeed likely to be inferior
basketball players. Similarly, in the non-scientific experiment you described,
the brown-eyed children did appear to perform more poorly.

Obviously the inferiority only holds in a cultural context and in certain
areas - mine referred to the modern American context, where apparently even
marking [X] Female lowers women's performance on scientific topics. I probably
should have expressed this more clearly in my original comment.

An interesting fact to realize is that the stereotype-threat based inferiority
might be unavoidable. Suppose hypothetically that white men are shorter or
worse jumpers (on average) than black men. In this case, the "white men can't
jump" stereotype is true - but then knowledge of this true fact might cause
them to also perform worse than their height would otherwise suggest due to
stereotype threat. Human psychology might actually amplify innate differences
in abilities.

~~~
DaniFong
If your goal were to find truth your arguments would be more well reasoned. I
can't ascribe your phrasing to anything other than sloppiness or a desire to
incite controversy.

To my knowledge we haven't found a single demographic group immune to
stereotype threat. I suppose one could argue under your tortured semantics
that they are all inferior to one another under different forms of
discrimination, but what is the point?

~~~
yummyfajitas
_...we haven't found a single demographic group immune to stereotype threat._

This is a straw man. I never claimed any group was immune to stereotype
threat.

You claimed stereotype threat affects some groups more than others in some
areas. Your specific example was women are affected by it in math. I pointed
out that _if_ this generalizes beyond the GRE, and if men and women's
abilities are equal absent stereotype threat, the result is that women would
be inferior to men in math-related jobs.

You can claim my arguments poorly reasoned all you want, but you still haven't
pointed out any flaws in them. All you did was demand I not be "insensitive"
and attack straw men.

I just realized I've had this conversation before, not going to waste my time
further. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3256492>

~~~
DaniFong
To be as explicit as possible: poor functioning as a result of discriminatory
stereotypes is no evidence of innate inferiority, be it in women or men or
whomever. It is evidence of discriminatory stereotypes, that is all.

~~~
natrius
For everyone's sake, allow me to try to rephrase yummyfajitas's argument.

Consider several groups of equal ability and equal vulnerability to stereotype
threat. On average, the groups that have more negative stereotypes directed
toward them will perform worse. Given two people of equal ability, a purely
rational actor trying to choose a member of their team will choose the one to
which fewer negative stereotypes apply.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Yes, and as a special case of this, _if what DaniFong says is true and
generalizes beyond the math GRE", non-Asian women will exhibit inferior math
performance_ in the contemporary US*. Similarly, if zasz's claims about
athletic performance stereotypes are true, then non-black men will be inferior
athletes.

Both of these predictions seem to concur with reality, so I'd suggest maybe
Danifong's theory has something going for it.

------
gyardley
In a roundabout way, the author points out that because of differences in
preferences between groups, equal access to opportunities don't lead to equal
outcomes.

However, the 'equal opportunities don't lead to equal outcomes' argument is
often used as an excuse to ignore inequality - if we all pretend we've all got
perfectly equal access to opportunities, we can attribute any difference in
outcomes between groups to group preferences and call it a day.

Yes, I'd expect that in a world where access to opportunity was truly equal,
the gender balance of founders would still be skewed. But that doesn't imply
that there's equal access to opportunity in tech today, and it certainly
doesn't mean we can say 'no gender problem here' and stop thinking about the
ways we inadvertently discourage women from doing what we do.

~~~
kstenerud
Thus begins yet another unendable initiative. Differences exist, therefore we
say there could be inequality. Since there could be inequality, better to
consciously bias against the alleged inequality, just in case the inequality
actually exists. And since it's impossible to prove its nonexistence, better
to simply state that it exists. After all, there HAS to exist some bias
somewhere, no matter how significant. It's safer to think this way because you
avoid being labeled as "against equality", and can enjoy life with the other
"enlightened".

I just call it pure cowardice.

~~~
gyardley
My eyes rolled so hard at this, it woke up my wife in the next room. Then we
both had a laugh at me being described as 'enlightened' - in my neck of the
woods, most people think I'm a troglodyte.

Look, sometimes people do real, obvious, correctable things that result in
inequality. There's nothing 'alleged' about these things, and correcting them
isn't an 'unendable initiative' - usually, all you've got to do is be a little
more self-aware.

A case in point - a startup I co-founded a few years back was all-male for a
while, and without getting into the details, we didn't always maintain a
sophisticated level of conversation around the office. We didn't change our
habits after we hired a couple of female college students part-time.

Later, I found out our part-time employees were uncomfortable with our office
banter. Not cool, since this was their first exposure to startups and the type
of people that work for them. When I found out about this, my unendable
initiative to fix the problem was a quick email, which took care of it. (Still
irritated that I didn't pick up on this earlier.)

That's it - no systematic bias in the other direction, no big bureaucratic
programs by government authorities, just being aware enough of your
surroundings to not be an asshole. You can do it too.

~~~
DuncanIdaho
That is exactly the right thing to do.

But completely honestly, why did you even develop this kind of culture in the
first place? Don't you think you should have prevented the whole situation in
the first place?

~~~
gyardley
Heh, that's easy to answer - it's because I was an idiot!

