
Women Don't Want To Run Startups Because They'd Rather Have Children - razin
http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/09/women-startups-childre/
======
cletus
I think this post is skipping the crucial factor in all this. It's not about
children--at least not directly. It's about risk.

Several years ago I read an article that analyzed the work preferences of the
genders. It demonstrably showed that:

\- Men are more likely to do riskier jobs;

\- Men are more likely to travel further to work (including internationally);

\- Women _tend_ to choose that are closer to home.

Basically it came down to risk-aversion. Women are, on the whole, more averse
to risk than men.

A startup, compared to any salaried job, is far riskier. You can work for
years on substandard pay and much longer hours and end up nothing. Of course
you could also end up a millionaire (or even a billionaire).

Obviously children will be a factor for some (both men and women but more
women than men, on the whole) and you can argue that the risk aversion is a
product of the child factor but I think you see these same traits in women who
are childless (so you then have to stretch the child factor to women who may
one day have children, which applies to pretty much any women under 40 so is
really a non-argument).

Tech Crunch had a post about this a few months ago. The tech press wants to
write stories about women entrepreneurs. Companies and business schools have
diversity policies the result of which is that the entrance requirement for
women are generally lower than their male counterparts.

Equality isn't the same thing as being identical. If less than 50% of
entrepreneurs or programmers are women is not a failure of equal opportunity.
Nowadays there aren't any barriers preventing women from taking these paths
(quite the opposite, actually). It's simply that less women choose these
routes.

~~~
mklg1266
"Nowadays there aren't any barriers preventing women from taking these paths
(quite the opposite, actually). It's simply that less women choose these
routes."

Begging the question. As you point out, there are no laws or physical barriers
preventing women in the US from doing just about anything, so their heavy
relative underrepresentation means _by definition_ they're choosing not to.
The question is: why not? Choices aren't made in a vacuum. What is it about
our culture and society that has led to the percentage of women in
tech/computing to drop pretty much consistently since the field was invented
while their numbers increase in many other formerly all-male professions?

You posit that women are observed to be more risk-averse, and that this
explains why they avoid founding startups. Leaving aside whether this is true,
I repeat my question: why?

(Tangentially, as I think someone else pointed out, the "women are
biologically risk-averse" trope can only explain why women "choose" to not
found startups, not why they "choose" to not work as a dev at a big tech
company, for example, where the risk level is close to nil. Have you looked at
the health benefits/maternity leave/termination policies at places like IBM or
Microsoft?)

Everyone loves to triangulate complex evolutionary explanations to this kind
of question, but a cultural argument is even simpler to make: women get paid
less, are taken less seriously, are subject to glass ceilings, harassment,
discrimination, have a higher probability of being raped, etc etc, _every
single day_. Moreover, women are explicitly told from an early age not to
dress too provocatively, never leave a drink unattended, never ever ever walk
home alone at night. . .and that's leaving aside the more subtle cultural
pressures that discourage them from the sciences. Women are at higher "risk"
than men just by virtue of their gender, and they're reminded of this, with an
implicit or explicit injunction to be careful, all the damned time. That might
serve as a reasonable explanation for why they'd be more risk-averse, but is
unfortunate in that it can't be shrugged aside with a trite evolutionary
explanation.

Just because there are no laws preventing women from doing something does not
mean that the playing field is equal.

~~~
cperciva
_women get paid less, are taken less seriously, are subject to glass ceilings,
harassment, discrimination, have a higher probability of being raped, etc etc,
every single day._

Conversely, men are less likely to attend college, are more likely to be
unemployed, are more likely be injured in the course of employment, are more
likely to be the victim of a violent crime, are more likely to be
incarcerated, etc etc, _every single day_.

