
Stanford's Women Won Just a Sliver of Silicon Valley - jashkenas
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/23/us/gender-gaps-stanford-94.html#top
======
debacle
I think it's important to acknowledge that men and women are treated different
socially but are also different biologically. We should work to equalize
representation and treatment from a social standpoint, but we also need to
admit that the innate behavior of men could possibly play a huge factor in
their roles in business. The factors themselves compound.

We should not work to equalize men and women objectively. What we need to do
is make sure that our daughters and sisters have the same _opportunities_ that
they would have if they were men, and aren't prejudiced by what society tells
them to be.

~~~
pron
> but we also need to admit that the innate behavior of men could possibly
> play a huge factor in their roles in business

That's a terrible way of thinking about it. Unless some difference is _proven_
to be biological, we should certainly assume it is not. That's how we deal
everything else that has to do with technology: unless something is proven to
be impossible, we try as hard as we can to achieve it. Some people believe
cryonic re-animation is possible, and some people believe in indefinite
extension of life or even uploading one's mind to a computer. If those notions
are credible enough for technologists to put a lot of effort into achieving,
then surely something as simple as equal representation for all groups in the
seats of power is something we must work towards, no?

~~~
debacle
> Unless some difference is proven to be biological

Many differences _have_ been proven to be biological.

> unless something is proven to be impossible

But what is your goal? Is your goal just for that number? What if parity is
not better? What if the problem of parity is that there is something intrinsic
in women that they're just not stupid enough to work 80 hours a week for 3-5
years to have a chance at a few million dollar exit? What if women just tend
to not have the same values as men do during the time when their career
priorities are most important?

It's much more important that a woman can become a CEO if she has the skills
and desire than that 50% of CEOs are women.

> equal representation for all groups in the seats of power

I think you start to tread into different territory here. While I don't
believe that half of the women on the board of a company need necessarily be
women, I do believe that half(ish) of the women on any sort of government body
should be women.

~~~
pron
> Many differences have been proven to be biological.

Absolutely none that are pertinent to the matter at hand.

> What if the problem of parity is that there is something intrinsic in women
> that they're just not stupid enough to work 80 hours a week for 3-5 years to
> have a chance at a few million dollar exit?

Sure. And what if it's impossible to find intelligence in the universe, create
true AI and extend life? There are good signs that that's indeed the case. I
guess you would argue we should stop pursuing those goals.

> I do believe that half(ish) of the women on any sort of government body
> should be women.

And don't you think Silicon Valley is a center of concentrated power?

~~~
minthd
There's good level of scientific evidence on differences in risk preference,
the importance of status, thinking styles(abstract vs concrete), levels of
attachment and child care abilities - at least between average males and
females. Sorry for not linking papers,but a good start would be this debate[1]
between pinker and spelke.

And it's clear those things impact participation in startups.

[1][http://edge.org/event/the-science-of-gender-and-science-
pink...](http://edge.org/event/the-science-of-gender-and-science-pinker-vs-
spelke-a-debate)

~~~
pron
You are both stretching the definition of "good scientific evidence" as well
as completely misunderstanding the very nature of the science producing those
studies.

First, are you saying that whatever "differences in risk preference" found
(for some definition of "good level evidence": I haven't seen the studies, but
I'm sure they weren't done on, say, a sample of a ten-thousand people) account
for the _huge_ difference seen in SV startups? I mean, I don't know what the
effect size was in the studies you were referring to, but I'm sure it was
nowhere near that we see in SV.

I call such an attitude "sciency" \-- ascribing small-n studies with low
effect size the scientific rigor of proof or strong evidence to reinforce
existing biases. You will never seriously consider this level of evidence
"good" if something important to you depended on it.

Second, and much more importantly: even pretending those studies were
conducted on a billion people and showed a 5x difference (or whatever it is
among SV entrepreneurs), all it means is that this is how people behave _now_.

Sociology doesn't purport to be physics, and those aren't laws of nature. I
mean, you could have done literacy studies in the 1800s and shown that blacks
are illiterate (with much more statistical rigor, BTW); what does that mean?
You must remember that sociology (and often psychology) studies snapshots of
society that are a result of forces _that we have the power to change_ (and
probably the moral obligation to). Sociology studies things _so that_ we could
change them. It doesn't claim (in fact, it claims the opposite) to uncover
fixed laws of nature.