Of course I should've prevented the whole situation in the first place, but I
wasn't on the ball enough to realize it was a problem. I wasn't consciously
trying to shape company culture at all, which is why it developed on its own
in a suboptimal way.

~~~
nknight
It happens all the time, and it can be essentially invisible to management at
larger companies. People get close. Cliques with their own sub-cultures will
develop, HR-unfriendly and perhaps legally-actionable things will go on behind
closed doors when everybody in the room is friends with everybody else.

Nobody will really notice or care until someone with a different worldview
starts having to work closely with them and stuff starts bleeding through.

When it goes on for too long, people may get angry and resentful when trouble
starts, and then you have a much quieter but more insidious mess...

What? No, I've never seen this happening from the inside! Of course not! I'm a
perfect angel!

------
francesca
I was hoping hackernews would have a better discussion on this topic but I
guess not.

I think I'm the only person who is infuriated by Penelope Trunk's article in
TechCrunch Titled "Stop telling women to do startups" It moves up to the top
of HackerNews very quickly, and I'm a little disappointed by the comments in
the article. The title is pure nonsense first of all, and while there are
maybe two points that I could agree with, it overall is a very poorly
constructed argument. As a 20-something starting her career, I would hate for
this type of talk to become a trend amongst women, because this logic cannot
influence the next gen of women movers and shakers.

1\. Women have choices and they aren't choosing startups because they want to
have their own children: FALSE women are not empowered to balance the work
life continuum. For men, the startup legend is one they would like to fulfill
--a la the Pirates of Silicon Valley. For Penelope Trunk, she would rather be
soft on the women who are itching to live life with a less exciting career
(quite contrary to her title of "Brazen Careerist").

2\. Raising Money and Running a Startup is Hard, so don't just tell anyone to
do it!: FALSE women should be empowered to make these decisions and push
themselves into riskier situations. In fact women who have partners with a
stable income and have children should feel even more empowered to launch
their own company (like so many women on this list have done) WHY CAN'T THEY
BE RISKY! Why can't they work their ass off and succeed--or fail? I tried to
start my own company, tried to raise money and failed miserably and guess
what, I'm probably WAY more clever now because of that.

Saying that women have a natural imperative to raise children is horrible
backwards. Women are the only ones who can give birth, but they are also
capable of building great ideas, great work environments, great products and
great companies. I'm horribly disappointed in this piece.

~~~
Goladus
_For men, the startup legend is one they would like to fulfill_

Ah, but why do you think that is? It's not the really legend they are chasing,
for the most part. Men are competitive, driven to be successful, make lots of
money, and driven to take risks because women reward decisive, winning,
wealthy, successful risk-taking men with more attention than losers and
boring, predictable guys. This drive to succeed is partly biological (higher
testosterone, for example) and partly social conditioning reinforced by the
behavior of the women they have known in their life.

In contrast, men aren't especially attracted to success. It's not
unattractive, but they care more about beauty and personality. Most women know
this, which is probably one reason why people turn to outside "empowerment"
and other paternalistic encouragement and positive reinforcement to affect
female behavior. Meanwhile, women are choosing fields and careers that
interest them, like psychology, biology, and education, or that will result in
a high-status profession like law or medicine.

Despite rhetoric to the contrary, evidence points to women caring about male
attention and caring about having children and a family.

 _[women] are also capable of building..._

I think that by now it is more or less conclusively proven that women are
_capable_ of a great deal. Humans are highly adaptable and throughout history
both men and women did whatever they could to survive and raise their
children. The question is what do women really want? What will make them
happy?

------
DanielBMarkham
There are a lot of hidden prejudices both in this article and in the entire
discussion around women in technology and the startup world.

I have a startup. I love startups. So should everybody else love startups too?
Not at all.

A more direct question: roughly 50% of people are females. Should 50% of
startup founders be female?

I don't think so, but I find it difficult to continue the conversation past
this conclusion. The reason I don't think so is that I know that my judgment
on how cool startups are doesn't extend to everybody else. I intuitively feel
that being a founder involves complex traits and personal decisions that I
cannot fathom. To simply say the ratio should be the same sounds wrong. It
sounds like the same kind of mental error that makes me want to believe
everybody should be in startups. Likewise to say that women should not be in
startups sounds wrong also. Or to say startups should have more women in them
than men. Each possible conclusion is undefendable.

You could try to attack this problem by taking it the level of personal
choices: assuming women are rational actors making informed choices, why do so
many choose not to be in startups? Is it the environment? The difference in
the sexes? Chemicals in the water?

Of course, that doesn't work, because once you try to start making general
assumptions about the behaviors of millions of people you're going to start
stereotyping and using guesswork. It can't be helped.

So at the end of the day I understand that other people don't want to be
founders. And I accept that. Heck, for all I know the people who are not in
startups are the smart ones, and I'm the guy who has something wrong with him.
Not only am I not sure how to reasonably investigate this issue, I'm not even
sure I have my head screwed on well enough to know what a good or bad outcome
is.

I think it's one of those things that you can endlessly argue about, and I
choose not to. If folks want to discuss why Person A made her personal
decision not to stay in the startup or tech world, we could do that. But when
generalizing to all women, and to all startups, in my opinion it's just too
much abstraction to be a tractable issue.

~~~
russell
In this discussion startup = hi-tech/software/web. But if you step back and
think profit making business, women are not under-represented. An article
linked to in the original post says that 44% of all business are partially ow
wholly women owned. If you include part-time profit making business, I suspect
most are women owned.

Some anecdotal data points from my family: my ex runs a daycare that provides
her a nice income. My older daughter works for her but has a side business
making tutus for babies, which is an absurdly small business. She says it
gives her something to do while she watches television and pays for her
Starbucks addiction. However, it is real. She had to learn all about selling
internationally. My sister is a traveling consultant in theater costume
design. My partner is an artist.

I have done several startups. My son started a hardware startup and his share
of the exit was in the high 6 figures. Our startups were hi-tech, but overall
we were outnumbered by the women.

~~~
einhverfr
Agreed. In fact I would argue two things at least historicaly in the US:

1) Men tend to take risks more than women.

2) Women tend to focus more on family than men.

Additionally, I would add, that it's likely that the bulk of businesses owned
at any given time in history, counting part-time businesses have _always_ been
owned by women. Indeed the great influx of women into the work force in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries had to do with industrial processes
undermining their businesses!

------
_pius
Penelope is known for throwing out controversial memes and running with the
ones that get attention.

