

JL on Female Founders - theoneill
http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2008/07/female-founders.html

======
mixmax
I think that natural selection might explain it.

What characrerises reproductively successful men? Or, to put it another way,
what qualities do women seek in a mate? Women tend to prefer dominant men of
high status with lots of money, and there is little reason to believe that
their ancestors differed. For much of human history male status came from
being a skilled hunter and warrior and from the ability to influence others
through muscle or wit. This history has left men more disposed than women to
strive for status and engage in the risky, competitive and sometimes
aggressive behaviour often required to do a successful startup. Women with a
taste for winners would likely be in a position to pass their preference on to
more children than would women with a penchant for failures.

Women would not ordinarily enhance their reproductive success through direct
competition and risk-taking. Indeed, it would promise little reproductive
payoff and could be a very dicey strategy because a bad outcome would imperil
a woman's future reproduction and the well-being of existing children.
Instead, women, to a far greater extent than men, have enhanced reproductive
success by looking after their children as they grow up, resulting in stronger
bonds between mother and child than between father and child.

This explanation also hints at the fact that women would make good CEO's of
large corporations where security is more important than risk taking.

Note: this isn't in in any way meant as a degradation of women - merely a
possible explanation of the cause.

~~~
DaniFong
Unfortunately, your explanation does not go the whole way.

Consider the evolution of biological genes:

a) Men and women share mostly the same genes (the y chromosome is a desolate
wasteland), and there are few (if any) known mechanisms by which gene merging
is different for male and female humans.

b) Dominant, decisive, intelligent, women are likely to share similar
evolutionary advantages to men. Note that I leave high status out of this
equation.

Compare the mathematics to the evolution of culture:

a) There are numerous known cultural differences between what men and women
grow up with. There are also many known mechanisms for which cultural _meme_
merging is different for men and for women. Our culture directs different
memes towards men and women, to a far greater extent than gene selection does
(if it does at all).

b) High status women are in fact less likely to have many kids, as is shown by
an abundance of demographic data. Therefore, the mechanism by which they can
spread what's responsible for 'high-statusness' is limited mostly to memes.
But culture strongly moderates this influence of dominant, high status,
intelligent women. Consider the treatment Hilary Clinton is getting now. Even
in a more ordinary circumstance, male bosses can wield power in a way that
would label their female cohorts 'ice queens'. So the influence of powerful
women is labeled a bad thing, and the adoption of those values by other women
is severely inhibited.

\---

So, for this case, at first glance, it seems like the evolution of cultural
memes completely dominates the influence of the evolution of biological genes.
Does anyone see a hole in this argument?

~~~
whacked_new
Yes. The reference to cultural memes is a chicken an egg argument; by claiming
"complete domination" you essentially overlook the origin of said memes.

I'm not armed with sources, but I daresay that nature has given everything
specialization, so much so that applying the same ideas to the sexes is not
the slightest bit strange. More strongly said, there is nothing surprising
when one sex exhibits traits much more ostensibly than another. While I am not
referring to the superiority of a specific sex, specie, or trait, it actually
seems more unnatural to claim equality on things like attitudes towards risk
and attribute difference to culture.

Back to your arguments specifically. These come from a fuzzy memory, but they
provide a complementary view.

a. Even a single genetic difference can lead to drastically different results.
We are close enough to chimps. Men and women have different brains; different
areas activate up when shown the same picture. It's not a stretch to say that
risk evaluation is done differently as well.

b. I recall at least two matriarchial societies in which women called the
shots. Nevertheless, the men were still the fighters, which is perhaps the
most competitive, aggressive, and risky behavior possible. Women can be
dominant, intelligent, and decisive, and still partake in less adrenaline-
laden activities. There may be something else in the motivation.

a. I think this is a good and important point, and am not trying to underplay
it, but this argument is usually the convenient one, and the hardest to make
any systematic observation. Thought experiment: try comparing startup founder
numbers of Japanese men to those of American women.

b. Again, true enough, but also: the sperm of a high-status males, whom are
shown to produce more offspring, still hold good chance to yield daughters.

