

Out of the loop in Silicon Valley - credo
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/technology/18women.html

======
philwelch
(Separate comment because it's a separate point.)

The problem with articles like this is the constant tension between the idea
that women are equally qualified as men and the idea that the startup culture
is inherently unfriendly to feminine personalities. Example:

"Later, when Ms. Vijayashanker joined Mint, she also wanted interaction with
other people, but, she said, “the guys went into their rooms and coded all
day.” So she started a weekly group lunch and hired an intern so she could
write programs with a partner."

I'm not saying that women are inherently more social than men, nor am I saying
that a software startup inherently has to have a work environment where
coworkers don't talk to each other. But this article seems to make both of
those assumptions and put them together to conclude "startup work environments
are unwelcoming to women" while totally ignoring the fact that the same two
assumptions lead to make "women are inherently unsuitable to work in a
startup".

~~~
jaybol
It is particularly odd that they use Mint as an example of a (slightly at
least) unwelcome environment early on for a woman in particular as they had an
amazing woman as CMO (Donna Wells) until being acquired. Throughout their
growth and since acquisition they have hired many women in leadership roles
that require them to be social. However, the piece that stands out to me is
that Ms. Vijayashanker didn't just complain about it at first (and doesn't
honestly seem to be complaining a whole lot now), she proactively made a way
to interact more socially to shape the work environment to meet her
preferences/needs (not to mention the fact that Mint let her bring in her own
intern to make her work environment more suitable). I'm not an engineer, but
from my limited experience any original, core engineering team is somewhat
insular and its probably a good thing if your coders are coding rather than
shooting the breeze around the water cooler, although I'm sure they didn't all
have their mouths sewn shut. In that example at least, it sounds like it is
more of a reflection on how engineers interact with one another (as compared
to say, the marketing/PR leadership) than a reflection of the startup
environment in general being hostile towards women.

I was at a conference recently and a few women were on a panel talking about
the challenges facing women in founding a startup, and continued to emphasize
and call attention to inequalities, without realizing that they were
perpetuating the same stereotypes they bemoaned, until one woman raised her
hand and said "please just tell us about your company, what is next, how are
you innovating? how did you raise VC money? we don't care about your kids"
(and i gave her a silent slow clap)

When women participate with strength and confidence in their merits, the
gender differences are not the emphasis of the relationship (and if anything
they can potentially have an advantage over men in some industries or
occupations). In my experience working with a lot of intelligent and
successful women, the ones who succeed the most are able to utilize the
benefits of the obviously different female perspective at times but you come
to just interact as humans working towards a common goal, not as two separate
species that are cautious of each other.

Lastly, men and women alike should sometimes consider that the dynamic in the
workplace might not have anything to do with how you look or whether you are
black white or magenta, it might (gasp) have something to do with who you are
and perhaps you might just completely suck at your job and annoy the shit out
of people.

------
eplanit
Articles like these always make the same inference, and then lead to a similar
conclusion: If a woman CEO gets rejected over and over, then it _must_ be
sexism (and/or racism); and, then a gender- (or race-) biased investment firm
steps in to promote business based on the gender of the CEOS/Founders, and a
moral transgression is set straight.

The article asserts that the recession somehow makes investors stupid and
frightened, wherein they think via 'templates' or some archetypal response. I
think the word they apply is something more like 'scrutiny' -- at least I sure
hope so.

It's 2010 -- let's start focusing on merit. I don't care what letters the
woman carries from name-brand institutions. It just might be possible that her
business ideas don't attract investment. Has that been considered? How many
males from these fine institutions also fail in business? I know the number
isn't zero.

~~~
techiferous
#1: I agree with you. We can't just _assume_ that it must be sexism.
Discussions about gender would do better to have more hard data and scientific
thinking.

#2: I'd like to suggest you give room to the idea that sexism may be both
_powerful_ and _subtle_. The _power_ expresses itself in symptoms like "98% of
open source software contributors are male". The _subtly_ shows up in the
large number of male programmers who don't notice that there is a problem. For
example, an assertive woman in a workplace may be viewed as a "bitch" but an
assertive man in a workplace may be viewed more positively. They can each be
sharing ideas of the same merit, but our cultural conditioning evaluates them
differently. That's the subtlety of it.

~~~
natrius
Since women aren't making it into the industry in the first place, the
assertive bitch phenomenon probably isn't the cause. It's an important
phenomenon to recognize in general so it can be avoided, but the reason
discussions about this go nowhere and never have much of an effect is because
the causes are less identifiable and harder to constructively assign blame
for.