This idea got her some pageviews last year and she's been rewriting the same
article over and over again ever since:

<http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/09/women-startups-childre/>

[http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505143_162-47140168/are-
startups...](http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505143_162-47140168/are-startups-
better-as-single-gender-affairs/)

[http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2011/08/16/blueprint-for-a-
wom...](http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2011/08/16/blueprint-for-a-womans-life/)

[http://venturebeat.com/2011/11/29/woman-problem-what-
woman-p...](http://venturebeat.com/2011/11/29/woman-problem-what-woman-
problem/)

And now, of course, today's link bait. As with other trolls, the best thing to
do is to just ignore her.

~~~
jen_h
I stopped reading the TC article when I hit the byline, having read her
writing before.

Kudos, I guess, for her omitting (or TechCrunch excising) the advice about how
women who really want to succeed should get plastic surgery, focus less on
work and more on capturing and keeping a man.

That "Blueprint" post reads so much like satire that I actually read the
entire thing, only to discover the woman was dead serious. "It's no small
feat, but Botox and Restylane will be your best teammates in this part of the
adventure." For real?? And that's not even the worst part of the post. Egad.

Anything for page views, I guess! :/

------
kenjackson
Why doesn't her advice apply to men? Why isn't the title of her article, "Stop
encouraging young bright males interested in SW from doing startups"?

It's just interesting that it's fine to push men into potentially lucrative
careers, but do the same for women and then there's tons of controversy.

She tries to offer a counterargument w/ what she's thinks is absurd: "Men
could change the world by staying home with their kids and parenting them. Men
would provide a totally different perspective as the lunchroom parent. They
would ask for totally different after-school programming. Men would hire
different babysitters and different SAT tutors. Because men are different than
women."

As a father who does do a lot of this (although not a stay-at-home dad),
actually we can have huge impact in these types of settings. I've literally
had several other parents saying they wish there were more people like me
involved as deeply as I am. I've single-handled been able to change the tone
and attitudes of lot of interactions apparently. And based on the poor
behavior I've seen from a lot of children of "executive" dad stay-at-home mom
parents -- something clearly isn't working with their model.

 _People are pretty good at making choices for themselves._

With all due respect to the author, that's not consistent with reality. If
that were the case I wouldn't have so much feedback in code reviews. We
wouldn't have child protective services, the incarceration rates we have,
poverty, high HS drop out rates (and not just for the Thiel money), etc....
People are generally really bad at making decisions w/o guidance. No one is
saying hand hold, but provide some basic guidance so that people can see all
potentially avenues.

~~~
pilgrim689
I have never seen someone encouraging young bright _males_ specifically into
starting a business. The words we hear target "bright people", "bring minds",
sure, but never "bright males" or "bright men".

We either see people saying "people should try running a startup" _or_ "women
should try running a startup". Thus, the author's point is that the latter is
unnecessary because the former covers both bases.

------
prasinous
I am a woman and I have worked at four different startups in finance. I have
to say, women weren't treated differently to men insofar as civility seems
orthogonal to success in finance.

But after ten years of ninety hour weeks, "special" weekend projects,
perpetual release death marches, and striving to meet unrealistic deadlines,
you know... I am really thinking of downshifting. Not for children, not for
society's expectations, not because I can't make it in a man's world - but
because I would really just like to take a long hot bath with a cigarette, a
glass of wine, and some Chaucer, and then... leave and never come back to any
of this rot.

So please don't tell me how you really feel about "women in startups" or
whether there should be more of them or less of them or your pet theory about
how two X chromosomes result in the inability to reason or to compete. I'm
here to code and the rest is just not very interesting.

~~~
tptacek
I've been doing startups since I was 18 years old, for over 15 years, and so
my social circle is reasonably well populated with other startup people ---
mostly men, for obvious reasons --- and this sentiment is so _not_ gender
specific that it's hard to see how it's even germane.

Everyone gets ground down by trying to get small companies off the ground. I
don't know many people at all who think 90(!) hour weeks and death marches are
a good idea, even at launch time.

Stop smoking, though. It's really bad for you.

------
bethling
I think it makes sense to encourage women to consider doing a start up - yes
for some women raising a family is the fulfillment that they want. But for
those that do want to focus on a career, it's very possible to feel left out.
Although (intellectually) you know that there's no reason why if this guy or
that guy can do it, you can't - there's something somewhat sobering and
potentially disheartening about almost everyone being "different" than you. As
the years start adding, up its the same thing with age - I /know/ that I can
do it, but there's that seed of doubt for one reason or another.

So I think it's a good thing to encourage anyone who doesn't meet the standard
expected start up founder profile - whether it's women, or people who have
been around the block a couple of times. They (we :)), might have good ideas,
we might need to be reminded that can be done - and to be pointed in the right
direction.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Although (intellectually) you know that there's no reason why if this guy or
that guy can do it, you can't - there's something somewhat sobering and
potentially disheartening about almost everyone being "different" than you._

I do lots of activities where everyone is "different" than me in some way.

I work in fashion, though I definitely stand out from the typical fashion
crowd. (Most people who meet me assume I'm a tradesman of some sort.) At my
company I'm an ethnic minority of one. I'm also an ethnic minority at my
primary hobby.

In my experience, it's mainly women who think "omfg, everyone is different
from me, what'll I do?" Men just think "those people are doing cool things,
I'd like to be like them."

------
lindseybieda
I'm not sure why people still take Penelope Trunk seriously.

[http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2011/08/16/blueprint-for-a-
wom...](http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2011/08/16/blueprint-for-a-womans-life/)

This should be enough to convince you that she is full of shit. She doesn't
practice what she preaches and holds very strongly to the status quo.

She actively discourages women from entering the startup world, so no wonder
she is annoyed that some people are trying to encourage women.

[http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2011/03/05/the-workplace-
shoul...](http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2011/03/05/the-workplace-should-be-
segregated-maybe/)

She regards inequality and unbalance as a non-problem and generalizes that all
women are the same.

[http://venturebeat.com/2011/11/29/woman-problem-what-
woman-p...](http://venturebeat.com/2011/11/29/woman-problem-what-woman-
problem/)

[http://baileybear.hubpages.com/hub/Penelope-Trunk-Brazen-
Car...](http://baileybear.hubpages.com/hub/Penelope-Trunk-Brazen-Careerist-or-
Brazen-Narcissist)

Listening to anything this woman says seems to do more harm than good.