Does this poke a hole in your argument?

~~~
DaniFong
_you essentially overlook the origin of said memes._

I don't overlook the origin. Your thrust seems to be that culture only
magnifies innate difference. Perhaps this is true in simple cases, but I think
that there are particular examples where culture takes on a mind of its own.

I point out that existing cultural bias might be due to biological bias
interacting with environmental factors long extinct. This bias is encoded and
preserved, unlike almost everything else in the animal kingdom, in human
culture, which can be perpetuated and passed on. Existing cultural bias might
just be a carry over from prehistoric times, entirely irrelevant to whether or
not there are now meaningful differences in aptitude, in this, the present.

 _it actually seems more unnatural to claim equality on things like attitudes
towards risk and attribute difference to culture._

I never claimed equality, I simply pointed out that the differences you'd
expect due to biological selection are smaller in magnitude than those due to
cultural selection, and so therefore born-attitudes towards things like risk
should be largely outweighed by cultural ones.

My mind wouldn't scream inconsistency if I heard that women, on average, were
intrinsically, say, 30% less likely to take big risks. That kind of difference
seems reasonable. But the data on entrepreneurship implies a difference many
dozens of times that.

I don't think this magnitude is consistent with other risky behaviors -- many
women do risky things as well, like dating strange men in remote places,
running away from home, abusing hard drugs, or keeping a pregnancy in ill-
health. This difference in magnitude may be explained by cultural factors,
because men have greater cultural support when projecting high-status creating
cultural memes (especially those encouraging risky behavior).

 _this argument is usually the convenient one_

Perhaps I was unclear. This is a very different argument than the one
typically given, because it uses the very same mathematics that the
evolutionary biologists use, only applied to culture. And what you find is
that the factors in culture -- the influence of the same kind of mathematics,
is much stronger.

 _the sperm of a high-status males, whom are shown to produce more offspring,
still hold good chance to yield daughters._

Can you explain the relevance of this?

~~~
mattmaroon
The easiest way to prove something is genetic rather than cultural is to
examine different cultures throughout the world, especially isolated ones like
pygmies or aborigines.

The paradigm of man as provider and woman as nurturer, and the mating
ramifications of that (i.e. women preferring men who are able to provide,
which most closely translates in our society to wealth, and men preferring
women more fit to raise children, which in our society most closely translates
to healthy appearance) are virtually universal.

That would strongly suggest that it is genetic rather than cultural.

~~~
DaniFong
_The easiest way to prove something is genetic rather than cultural is to
examine different cultures throughout the world, especially isolated ones like
pygmies or aborigines._

I agree that this is easy, but I am not sure that it is in fact accurate. To
do so you must show that the particular cultural values you're exploring do
not share anthropological linage. This is a very difficult problem. How do you
propose to handle that case?

 _The paradigm of man as provider and woman as nurturer, and the mating
ramifications of that (i.e. women preferring men who are able to provide,
which most closely translates in our society to wealth, and men preferring
women more fit to raise children, which in our society most closely translates
to healthy appearance) are virtually universal._

So would you draw the line from this evolutionary argument like so: men have a
greater instinct to produce wealth or high status, which causes them to
produce more startups.

The problem I have with this is that's its so vague. If we don't actually try
to nail down or postulate an actual theory, people can be lazy and
undisciplined in their thought. They might say, for example _"here are some
good reasons that the sexes might be intrinsically different; any existing
difference is just the way things are, due intrinsically, and due to
genetics"_. My point is that the disciplined way to approach this question is
that you actually need to make specific predictions, or you risk degenerating
into religious war.

So, _in which ways_ is this instinct for men to provide manifested?

Compared to startups, law or medicine or finance seems a surer method to
acquire status and prestige, and you probably come out ahead on average. More
women are in these fields than in startups.

And physical science and engineering aren't particularly high prestige
careers, nor do they make much wealth, nor do they seem to improve procreative
chances. And these fields are particularly male centric.

So then usually someone points out that men like to take risks. They aim for
the massive payoffs. If that's so, one should examine the _structure_ of risks
that men take versus women.

So, we have a set of hypotheses, backed up in varying amounts by data. Men are
much more likely to do one off things to impress people. I guess this is
called machismo. They're much more likely to take physical risks, or health
risks. They may be more likely to take risks in their social stature, so long
as they have little to lose. They're more likely to risk the state of a
relationship for some impulse, someone or something that they want.

By contrast, I postulate, women are more likely to risk themselves
emotionally. They are more likely to invest themselves in one particular
friendship or relationship, even if it risks not panning out. Men, by
contrast, _fear commitment_. They're more likely to keep their eggs out of one
basket (see especially, for example, studies on the messaging patterns and
viewing patterns and requests and satisfaction on dating sites). Women are
_more_ likely to invest themselves emotionally in some community, cause,
person, or idea.

Doesn't this sound like a startup?

It's striking how many female entrepreneurs describe starting a startup like
having a baby. Mena Trott (in founders at work) describes it like having a
chemical in your brain that blocks out the painful moments, leaving only the
other ones in memory (This effect is described also of pregnancy, and recently
they've actually discovered that _such a chemical exists_ ). Are women more
ready to devote themselves like this? Are women more emotionally prepared for
a startup? Perhaps.

So, we have _conflicting_ attitudes towards risk. On one hand, we postulate,
men are more likely to be driven by promises of extreme status and wealth. On
the other, women are perhaps more emotionally prepared, in some areas, when
they get there. It seems like this should be a fairly balanced game.

But it's not. Female founders make up 3% of the YC pool. The risk and wealth
hypothesis can't handle this alone.

Something has to take up the slack. And I think that it has much to do with
the fact that different memes that define success in this society propagate to
men and to women.