~~~
minthd
Read the link. It has GOOD scientific evidence, including talking about "a
large meta-analysis involving 150 studies and 100,000 participants, in 14 out
of 16 categories of risk-taking, men were over-represented. "

And secondly i'm not saying they account for all the differences in SV, just
that there are large biologically based differences.

~~~
v13inc
I think the truly important question is: Are those differences caused biology
or society?

~~~
belorn
If it is society, how should it be handled? Should schools educate girls to
take more risk while boys are instructed on the negative aspect of risk
taking?

Or to phrase the question in a different way. If risk behavior is a socially
learned behavior, and risk behavior is the cause of gender imbalance in SV
entrepreneurs, what would the ethical action be to create equal opportunity
for people of both genders?

~~~
pron
> Should schools educate girls to take more risk while boys are instructed on
> the negative aspect of risk taking?

Let's ask the question another way: if schools (and parents) are currently
_educating boys to take more risk_ (or educating girls to take _less_ risk),
should they start treating both sexes the same way?

~~~
belorn
I have heard of no school that has a program to increase risk taking in boys,
nor do I know of any teacher education that instruct teachers to teach boys in
taking more risk. Could you explain why you are suggesting that some do?

What schools could do is educate about actually risks, so that any personal or
cultural level of risk aversion is confronted with reality. That would be
treating children of both genders equally and could mitigate differences
between genders.

~~~
pron
> I have heard of no school that has a program to increase risk taking in boys

Those biases are subtextual, but very powerful. There's a nice recent article
demonstrating some of them:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/12/wom...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/12/women_in_tech_and_the_sciences_how_to_make_sure_your_daughter_knows_she.html)

------
gd1
Remember, we're talking about the outliers here, the tail end of the
distribution founding billion dollar companies. Here's a thought experiment.
Take two normally distributed populations with the same mean. But one of them
has a slightly higher standard deviation. How much higher does the standard
deviation need to be before the combined population tails (at both ends) are
dominated by the population with the higher standard deviation?

You see men don't even necessarily need to have inherent (biological or
social) advantages over women... they may just be more erratic and have a
higher spread, and bam, they're producing both more serial killers and more
geniuses. You can speculate as to why they might have a higher st. dev, but I
think it is an interesting line of thought.

------
patrickg_zill
from the article:

PayPal had a hard time hiring women, Max Levchin, another co-founder, later
told a class at Stanford, “because PayPal was just a bunch of nerds! They
never talked to women. So how were they supposed to interact with and hire
them?”

“The notion that diversity in an early team is important or good is completely
wrong,” he added. “The more diverse the early group, the harder it is for
people to find common ground.”

Later, in an interview, Mr. Levchin said he had been speaking about diversity
of programming backgrounds, not race or gender.

~~~
moron4hire
What difference does it make? It's all about not being a narcissistic asshole.
Whether you marginalize someone's opinion because they are a different sex,
race, or computer science school than you doesn't matter. Be nice! Find
compromise! "FP v. OOP" is not--contrary to the last decade of popular CS
press--the make-or-break issue of project success!

------
lpsz
It seems that at least a few of the graduates mentioned in the story gave up
entrepreneurship to start a family (i.e. a traditional path.) It would be
interesting to see if modern-day delay/avoidance of "family life" stage [1]
may lead to a different outcome today.

[1]
[http://www.bloomberg.com/image/i5kUtaPYUPf8.jpg](http://www.bloomberg.com/image/i5kUtaPYUPf8.jpg)

~~~
_random_
Easy to guess: same money would be redistributed differently and there would
be less of healthy kids (statistically speaking).

------
dropit_sphere
...and all of the media.

------
pron
_“If meritocracy exists anywhere on earth, it is in Silicon Valley”_

Is this PR, self-delusion intended to make the (powerful) speaker not feel
bad, selective blindness or just mind-boggling ignorance? If it's the latter,
how can society educate these people, who hold ever-growing power over us all?

Of course, he could have meant "meritocracy" in its original, parodic, sense,
in which case he's absolutely right.

~~~
sedachv
> Of course, he could have meant "meritocracy" in its original, parodic,
> sense, in which case he's absolutely right.

I had no idea about the etymology of the word (a good explanation from the man
who coined it:
[http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment](http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment)).
Thanks for the insight!