~~~
RobAtticus
In your first link, and also the link submitted, she states that women do
better than men in school. I don't see where she gets this information (she
doesn't cite any study that I can find), and I'm curious about the claim. Is
it simply that men have a wider range of grades in school so there are many
more in the failing range that brings down the average, whereas women have a
smaller range with fewer women failing so the average is higher? Is it even
measured in terms of grades? I only wonder because in my experience, my peers
who did the best in school were mostly male (however, the ones doing the worst
were also mostly male). Then again, maybe my peer group is just an exception
to the norm?

~~~
roguecoder
It depends on which society you are in; the more gender-equal, the better
girls perform in school. There are places where they do slightly outperform
boys overall, including in many colleges. The broader trend is that girls'
test scores have been improving much faster than boys have over the past 40
years. It isn't that boys are performing any worse than they were before, or
are being ill-served by school, it's just that girls have overtaken them. This
change mostly came when standardized testing came about and grades were no
longer subjective: with clear goals and unambiguous feedback, girls had new
opportunities to excel. Boys, on the other hand, aren't socially rewarded for
working hard on things they aren't good at, for empathizing and thus
developing social intelligence (which is enormously valuable in school and
particularly test performance) and weren't driven by the same fear of failure:
worst that happens to me is I end up in my parents basement failing to pay
child support.

(Your proto-bell-curve explanation has been mostly dismissed at this point,
just like all the rest of the "variation" arguments: variation ends up being
highly influenced by social and cultural factors. The variation in American
boy's performance in school, for example, is partially a product of how
shittily our schools serve poor African-American boys.)

------
Mz
It's highly likely that I will regret posting this, but I just find this woman
annoying (and her ideas stupid -- and this is not the first piece of hers that
made me feel this way). I don't view myself as a "feminist". To me, "feminist"
means "women who want to pursue career/personal fulfillment _at the expense of
their children_ ". I wanted a career but when push came to shove, I ended up
doing the full-time mom thing for eons (my oldest child was 19 when I got my
first full time paid job).

I had children younger than I intended. My kids had special needs. I could not
count on their dad to help raise them (if I left the kids with him for two
hours, it went disastrously, with children unfed and diapers unchanged). Their
dad had a lot of fine qualities and was a dutiful provider, but, no, taking
proper care of children under a certain age was just not one of his strong
points. I happened to be extremely good at it. So I did it -- for the sake of
my children, not for personal joy. Yes, I made a _choice_ (like she keeps
harping on). But, no, it wasn't a choice of the "gee, golly whiz, staying home
and raising kids is all I have ever dreamed of my entire life and this is the
fulfillment of a DREAM!!!" variety.

If I had been in a different situation with more support (or less demanding
children and fewer health issues of my own), I would have preferred to have
both a family _and_ career. That option was simply not viable for me so I rose
to the occasion and did right by my kids. And most of the time I am reluctant
to talk about my views on the topic because I am leery of the potential to
come across like this woman, who is doing all she can to set women back a few
decades. The fact that women clearly make different choices from men hardly
means those choices are rooted entirely in free will and the fulfillment of
their dreams. A lot of it is rooted in "shit happens and then, if you are a
decent, responsible person, you do right by your kids rather than indulging
your personal whims, like it or not."

I don't resent my kids. I do resent the general lack of support that denied me
other opportunities. And I've worked really hard to change my life. So I am
not thrilled with the crap that routinely comes out of this woman's mouth.

~~~
roguecoder
Any feminism I could subscribe to would include valuing childcare, teaching
the skills early to everyone explicitly, and eventually re-integrating
children into day-to-day life. I get incredibly frustrated with all my friends
who hate ever being around children, such that I can't have over my fiends
with kids and my friends without at the same time. I was always around
children growing up, and it was a part of life. It also meant that the adults
who stepped up to fulfill their parental responsibilities weren't punished for
it. Both you and this woman are facing the same social problem; we could think
of radical solutions such as free, high-quality child care, part-time work as
an encouraged and a valid option for everyone, not just people with kids. We
could stop promoting the biggest assholes, who ask the loudest and put in the
most hours (breaking code, usually). We could make it a social norm that if a
man doesn't want to or is incapable of performing childcare he should not
expect to have children. Individual people may come to other arrangements, but
the basic social norm needs to change. If we demand that children be hidden
away from the world for 15 years, and then we demand that women and only women
who produce children must care for them, "choice" is an illusion. "Would you
like the rack or the thumbscrews?" is a choice too. "Would you like to be
childless or give up your career?" is a sucky choice, and if we are going to
force women to make it I believe it is only fair that men be forced to make it
to.

~~~
Mz
(when) _we demand that women and only women who produce children must care for
them, "choice" is an illusion. "Would you like the rack or the thumbscrews?"_

Yes, I basically agree.

 _"Would you like to be childless or give up your career?" is a sucky choice,
and if we are going to force women to make it I believe it is only fair that
men be forced to make it to._

In some sense, men are asked to make this choice and men fairly often choose
career over children. This doesn't necessarily mean that they do not
reproduce. My grown sons have no relationship to their father. I am divorced.
Our sons live with me. At some point after they became legal adults, my oldest
son clearly spelled out to his father that he didn't view him in
parental/affectionate terms and please don't have an delusions in that regard.
Their father stopped trying to contact them after that. We are okay with that.

Their dad poured himself into his career. He thought he was doing the right
thing. I have no idea how he feels about his lack of relationship to the kids
but he did in some sense make a choice between the two. The fact that women
(and children) are getting screwed by our societal norms/policies does not
prove men really have it much better.

~~~
sunahsuh
> The fact that women (and children) are getting screwed by our societal
> norms/policies does not prove men really have it much better.

But economics does.