~~~
mattmaroon
You can't simply say that since men are more hesitant to commit to
relationships, and women less, that the same holds true in startups or
careers, or that it translates at all. Both genders exhibit behaviors where
mating is concerned that are very different from how they behave in other
situations.

You should really read up on evolutionary psychology, I think you might enjoy
it.

------
bootload
_"... By nature, startups are very non-discriminatory ..."_

I don't know about that, maybe in a homogeneous ideal Startup.

Startups by nature tend to be a blended team soup of testosterone, technology
and immaturity. Of the three I don't know which is worse. Testosterone is
vital because it gives drive and competition. But has the downside of cruelty
and bullying. Technology circles also tend to attract a certain cloistered
_male_ culture (online or in meat-space). Hostile to difference and eager to
argue. The nastiness occurs in arguments over technology is in part due to the
makeup of Startup founders, Homo logicus. There is a Coding Horror article
discussing Coopers observations if you are interested ~
<http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000091.html> The last of the
Startup ingredients is "immaturity". There's a reason the term "grown-up" is
bandied jokingly around Startup-up culture. It has less to do with _"Age"_ and
more to do with understanding how the _"real world"_ works and how to deal
with it. Put the founder team under enough stresses, let them get tired
(because they are working hard) and put before them a decision that has to be
made, now! Now place any male founder in this environment and tell me if
_"discrimination"_ of some sort will not happen. Let alone a female.

It's no co-incidence that a question in the application asks how long the
founders have know and presumably worked together. Because this is a sort of
heuristic of future success. It's interesting that Mitch Kapor discussed the
issue of poor behaviour in Startups (but not specifically with founders).
Behaviour that would never be tolerated in big business at StartupSchool '07 ~
[http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Ycombinator-
StartupSchool/~3/...](http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Ycombinator-
StartupSchool/~3/106570486/Startup_School_2007-Mitch_Kapor.mp3) [ approx 20Mb]
Kapor was most proud of the culture created where good behaviour resulted in a
non-discriminatory workplace. It must be easier to do this when you build a
1000 employee company and have a Business background and wide experience.

------
dilanj
The numbers alone don’t work out. 48% of the class or 06 at MIT were female
(up from like 2% back in the day) and most of them were serious hackers. Yet
today almost all of the girls who didn’t go to grad school are working for
either one of the big tech companies (Oracle, M$ etc) or an investment bank.

With the whole goddamn responsibility of keeping humanity alive on top of them
undoubtedly there’s a genetic disposition for women to be more risk averse.
That though probably does not matter as much because women have clearly been
extremely competent in pretty much every other field now for decades.

So the problem has to lie in social conditioning. Cultural expectation and
etiquette has always been the most powerful destroyer of human potential in
both men and women, from the day they are born (and thus being most effective
at it)

Heard this joke? Why do baby boys wear blue and baby girls wear pink?

Cos they don’t have a fucking choice!

------
sanj
No one's going to even suggest sexism?

Or the fact that many, many people (men and women) look at any woman between
25 and 40 and expect them to leave to have a baby and raise a family?

~~~
mhartl
Women have stormed the academy in most fields, and around half of new medical
doctors are female. I think it's time to retire knee-jerk sexism as the main
explanation for the lack of women in tech.

While I'm confident that women face more barriers than men, it's dubious that
sexism is sufficient to explain such extreme numbers. The same goes for math
professors, Wall Street traders, and the NBA for that matter.

More smart women choose to become doctors or lawyers, it seems, than to study
physics or to roll the dice on a startup. And a lot of those 25-to-40 year old
women _want_ to have a baby and raise a family, even if it means a less
resume-impressive career. (My sister, an M.D. who specifically chose a family-
friendly ophthalmology specialty, is one of them.) And what's wrong with that?

------
helveticaman
This is sad, but from a biological perspective, it's oddly tautological. Men
are organisms that run huge risks in hopes of huge payoffs, while women run
smaller risks for more certain rewards. One could consider a male lion to be
an entrepreneur, and a lioness to have a steady job. However, in nature both
strategies are equally successful, while in the modern world being an
entrepreneur is more effective.

On the flip side, men are incarcerated much more frequently than women, and
for similar reasons. This is somehow not as surprising.

------
johnrob
I'd have to think that making a start up succeed is so hard that any gender
barrier, whether perceived or real, would seem minor in comparison.