I'm reading the Times Magazine profile of Mayer at Yahoo
([http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/what-happened-
whe...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/what-happened-when-marissa-
mayer-tried-to-be-steve-
jobs.html?action=click&contentCollection=Magazine&region=Footer&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=article))
right now: "Even though the actress Gwyneth Paltrow had created a best-selling
cookbook and popular lifestyle blog, Mayer, who habitually asked deputies
where they attended college, balked at hiring her as a contributing editor for
Yahoo Food. According to one executive, Mayer disapproved of the fact that
Paltrow did not graduate college."

~~~
vitd
It's hard to tell from the article what was actually said or meant. But to be
fair to Mayer, Paltrow sends out a weekly newsletter (Goop) that contains lots
of bad dietary advice, such as "toxin cleanses," and other pseudoscientific
nonsense. She could have meant literally that Paltrow is uneducated about food
and her food advice is harmful, so she didn't want her associated with Yahoo.
That's certainly what I would meant done in Mayer's position.

------
susan_hall
The stories about the backlash against the diversity efforts at Stanford,
circa 1994, are what Susan Faludi was talking about in her book "Backlash: The
Undeclared War Against American Women" which was published in 1991. That era
saw a turning point, as various important factions in USA society withdrew
their support from the project of advancing the role of women in society. The
encouragement given during the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s disappeared in the
1990s.

~~~
imanaccount247
>That era saw a turning point, as various important factions in USA society
withdrew their support from the project of advancing the role of women in
society.

Like who?

~~~
electronvolt
Any prior Republican support for women's reproductive rights/etc. had dried up
at that time because of their alignment in the '80s with the evangelical
Christian right. In the '80s the party platform dropped support for the Equal
Rights Amendment and abortion rights.

Also, religious groups that were traditionally very liberal/voted Democrat
(e.x. Catholics) on social issues also broke off from the Democrats over
abortion and reproductive rights related issues over the course of the '80s,
which isn't to say they were specifically /for/ those things at any point,
they just became something more political in the '80s.

I wouldn't really have said that 1991 was a clear date for the 'start' of that
process, though. Perhaps more "When it got into full swing." The other thing
is that the loss of large groups like the Catholics and the involvement of the
Christian Right in general caused the Democrats to swing right as well, which
means that even when the Dems were in power in the '90s their attitudes and
the policies they enacted were often more conservative than they had been
before RE: women's lib/rights/etc., even if they still supported most of the
issues on paper.

~~~
imanaccount247
So an actually accurate statement would have been "some people are opposed to
complete freedom on abortions". That's not quite the same as not supporting
the advancement of women in society.

~~~
electronvolt
What about dropping support for the Equal Rights Amendment and attempting to
reinforce/reinstate "traditional gender roles" isn't about putting the breaks
on the advancement of women in society?

The issue wasn't just abortion: abortion was, perhaps, a catalyst or a trigger
issue, but it also had implications on the rhetoric surrounding the passing of
anti-discrimination laws, domestic violence laws, etc.

~~~
imanaccount247
The equal rights amendment was not about equality. I am legally equal to a
man. That should be the end of government involvement. Discrimination is
already illegal. Domestic violence is already illegal. Being opposed to absurd
DV legislation that requires arresting men who seek help when they are being
abused is not being anti-women.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The equal rights amendment was not about equality. I am legally equal to a
> man.

Discrimination on the basis of sex is, in fact, not _as_ illegal as, e.g.,
discrimination based on race -- particularly, _government_ acts discriminating
based on sex are subject only to intermediate scrutiny, while race-based
discrimination is subject to strict scrutiny.

Correcting this has been expressly cited by ERA backers as a key motivation
for the ERA. As a woman, you are _not_ , under existing law, guaranteed to be
legally equal to a man even to the extent that a Black person is guaranteed to
be legally equal to a White person.

~~~
imanaccount247
This is seriously the level of discourse here? Just flagrant outright lying?

~~~
maxerickson
I'm curious how you are reading _particularly, government acts discriminating
based on sex are subject only to intermediate scrutiny, while race-based
discrimination is subject to strict scrutiny._

It seems to be a plain description of how the supreme court rules on things:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_scrutiny#Sex-
based...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_scrutiny#Sex-
based_classifications)

Or maybe you think it is some sort of misdirection to bring it up in the
context of this thread?

~~~
imanaccount247
This part: "Discrimination on the basis of sex is, in fact, not as illegal"

~~~
maxerickson
I was asking you understood the part I quoted, not what part you took issue
with.

~~~
imanaccount247
And I am telling you that is not the part I said is a lie.

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patronagezero
I didn't realize it was a competition between the sexes. Pick your side and
game on, then.