~~~
techiferous
Yes, I agree with you here. I would say that much of the causes of low numbers
of females in tech jobs can be traced back to middle school/high school years.
I don't think that sexism at work is a large part of the problem, but I do
think it's out there to some extent.

This is actually a very touchy problem. On the one hand, it would make matters
much _worse_ if we all started walking on eggshells around female programmers.
On the other hand, I don't think it's good to act like there isn't a problem.
In some respects, discussing it makes it worse, because it brings the matter
of gender to the forefront, when ultimately where we need to go is to make the
gender aspect of this all _less_ salient. _sigh_

~~~
kevinpet
If the problem originates in school where math and science are perceived as
the boys areas, then changing the attitude of venture capitalists isn't any
solution. If men outnumber women 10 to 1 with the qualities that are needed to
start a tech startup, then I'd expect any tech company to reflect those
ratios.

It's like saying there's a shortage of tech startups from equatorial Africa.
It's not because venture capitalists are racists. It's because you're unlikely
get the education and experience when growing up in a screwed up society.

~~~
techiferous
There are two separate problems. One of them is the shortage of women in tech
fields and the other is women being treated poorly in the workplace.

------
philwelch
"Women own 40 percent of the private businesses in the United States,
according to the Center for Women’s Business Research. But they create only 8
percent of the venture-backed tech start-ups, according to Astia, a nonprofit
group that advises female entrepreneurs."

There's a whole host of companies which popped up in the 20th century in
America that were designed to give increasingly bored[1] housewives a means of
earning a supplemental income for the household--Tupperware, Avon, and the
like. All these statistics about how many private businesses are owned by
women are usually talking about these. The statistics about private businesses
_with more than one employee_ are not nearly as heartening.

[1] Because of labor-saving devices such as laundry machines and dishwashers
being invented.

~~~
mynameishere
It bugs me. You know, here's somebody pulling words out of his ass, "Oh, yeah,
that 40 percent--it's all Avon ladies, and here's why..." and he pulls some
reason out of his ass, "Because in the 20th century the vacuum cleaner
revolution was a direct cause of...the Avon company... _and the like_. And
that's where the 40 percent number comes from."

Citation _not_ needed.

Obviously, it doesn't matter why or how the number actually came from, but
would it really have killed you to research for 2 seconds to find out that the
Avon company was started in the 19th century? And that if you looked into your
numbers, Tupperware _and the like_ would be a negligible cause of female
startups. I mean, has anyone even had a Tupperware party in the last 30 years?

~~~
philwelch
While your quibbles are true, the numbers for female-founded more-than-one
employee businesses _are_ much smaller than the numbers of female-founded one-
employee businesses. (And no, a single-employee business is not a "startup",
and neither is a ten employee business unless there is some expectation that
the business will be worth millions of dollars in less than ten years.) The
phenomenon of otherwise-housewives starting single-employee small businesses
_is_ where a large part of the numbers come from. My mother, for instance, was
a Kumon instructor.

I think there are huge market opportunities for women to start actual
startups, of course, but statistically that's not happening for whatever
reason.

------
nzmsv
Some of the complaints are contradictory. Women are "pushed into management
positions" and not allowed to be "individual contributors", yet find actually
sitting down and writing code unbearable, and apparently desire lots of human
interaction. Isn't that what the management job offers?

However, I have found some of the things mentioned to be true, particularly
the bit about women placing a lot of weight on their academic success.

------
prodigal_erik
I entered the software industry during a recession and far before the dot-com
boom. I didn't think it was going to be much of a career. Geeks were much more
ostracized. But I didn't care--I _have to do_ what I'm doing.

> There’s a really strong image of what a computer scientist is[....] It makes
> it hard for people who don’t fit that image to think of it as an option for
> them.