~~~
DaniFong
One of the principles that YC is founded on is that many of the very best
founders were sitting on the fence. So even if there's some minor force
pushing one group of people backwards instead of forwards, you'll discover a
big difference in the number of people on each side.

------
jnovek
So, geeks are mostly male right now. It makes sense that geek startups will be
mostly male, as well.

It's very difficult for women to break into any field that is male dominated.
The fact is, just being different causes a woman to be treated differently in
a male-dominated environment. That makes it hard and un-fun. This is
exacerbated by the fact that some guys really are jerks, and enjoy exerting
the power that comes with picking on someone in the minority -- women, in this
case.

If something is more difficult, there are fewer people who are willing to do
it, regardless of gender, race or creed. So when women break into a male
dominated profession, it first it starts out at a trickle; just those who are
very brave.

I really hope that this changes pretty soon. Women have a lot of things to
bring to the table that men don't -- namely, they're (on the average) familiar
with a lot of markets that men aren't (on the average) as familiar with.
There's a lot of money to be made there, and a lot of cool new stuff to be
invented.

------
jdavid
So I wanted to make sure no-one posted this view point before.

1stly in a modern 1st world country like the US or Japan birth-rates have been
falling for along time. I think this a strong indication that gender roles are
becoming less important in culture. Additionally you can see this in the
current political strife on similar topics.

So to put all of those things aside, lets just look at the numbers. Marquette
the school I went to had an engineering degree program with 40-60% female. It
was the highest in the country while I was attending, and the topic of choice
.....

Biology.

So, I had the chance to ask many of them why they chose that field and the
response was ALWAYS, that they wanted to help people.

I think ability is not the root here, but it is the drive, and I think the
women out there that have the personality and the drive to be entrepreneurs do
not have an economic model that matches their interests.

I am willing to bet that as greentech becomes a viable industry to start a
company you will see more women entering the entrepreneurship game. So, if it
is still some sort of preference to help people and the world, why is that so?
I don't know but thank God someone wants to do something more.

I think that if you are going to support a climate for female entrepreneur's
you are going to have to find a way to create a community (YC seems to be a
good start) and a way for the process to feel personable rather than abstract.

Jessica, maybe you can organize a few geek dinners to get female entrepreneurs
together talking about what they would of like to have had when they were
starting a company? I am sure you will find it much different than what the
guys needed.

------
Xichekolas
From what I gather it's not so much that female founders are turned away from
doing startups as they just never turn towards it to begin with... anybody out
there with thoughts on why?

I have often wondered this. If one assumes the prototypical founder is a
hacker, and the stereotypical hacker was a nerd in school... then we come back
to: why aren't more nerds female? Are little girls discouraged from tinkering
and making things in favor of other activities? I'm asking seriously, as I am
a guy without sisters, or really any close female relatives, so I have no idea
how girls are raised.

~~~
aasarava
I don't think there's a single culprit. Now, I'm not a sociologist, and I'm
simplifying here, but it seems to me that it starts in childhood with the
selection of toys and judgments on character that parents and family members
apply. Boys get Legos, girls get dolls. This gets reinforced in grade school
where perhaps girls are rewarded more for excelling in "creative" activities
while boys are subtly steered in a different direction. In high school,
science and history books are almost devoid of women. Meanwhile television and
movies continue to portray stereotypical views of women. By the time college
and career roll around, you've got both subtle and explicit forms of
discrimination to contend with -- not to mention a complete lack of role
models at the CEO and founder level in Silicon Valley. So the cycle continues.

------
vaksel
actually if you think about it, women would actually have a leg up when it
comes to getting funding etc. Since there are so few of them, they have a much
higher chance of actually getting to talk about their idea in front of VCs who
want to see what they have to offer.

~~~
jnovek
Why does there being fewer of them increase their likelihood of getting an
opportunity to pitch? Because they are a curiosity?

~~~
vaksel
Well I wouldn't use that exact word, but it works.

~~~
DaniFong
I really don't think that being a curiosity helps much.

~~~
vaksel
hey if it gets you in the door to give a presentation to a VC, more power to
you

~~~
DaniFong
Presentations are a cost. If they won't lead to funding, they give information
to the VCs, they waste your time, and they get your hopes up and then slowly
disappoint you.

If being a curiosity gives a negative first impression, this likely outweighs
any additional time to speak.

------
axod
If you want to make a startup, you do it. If you want to raise money, then
sure, you do run the risk of not being able to. I think that could be for many
reasons.

These days though bootstrapping is well within most peoples reach, male or
female. There are no excuses.