And yes, how many men would be happier if society didn't try to tie so much of
their self-worth into career advancement (just as it tries to tie so much of
women's self-worth into wife/motherhood) and gave them the respect they
deserve if they decide to focus on their families?

~~~
Mz
_But economics does._

Last I heard, when a man dies, it often plunges the wife into poverty. But
when a woman dies, it often leads to the death of the husband within a year.
And in spite of being over-represented among the "poor" and "chronically
poor", women live on average several years longer.

Me thinks you have a rather one dimensional view of quality of life which I
don't happen to share. Which strikes me as a bit odd coming from someone
trying to advocate for stay-at-home dads.

Peace.

(Will add I did appreciate your remarks here and did upvote it:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3341367>)

~~~
sunahsuh
It _is_ an inadequate measure, and what I meant is that in that dimension, men
still have it better (I suppose in my attempt to be pithy, I opened myself up
for misinterpretation). Economics is a metric that's relatively easy to
measure as opposed to personal happiness and so it's a yardstick we can look
at that's not unrelated (as a grad student that left a good tech job for
school, I can say not having to stress about the state of your bank account is
a privilege that I took for granted). And from what I've read in recent
studies regarding happiness among men and women, men seem to be doing better
at the expense of women (see, for instance, this 2009 overview:
bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/betseys/papers/Female_Happiness.pdf)

So yes, I definitely agree with you in that quality of life is made up of so
much more than your economic situation, but making enough to live on (with a
strong emphasis on _enough_ ) is for a disproportionate number of women a
source of unhappiness and unfulfilled aspirations. I suspect if we as a
society were to attack the root causes for the gender gap in wealth and
income, we'd also rectify some of the causes of unhappiness for both genders.

~~~
Mz
It's a complex topic, which I suspect cannot be done justice in a post on HN.

I am currently being evicted. My mother has informed me that due to my
father's medical situation, I am not welcome to come home again. My two adult,
unemployed special needs sons still live with me. I am deeply in debt and in
very serious trouble. In some sense, I suppose I probably look like "the
poster child" for all the financial issues your "typical" divorced homemaker
can have. But it's really not that simple.

I have a deadly genetic disorder. So does my oldest son. I not only raised my
sons, I also homeschooled them for many years. They both have a long list of
special needs but are also incredibly intelligent. I nearly died about 11
years ago and this led to being diagnosed late in life with "atpical cystic
fibrosis". All of this ultimately led to me getting divorced, in part so I
would be in a position to save my life and get well. My sons were on the same
page with me. My husband was on the same page with the doctors, who were all
too happy to wash their hands of trying to get me well and just blame my
genes.

I could not have gotten well without the ongoing dedicated care of my two
sons, who were 11 and 13 when this journey began. I had their backing when
most of the world was actively trying to talk me out of my crazy scheme to
actually take care of myself. Getting well has destroyed me financially but
had I not gotten well, I would likely be in worse straits by far, both
financially and in overall quality of life. I have gotten off boatloads of
drugs and the hole in my left lung has closed. I have been well enough to work
a full-time paid job the past five years, which I really was never well enough
to do before. The condition I and my son have is one of the more expensive,
chronic medical conditions around. And though I have gotten myself basically
health, there is no cure. For me, it will be a case of "management" for the
rest of my life, but the answers I have come up with are vastly superior to
anything else out there, both in terms of quality of life and in terms of
financial impact. This miracle could not have been pulled out without the
backing of my sons.

I wish there were easy answers with regards to the whole gender equality
thing. I think of such things as a matter of "sexual morality" in that as long
as heterosexual people have sex, children will result. Human need is a complex
thing and cannot be boiled down to any one thing, not money, not length of
life, not career success. Given the details of my situation, in spite of my
current dire financial situation, I think I got the better deal in keeping the
kids. If I get through this, a career can come later. But first I had to live.
I've done that.

Perhaps it's time to go play a game. Examining my navel in public is an old
habit that I like indulging but it often comes across as shocking, disturbing
and problematic for other people.

Peace and have a great evening.

~~~
sunahsuh
Thank you so much for sharing your story. It's never simple and every story is
unique and rich in its own details.

------
tptacek
tl;dr: Some women say it's hard for women to start startups. But none of them
have started startups like I have. Except for Facebook's C.O.O. But who wants
her life? Wouldn't most women want to be GOOD moms? VCs say they want to
encourage women to start startups. But since they're not themselves women who
have started startups, they can't know what I know, which is that women have
ovaries and want to work part time.

Now please excuse Penelope while she repeatedly hits refresh on her blog stats
for a few continuous hours to see how this post did for her site.

~~~
look_at_me
Now please excuse Thomas while he repeatedly hits refresh on his EVERYTHING
stats until he gets his daily dose of narcissism.

All comments Copyright © 2009, 2010, 2011 Thomas H. Ptacek, All Rights
Reserved.

~~~
gruseom
No, please no. Not the snide novelty swipe. You don't like something, have the
guts to say it straight.

But I do think TP was unfair to PT. She's saying things that a lot of strong,
smart women I know would agree with. For example: _For the most part, women
are not complaining about the lack of VC funding in the world. They are
complaining about the lack of jobs with flexible hours._ That is so true of
the women I know that my guess is one would have to be at a statistical
frontier to see anything different.

~~~
tptacek
How often do those women you know interview for tech jobs? Because the flip
side of that coin is the prospective employer who asks, "how are you planning
to handle child care if you take this job?" It seems like a sentiment that
plays directly into one of the places where I've seen discrimination firsthand
in our field.

It's true, though: my comment was motivated as much by visceral contempt for
Penelope Trunk than anything else. I could probably stand to keep that to
myself.

~~~
gruseom
_How often do those women you know interview for tech jobs?_

Rarely if ever.

------
jfager
Of all the things women are told on a day-in, day-out basis, "you should start
a start-up" seems really low on the list in terms of both frequency and
maliciousness.

It's also odd to simultaneously state that women are perfectly capable of
making their own decisions, but it's somehow damaging to present them with
another choice they can decide on. Why, exactly, do we need to protect women
against the awful specter of another option in life?

------
AznHisoka
I love Penelope Trunk and her political incorrectness. Her advice may always
be controversial, but she's never afraid to speak her mind. And she's right
too about women. Their natural imperative is to raise children and nurture
them - not to do startups. Most also want the social companionship from
friends/family as they raise children (which is missing today as most people
don't live near extended family), but they don't need to go the extreme of
climbing the corporate ladder, or starting a venture.