If anyone with a computer can be dissuaded by such trivia, programming is not
their calling, and they should go find it rather than waste their time doing
mediocre work.

~~~
earl
Ding! We have a winner!

If you are so blind as to think that looking around and seeing nobody like you
for values of you in minority groups in a position doesn't discourage
qualified people, well, then you're not only ignorant of the last 30-40 years
of social science research, but also live a life so self-unexamined as to not
be aware of your own privilege. Thank you for the demonstration.

Queue the downmodding... now.

~~~
prodigal_erik
Qualified people don't dip their toes in to see how welcome they feel, or how
the money is, or anything else that happens offscreen. They live and breathe
this stuff. Before PCs were available, some used to commit petty crimes just
to score some computer time. And nobody regarded this compulsion as any kind
of privilege until the pay improved.

------
asnyder
I was expecting an article on how being out of the loop in Silicon Valley
affects your business and funding potential. Unfortunately, that's not what
this is.

Personally I believe Silicon Valley doesn't necessarily discriminate against
women, but rather, discriminates against anyone not in the relevant Silicon
Valley social circles and cliques. This is sometimes obvious when a valley
startup garners significantly more attention, press, and funding than a
similar startup outside of the valley.

------
fierarul
This was a bit obvious and yet surprising:

> That may be because data show that people are more trusting and comfortable
> working with people of their own sex, says Toby Stuart, a Harvard Business
> School professor who studies the topic. > He says that some men are
> reluctant to invest in women’s start-ups because “there are enough things
> that can go wrong with a high-risk, early-stage venture that if you’re
> worried about any interpersonal dynamic issues, why not do a deal that takes
> that out of the equation?”

From what I've seen in some large companies though, women get far more easier
into middle management, while coders are mostly men (that also don't really
want to be into management, mind you). But upper management is male-centric.

------
yurisagalov
I'm curious if the 8% number is related to the fact that only a small
percentage of women start tech starups in the first place? There was an
interview with Jessica Livingston a year ago in which she stated that 7% of YC
founders are female, and it corresponds very well to the application pool
(citetation: [http://thenextwomen.com/2009/05/01/interview-y-combinator-
fo...](http://thenextwomen.com/2009/05/01/interview-y-combinator-founder-
jessica-livingston/))

It's possible the 7% and 8% numbers are a coincidence, but I'm hoping that as
the number of women creating tech companies increases, so will the 8%...

~~~
froo
I'd be curious if these figures are similar to those found at universities for
these industries?

As an anecdote, I know that in a first year class of around 300 for
engineering at my uni, there were 2 women. This was in `99.

------
akkartik
(I'm a little concerned this may be too outspoken for my own good, but here
goes..)

The first two stories at the start are horrible. Why are they being
anonymized? She should just reveal identities (and compromising photos/emails)
and make an example of them.

I know people are afraid of seeming like trouble-makers. Silicon valley can
seem awfully small. But you know what, it can also be small for investors.
Certain kinds of behavior are so unambiguously bad that with documentary proof
nobody should (would?) fault the whistleblower. To do otherwise is to abet
sexism.

(The third is obviously not interested in funding her. Who knows why. Just
post to thefunded or something.)

~~~
gabrielroth
Even if the source told the reporter the names, all she's got is her word, and
that's not enough evidence for the New York Times to print something like
that. (And for good reason: it shouldn't be possible to smear someone without
evidence, not to mention that the paper would be vulnerable to a libel suit.)
You mention 'documentary proof,' but there's no suggestion in the story that
she has any.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that she's not telling the truth -- just that
reasonable journalistic standards sometimes result in important information
being withheld.

~~~
jimbokun
"Even if the source told the reporter the names, all she's got is her word,"

and maybe a photo of a naked guy on a boat.

~~~
gabrielroth
"Another potential backer invited her for a weekend yachting excursion by
_showing_ her a picture of himself on the boat — without clothes." [emphasis
mine]

Sounds like the creep was smart enough not to give her the picture.

------
alanh
> At Stanford, female graduate students in computer science are encouraging
> freshman women through a group called Women in Computer Science.

We have a Women in Computer Science club here at Arizona State. The current
president is a man.