 _Just because there are no laws preventing women from doing something does
not mean that the playing field is equal._

Just because there are inequities in one direction does not mean that there
aren't also inequities in the opposite direction.

~~~
mklg1266
"Conversely, men are less likely to attend college, are more likely to be
unemployed, are more likely be injured in the course of employment, are more
likely to be the victim of a violent crime, are more likely to be
incarcerated, etc etc, every single day."

Yes. I never claimed otherwise. I was making an argument as to the cultural
conditioning that might lead women to be, on average, more risk averse than
men. This doesn't mean that bad things don't happen to men. The two
statements, in fact, have nothing to do with one another.

"Just because there are inequities in one direction does not mean that there
aren't also inequities in the opposite direction."

Yes. Again, I never claimed otherwise. Inequities are bad. That's my point.
Inequities that disadvantage men are also bad and, had that been the subject
of the conversation, I would have made that point too. However, we're not
talking about inequities that apply to men, we're talking about a field in
which there are demonstrably fewer women participating than men and we're
asking why. I was arguing that first, we need to go beyond a conclusion that
states "women are choosing not to do X, so it's not a problem", second, that
women may be risk averse for cultural reasons that may be worth addressing,
and finally, by extension, that it's insufficient to claim that so long as
women are legally treated the same way as men the playing field is equal so we
shouldn't worry about it.

In other words, I'm not sure what your point is.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>we're talking about a field in which there are demonstrably fewer women
participating than men and we're asking why

I'd like to ask why you imagine that in any field there would be equal numbers
of men and women? Or indeed why there should be any reason beyond simple
preference. More women like milk chocolate; more men like dark (pulled that
one out my arse incidentally). Does it matter?

If you take a gender blind view then you only have to look at individuals and
say - "were you discriminated against due to prejudice?" if not then no foul.

There's a natural skew I think: if both men and women equally wanted to start
families then more women would normally be able to than men (artificial
insemination, one-night stand, stop using birth control, decide contrary to
the male to not have an abortion, whatever). This leaves more men doing
startups whether they prefer that to starting a family or not.

No, I'm not saying this accounts for any discrepancy I'm just saying this
seems to be a reasonable explanation as to why there might be an imbalance and
that these sorts of possibilities lead me to think that should it be clear
there is no discrimination then it is highly unlikely that equal numbers of
any two sub-populations (male-female, blue eyes-brown eyes, ...) occupy a
particular field.

~~~
mklg1266
"I'd like to ask why you imagine that in any field there would be equal
numbers of men and women? Or indeed why there should be any reason beyond
simple preference."

Listen: "Women are choosing not to as a matter of preference so there's
nothing wrong" is a cop-out. I'll grant you that the reason for the lack of
equality is "simple preference." Clearly, because if women "wanted" to do
startups/tech, they would. There are no laws preventing them.

"More women like milk chocolate; more men like dark (pulled that one out my
arse incidentally). Does it matter?"

Intrinsically? No, of course not. But if we start from the assumption that
gender shouldn't matter, we would expect a distribution that cleaves pretty
closely to the gender distribution in the population. The fact that that it's
doesn't isn't necessarily bad per se, but it suggests that maybe something is
going on that may be worth investigating a little further. To do otherwise is
intellectually lazy.

It's totally possible that the discrepancy is completely innocent, or that
there's some reasonable gender-based explanation that involves no negative
cultural messages, discrimination, whatever, to explain the massive
differences in the number of women and men who choose to go into tech.
<snark>I suppose there's a first time for everything.</snark> I just haven't
been convinced by any of the pat explanations so far. None of them have
explained, for example, the relatively low number of women working for large,
stable tech companies (some of the best employers in the world if you're
looking for benefits and stability), nor why the relative percentage of women
in tech has been dropping pretty consistently over the last 30 years (actually
since the early days of computing, but whatever). The point of my original
post was mostly that we should go farther than saying something simple like
"Women are risk averse!" and ask, well, why? Because it's not totally out of
the question that cultural forces are at work, and it might behoove us to at
least _think_ about them a little bit.

"There's a natural skew I think: if both men and women equally wanted to start
families then more women would normally be able to than men (artificial
insemination, one-night stand, stop using birth control, decide contrary to
the male to not have an abortion, whatever). This leaves more men doing
startups whether they prefer that to starting a family or not."

If it were that simple then tech/CS/startups should have a gender imbalance
roughly equivalent to that of the rest of the working world.