If anyone wants career advice that makes sense from a human perspective, her
blog is a must-read. You just can't dish out career advice without considering
human happiness and human nature as a whole.

~~~
JoachimSchipper
> [Women's] natural imperative is to raise children and nurture them

This is the 21st century. Are we really still talking about "natural
imperatives"? If nothing else, note that women are having fewer and fewer
children, later and later - clearly, they are feeling this "natural
imperative" less and less.

Traditional gender roles are unfair to women wanting to have a career, unfair
to men who want to stay home with the kids, and far more rigid than needed.
Having some "standard patterns" makes sense, but there should be more than
one, and the freedom to deviate from those.

~~~
araneae
>This is the 21st century. Are we really still talking about "natural
imperatives"?

I do think that "imperative" is a little strong. But males are biologically
different from females in all species, and in all species this translates into
behavioral differences. There's no such thing as a species where males and
females don't show behavioral differences, and in particular in regards to
mating behavior and reproduction.

Certainly humans, as a whole, in first world countries are failing to mate
effectively. Children are being had later or not at all. But women still show
a comparatively greater interest, despite this overall trend. It would be
foolish to claim that the 21st century has made natural behavioral differences
irrelevant.

~~~
colevscode
The biology argument is an affront to the spirit of entrepreneurialism.
There's nothing natural about starting a company. Often it requires ignoring
social needs and occasionally one's health. What about the need for sleep? I
don't often read comments compelling founders to heed that biological
requirement.

~~~
araneae
>What about the need for sleep? I don't often read comments compelling
founders to heed that biological requirement.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39699>
[http://www.ted.com/talks/arianna_huffington_how_to_succeed_g...](http://www.ted.com/talks/arianna_huffington_how_to_succeed_get_more_sleep.html)

Besides your counterpoint being blatantly wrong, I don't understand why
something being an "affront" to what you feel is the entrepreneurial "spirit"
is a valid argument at all.

It's like Christians saying evolutionary theory is an "affront" to
Christianity. It very may well be, but that doesn't mean that evolutionary
theory isn't correct or have merit.

------
mjg59
Her first link ("women earn more than men in their 20s") goes to an article
that ascribes the difference to a larger number of women at that age having
degrees - ie, all else being equal, women earn less than men for the same job.
Her second link ("women choose to downshift") links to an opinion piece that
provides no citations for any of its claims. Her third link ("Women are
choosing children over startups") links back to her own blog and again
provides no substantive citations.

If someone's going to make blanket assertions like this then they ought to be
able to back them up. She hasn't.

~~~
randomdata
I recall an article posted to HN several months ago that echoed her
assertions.

It showed that single women in their 20s were earning as much, if not more,
than similarly skilled men. But those earnings, relative to men, declined as
they started getting married and having children.

So yeah, it would have been nice of her to cite it, but the data is out there.

------
cousin_it
Why is it suddenly about "happiness" and "respect"? Stop moving the
goalposts!!! If society would benefit from more women doing startups (as is
often alleged), and men are encouraged to change their behavior in the name of
that goal, why shouldn't women be encouraged to change their behavior too?

------
amcintyre
_And he himself points out that by the time women are 40 and they want to go
back to work full-time, these women are not going to relocate to Silicon
Valley. But the truth is that if there were really a problem with there not
being enough women running startups, then people like Fred would fund startups
in suburbia. He’d fund startups that run at half-speed to accommodate
carpools. He’d fund startups that have part-time ambitions. He’s not doing
that, though. So clearly there is not that big a problem that women are not
running startups: The market for funding has spoken, and it is still funding
mostly men._

The market has spoken, and it is still funding mostly men that are willing to
drop everything and relocate to NYC or Silicon Valley (who hopefully have
minimal business experience so they can be convinced to give up more equity
than they should). The things she lists as disqualifiers all apply to me,
except the "being a woman" part.

~~~
im3w1l
One should be careful in assuming market efficiency

~~~
amcintyre
I'm not assuming that it's efficient, just that there are a lot of people that
would probably be very useful in a startup that aren't of any interest to
people funding startups.

------
tryitnow
Actually, I've met a lot of guys who are in high powered positions who have
implied or stated explicitly they'd much rather spend more time at home. And
these guys have told younger guys, mentees, to pretty much spend more time as
dads and husbands. This advice is becoming increasingly common.

So, um yeah, Penelope is pretty much wrong right out of the gate.

~~~
gvb
Come again? I was agreeing until I read your conclusion. Your references are
_agreeing_ with Penelope from a position of hindsight: sacrificing family for
your job is a bad choice.

------
inuhj
One thing that I took away from this is that there are plenty of women in
their early 30s who have children who want to work part-time. I've heard this
echoed in my girlfriend's circles as well. Perhaps a marketplace for mom's
seeking part-time work is in order.

~~~
learc83
I like this idea, my mom ran many small businesses while myself and my
siblings were young. She still sells quite a lot on the micro-stock
photography websites.

However, to be successful, you'd need to find part-time work that mom's where
inherently better at. Or to put it better work that can't easily be done, by
single guys in developing countries.

If you can't figure out a way to do this, the target demographic will be
crowded out by people from countries with very low cost of living (which is
starting to happen with stock photography).

Before someone says it, I don't mean to imply that developed countries
_deserve_ these jobs any more than developing countries. I'm just pointing out
that a job site for moms fails if moms can't compete.

------
roguecoder
Very few women are actually stay-at-home moms, and it is only even an option
for a narrow proportion of women married to upper-middle-class and rich men.

The women who are choosing not to do start ups aren't choosing not to in order
to stay at home or work part-time. They are choosing to continue working for
other people, never trying out their ideas. We are all poorer for it.

Additionally, of course, plenty of people argue that more men should take on a
greater share of household tasks and primary responsibility for raising
children. Men even just taking the paternity leave to which they are already
legally entitled could do great things for gender equality in the work place.

~~~
wyclif
_The women who are choosing not to do start ups aren't choosing not to in
order to stay at home or work part-time. They are choosing to continue working
for other people, never trying out their ideas._

I don't think that's totally true. Certainly there are plenty of non-rich,
middle-class women who are at home raising children full time.

That's one way of interpreting it. Another way of looking at is that "working
for other people" is not the negative you imply. Working for other people may
be something women choose over entrepreneurship as a good way to get the
work/life balance they want.

------
ThomPete
Here are some interesting statistics from Denmark.

There are 2.5 as many male entrepreneurs as female Companies started by female
entrepreneurs do not survive as well a companies started by male after the
first 5 years. Female entreperneurs are distributed across industries much
less than men The three biggest industries that women acupy accounts for 91%
af all companies tarted by women. 1/4 of female entrpreneurs have emploees
after 5 years (male 1/3)

------
helen842000
Women don't need to be told "go start a startup", the barrier to entry is
knowing that it is a possibility in the first place.

I only knew this life path existed due to working at an early age in the
family company. I know of 2 other women that went and set up their own
businesses after working there too.

All female entrepreneurs will probably find they had some unusual
serendipitous exposure at an early age into the world of business. A moment
they can trace back to where their interest was sparked. A helpful mentor,
boss, teacher, a particularly interesting class etc. Somewhere they were
talked to about the beginnings of a business.

Miss out on this moment and there's little else for women as a point of
reference to join the business world.

Young males tend to look at peers and see this route implied far more clearly.
Many men choose the startup route without ever having first hand experience of
it.

I'm a female running a startup, I wouldn't want to be invested in just because
my gender is under-represented. I want it to be because my plan, idea and
execution is intelligent and strong.

From my experience, women are more likely to bootstrap for longer and look to
take on a lower level of investment.

Perhaps more offers of micro investments would naturally fit in with the types
of businesses that women are already running.

There seems to be a big gap in investment, it's either fiercely fought
incubator places offering around $15k or the traditional VC route of $100k+.

Where's the middle ground for those that don't like the "go big or go home"
attitude but want to "start small, stay stable" - I think that's where the
majority of female entrepreneurs sit.

------
rachelbythebay
This almost sounds like a front to keep everyone but the "true believers" out.
If you try to make a startup three times, do they finally accept you and let
you in?

I will continue to lean on everyone I know. One of them might break loose and
go on to do something interesting, and then I will feel good about it. It
might even improve the situation as a whole for the rest of us.

------
pwaring
There seems to be an assumption within the tech industry that startup == total
dedication to the company, including 60 hour weeks and a lack of family time
(which might put some people - male and female - off). I don't understand why
this has to be the case.

I work for a startup in another industry (wholesale insurance) and 90% of our
staff are female. People work 8:30-5 Mon-Fri and rarely do any overtime. If
there's a programming/development project which needs to be done, I estimate
how it will take and we decide if it's worth the cost, including the
opportunity cost of what we could have worked on instead.

If tech startups were run properly, with sensible deadlines, fixed hours and
no 'crunch sessions' (if you need these on a regular basis, your project
management is broken) they would probably attract a far wider range of people.

------
eof
I am some what torn about this; it seems akin to "stop telling women to do
math."

I think it's a matter of semantics; no one (at least in these pro-woman-
startup posts) is _telling_ particular women that they need to do a start up.
They are encouraging women to go into a male-dominated field.

I strongly believe that evolutionary biology sas _on-average_ gifted men and
women with different types of strengths; and while cultural idiosyncrasies
have exasperated the 'problem' of a dearth of women in engineering, etc; there
is also the issue of playing to our natural strengths and preferences.

So, _of course_ women (and men) should do whatever the hell they want; and be
encouraged in that regard, and, discouraged from falling into stereotypes.

------
djtriptych
The reason we need women doing startups is (as corroborated by the author's
own argument) that women think differently than men do in many ways, and we
need all kinds of ways of thinking amongst people who are creating on the web.

~~~
im3w1l
Are female entrepreneurs more successful than males? What does that imply
about what is in undersupply?

~~~
roguecoder
<http://www.illuminate.com/whitepaper/> explores this question, and finds that
though they have fewer resources than man-led start ups, woman-led start ups
have lower rates of failure. A complete answer probably depends on what
definition of "success" is adopted.

------
mjijackson
"If you are worried that women don’t feel capable of doing whatever they want,
you can stop worrying."

This comment from the article gets at the heart of what the author is trying
to say. Behind the desire to single out women as a group that needs a special
invitation to pursue a career doing startups are two assumptions: 1) that
women actually _want_ a career doing startups and 2) that they do not feel
empowered to pursue that course on their own.