In the past, simple, personality/preference/constitution-based explanations
for gender discrepancies have proven false many times - women didn't have the
constitutions to be doctors, women didn't have the temperament to be lawyers,
etc etc - so I'm inclined to distrust this sort of explanation, at least
initially. I'm not saying "Oh because it wasn't true that women just didn't
want to do law and medicine it can't be true here.", or that we need 50-50
male/female representation or I'm burning my bra, or even that we should
_change_ anything or that anyone is suffering any overt injustice at the hands
of anyone else. I'm just advocating for a little critical thought about our
society/culture instead of just shrugging our shoulders and assuming that
there's no problem.

~~~
dejb
> But if we start from the assumption that gender shouldn't matter

There's your problem. By using the word "shouldn't" you seem to be conflating
"our best guess at objective reality" with "what we think would be morally
correct". It is unfortunate that thinking like this is still allowed to infest
some higher educational institutions but it doesn't cut the mustard when
nobody's funding is on the line.

In terms of objective reality this assumption is unwarranted. There are
significant documented differences between the distributions of intellectual
capabilities of genders including the higher variance in IQ for men and men's
aptitude skew towards maths and away from language.

> In the past, simple, personality/preference/constitution-based explanations
> for gender discrepancies have proven false many times - women didn't have
> the constitutions to be doctors, women didn't have the temperament to be
> lawyers, etc etc - so I'm inclined to distrust this sort of explanation, at
> least initially.

In the 70s, 80s and even 90s this would have made more sense. But as the years
of higher university attendance of women stretch out, as women continue to
succeed in previously male dominated areas such as medicine and law you have
to ask 'why not in tech/CS/startups'. It isn't as if it is a area that has
ever been reputed as having a history of institution chauvinism. To me, the
weight of evidence points more and more towards the differences in
distributions of capabilities and preferences between genders playing a
significant part in participation rates in tech. However much of an
'Inconvenient Likelihood' this may be for both the tech industry and many
women, it shouldn't blind us to evaluating the evidence as objectively as
possible.

~~~
mklg1266
"In terms of objective reality this assumption is unwarranted. There are
significant documented differences between the distributions of intellectual
capabilities of genders including the higher variance in IQ for men and men's
aptitude skew towards maths and away from language."

Are there? Cite some for me. And then explain why they mean there are fewer
women in tech but not in other fields. Higher IQ variance means that there are
more super geniuses and more mentally retarded men. You don't actually need to
be a super genius to go into tech. _Maybe_ to found a startup, though that's
also a reach, but certainly not to go be a dev somewhere. And moreover, why do
you assume that those differences are innate? Maybe they are, but there is
also plenty of [uncited] evidence that suggests that many of those differences
are learned.

I'm not assuming a priori that women are being screwed, but it mystifies me as
to why this community tends to assume A) that the tech community is totally
immune to societally constructed gender forces that have at some point
affected pretty much everything else in the world and B) discrimination is the
only bad thing in society that could be keeping women out of tech.

"It isn't as if it is a area that has ever been reputed as having a history of
institution chauvinism."

…say what now? Maybe not like law/medicine did, but there's been plenty of
chauvinism in tech.

"To me, the weight of evidence points more and more towards the differences in
distributions of capabilities and preferences between genders playing a
significant part in participation rates in tech. However much of an
'Inconvenient Likelihood' this may be for both the tech industry and many
women, it shouldn't blind us to evaluating the evidence as objectively as
possible."

What evidence? I'm very happy to evaluate the evidence objectively. But it
seems so far that there's been very little evidence presented either way, and
a common response then becomes "well, I don't see a problem, there must not be
one!", despite the fact that A) this hasn't worked out as an explanation in
the past B) there exist several societal factors we could point to that might
explain the problem, if we bothered to think about it for two minutes instead
of constructing some complicated and totally unfounded explanation based on
evolution.