The author simply isn't comfortable making those assumptions, which point of
view is completely valid given the subjectivity of the topic.

~~~
prodigal_erik
This is the thing that always bugs me about encouraging anyone (not just
women) to become founders. The relentlessly resourceful, the ones who are
equipped to succeed, were not waiting for encouragement or an invitation. (And
no, I'm not claiming to be one of them, merely tempted while bereft of ideas
with legs.)

------
peterwwillis
My theory is this post, along with this woman's online identity, is an
elaborate troll on feminism. Let's explore.

 _"Here is a Blueprint for a Woman’s Life which I published. It is full of
recommendations for how to make choices based on what we know women really
want for themselves. It does not involve getting VC funding."_

Hmm. It's kind of weird for anybody to pretend they can tell anyone else how
to live their life, since figuring out how to life your life in your own way
is what makes it your life and not someone else's. But whatever. Let's read a
bit into this thing and see what she talks about...

She posted a list of things all women should be doing with their life. Here's
the list verbatim (from [http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2011/08/16/blueprint-
for-a-wom...](http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2011/08/16/blueprint-for-a-womans-
life/)):

    
    
      1. Do less homework.
      2. Get plastic surgery.
      3. Go to business school right out of the gate.
      4. Start early looking for a husband seriously.
      5. Milk maternity leave for all it's worth.
      6. Guard your marriage obsessively.
      7. Practice austerity.
      8. Do a startup with a guy.
      9. If you can't get men to do a startup with you, do a lifestyle business.
      10. Homeschool. Your kids will be screwed if you don't.
      11. Spend money on household help and Botox to keep more doors open longer.
      12. Break the mold in your 40s.
    

All of that sounds like wonderful advice. It's a really thought-provoking and
insightful read. Her only problem is she doesn't go far enough. First of all,
you want to marry rich. That way you don't have to work, much less create a
start-up. Actually wait, that was the whole point of the techcrunch post, so
nevermind.

Before you liberal feminist sissies get all huffy, she clearly states _"I know
that's not good for feminism. But none of this post is."_ So please don't fret
over whether or not she's setting women back by 60+ years as she is probably
typing this story from the kitchen.

(p.s. this is the woman who did the tweet about having a miscarriage during a
board meeting -
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/nov/06/penelope-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/nov/06/penelope-
trunk-tweet-miscarriage))

------
solipsist
The problem with this article, along with the rest, is that it is full of
generalizations. It attempts to dichotomize the situation, which simply
shouldn't (and thankfully can't) be done.

I didn't read past the first few paragraphs.

------
quellhorst
I'm tired of the articles on HN telling me what to do.

------
hnecib
I think she made some very good points. It was a bit ranty, and self
contradictory at times:

>On top of that there is evidence that the members of the VC community go out
of their way to attract women. Of course, this makes sense. VCs look for
underserved markets. Women are likely to address different markets than men,
and since there are so few women founders compared to men founders, it’s
likely that women are addressing an underserved market.

and then this:

>Whoever started the TED Women’s conference is pathetic.

Uh, ok. Right on TED Women's webpage they say that "Over the past several
years, a flood of fascinating data from the worlds of education, microfinance
and more has shown an essential link between investing in women and girls and
economic growth, public health, political stability."

And it goes on to state that TEDW wants to explore those 'underserved markets'
to borrow the author's words, in greater detail, -behavior that she just got
finished praising.

But whatever, I'm nitpicking. I think the general thrust of most of her
arguments have merit. Women often choose to disengage from the business world
to realize life goals that make them happier than what business success can
offer them. What guy hasn't had this dream? To be sure, it's probably a
different dream. For women, it may involve having children and raising a
family for some. For me, it might be throwing caution to the wind and
traveling the world. Bottom line is that I think there are some very basic
'non-business' aspirational lifestyles that humans of all walks of life wish
they could engage in at different times. Biology and culture have conspired to
offer women one of them up on a silver platter if they so choose. Many do, and
there's nothing wrong with that.

EDIT: I don't know how scientific this is, but just an ironic post I came
across browsing just now. Check out #2 on the list:

<http://www.rense.com/general95/regrets.htm>

I think this would be an interesting study to formalize and conduct, don't
you?

~~~
fennecfoxen
Yes. What's a startup business, or even a traditional career, going to get you
in the end? Admiration? Adulation? Money money money?

As most people with children will be able to tell you, all of those things are
vapid and empty compared to _spending time with your children_. Perhaps many
women choosing to stay home raising families instead of pursuing careers have
found something more rewarding to do with their time.

~~~
mml
You hit the nail on the head.

My wife gets the dismissive smile and nod from career women whenever she
answers their obligatory "what do you do for a living" question.

This makes her feel bad for raising our children.

This only lasts until I point out that these career women get the awesome
privilege that men have enjoyed for hundreds of years: slaving away for some
overseer, pushing paper in a cube and staring blankly at fluorescent lights,
having distant relationships with your own offspring, and dealing with office
politics for 30 years, then dropping dead.

Families also get the added benefit of having their children raised by a
rotating crew of $10/hr wage slaves at some cut-rate daycare from infancy, in
exchange for about what a 2nd house would cost, because dad isn't likely to
want to stay home either.

The neighborhood also "benefits" by being an absolute ghost town during work
hours, so people who are doing the work of raising children are left bereft of
any sort of neighborhood support (remember when you could just let kids run
wild outdoors, or your mom stopping next door for coffee?).

The fulfillment angle of no-parent society is pretty slim I think.

Raising kids is about the only fulfilling thing left in the world that anyone
you know is likely to do. Families with no full time parent (mom or dad, mind
you) is a bizarre and frightening development.

~~~
munin
wow. if that's the world you live in, why have any children? :(

seriously, do you think that maybe different people are made happy by
different things? i know men and women who have no interest in having a
romantic relationship, let alone raising a family. do they occupy some
horrible THX1148-style monochrome existence for fulfilling their lives by
doing things?

------
CPlatypus
I love the assumption that the men currently in startups have female partners
who would want to reverse roles. Most have female partners who would prefer to
stay home or work for an established company, so the actual effect of those
men staying home would be a smaller talent pool. That is, unless she's trying
to tell men who they should marry as well as how they should run their
careers. Nothing she suggests would actually lead to the change she supposedly
wants. The best way to get more women in startups is to let them see
supportive role models . . . most often, their fathers.

------
gcb
Loved it.

At work they have one organization about Women in Tech. That does nothing
besides call out the misconception that women need help for some reason.

In my previous country that would outright illegal. You know, sexism. Here
it's seen as a great thing. Well, we didn't have minorities guettos on every
city either...

------
chadp
Here is someone talking sense. Who cares whether people starting startups are
black, yellow, purple, men or women.

There doesn't need to be any equality. Everyone is already equal and can
decide to start a startup whenever they wish.

------
firefoxman1
On Jean Bittingham: "She’s an author and an academic. Of course. She has no
idea what life is like running a startup, so she thinks it’s a good idea to
tell other women to do that while she writes books."

That's how it's always been. There are the talkers (they're usually the
academics as well) and then there are the doers-the ones that don't scream
their opinion every chance they get, but if you ask them for advice they'll be
full of real world experience to share with you. This article does raise a lot
of good points though. I usually ignore posts with opinionated titles, but I'm
glad I read this one.

------
trocker
<http://croak.eu/vm5Tjy> #whyAllTheMen?!

~~~
noamsml
Hm. While croakit is an interesting idea, I'd note that croakit comments
aren't searchable or quotable. Sometimes text is better.

~~~
trocker
yup true, completely agreed.But doesn't it make more sense to discuss the
things meant to be discussed? :)