Instead of assuming that I'm a crazy and irrational feminist who cannot be
convinced by facts, which is not the case, why not respond to the _original_
argument I made, which was that our society conditions women to be afraid,
which may explain why they're more risk averse?

~~~
dejb
> Are there? Cite some for me.

I'm sure you are aware of them and if you had any actual contradictory
position on this you would have mentioned it.

> You don't actually need to be a super genius to go into tech.

I'd say you need to be well above average in 'math IQ' to be useful
programmer. When you combine a lower mean in math-like capability with a
smaller standard deviation this significantly cuts down the percentage of
women who'd be expected to cross that 'threshold'.

> Maybe to found a startup, though that's also a reach, but certainly not to
> go be a dev somewhere

Can you actually program competently? Cause I'm getting the vibe that you
don't have much respect for the art.

> why this community tends to assume A) that the tech community is totally
> immune to societally constructed gender forces that have at some point
> affected pretty much everything else in the world

Because at it's heart, the nuts and bolts of tech work is not about social
interaction, it is about you and the computer/system. At some level it doesn't
matter whether you are an bipolar lesbian midget with major personal hygiene
issues or a privileged WASP, the computer doesn't care - your program will
either work or not. True geeks don't need to ask for anyone's permission,
approval or assistance to get into the area - they just start learning and
coding. Sure, this is 'back room' stuff but at the heart of most successful
tech startups you will find a healthy 'inner geek' that respects results above
contemporary social mores.

> What evidence? I'm very happy to evaluate the evidence objectively. But it
> seems so far that there's been very little evidence presented either way

I agree in that none of he individual arguments presented are knockout blows.
But when you accumulate the maths vs language gap, the variance difference, a
reasonable explanation for different attitudes to risk, the successes in
previous male bastions (law/medicine) versus the individualistic/mathy tech -
it starts to look a lot like mutually supporting evidence.

When it comes to the 'complicated and totally unfounded explanation based on
evolution' I see it as stronger than the 'secret societal forces that nobody
can seem to put there finger on that stops women from entering tech'. Your
argument about fear makes some sense but it is just as easy to argue that
founding an ambitious startup is actually irrational in terms life result pay-
offs - even for men.

In general I think it is quite too fall into the trap of thinking of people as
fundamentally more similar to ones self than they really are, and to explain
away the differences as societal influence. Modelling the rest of the world as
'slightly different versions of me' certainly has power but also great
inaccuracies. This particular article called 'Generalizing From One Example'
was a real eye opener for me.

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/>

------
edw519
As I read this, I couldn't stop thinking about my sister:

    
    
      Age 25 - met her future husband
      Age 26 - got married
      Age 27 - Child #1
      Age 27 - graduated law school
      Age 29 - Child #2
      Age 33 - Child #3
      Age 35 - Child #4
      Age 39 - Child #5
      Age 46 - Child #6
      Now    - runs a minor league baseball team
    

(I don't really know how she does it. But, then again, no one does.)

~~~
Watermelon
You know, rats can have more offspring than your sister in just a month. I
don't see what's admirable about fulfilling one's biological destiny. And who
cares about law school or baseball teams? If she had gotten a PhD in Quantum
Field Theory while raising 6 kids, then...

~~~
Jun8
I think you've got it wrong. I think the point he was trying top make is the
time management aspect (as parents know, kids are a huge time sink, god
bless'em). I've got only one, and he's making it extremely hard to put extra
time on anything. So, actually having N kids is nothing to boast about, doing
so while being able to do _anything_ meaningful is.

~~~
Watermelon
I know a medical doctor who had 14 kids (oh, those catholics). And she still
managed to practise medicine when she was not spreading her legs to launch
another baby in this world. Sounds much more impressive than managing a
baseball team, imho. The OP wants the HN crowd to assure him of what a special
and unique snowflake his sister is, when she's merely doing something that is
the norm in some parts of the world.

~~~
antileet
"Intellectual pursuits are more respectable and rewarding than non-
intellectual ones". Personally, I'd say it might be okay to run a little
baseball team and make a few dozen people's lives more interesting. Even doing
a phd in QFT, as you note, might help some people in the long run. But are you
trying to define a __heuristic __that proposes that one human is better than
the other solely due to the field of work?

I find this trend rather disturbing. It's almost parallel to the "nerds don't
get laid" paradigm. For the record, I'm a physics major. And I'd any-day
prefer to be a little-league team manager than troll on comment threads.

~~~
Watermelon
_"But are you trying to define a heuristic that proposes that one human is
better than the other solely due to the field of work?"_

No. I am merely stating that having kids is not an accomplishment, it's one's
biological programming. One should admire people who do things that are
challenging and difficult, like proving hard theorems or sailing around the
world solo. It's not about status nor academic pedigree, it's simpler: if
everything is admirable, then nothing is.

 _"I'd any-day prefer to be a little-league team manager than troll on comment
threads."_

Just because I am being downvoted, that doesn't make me a troll. But thanks
for the remark. Now you can be all happy that you're on the side of the "moral
majority". You're a self-righteous sheep. Be proud.

~~~
antileet
I didn't _disagree_ with what you said. Yes there are certain people who have
spent a good amount of their time working towards noble and challenging causes
who have my utmost respect. I fully agree with your first point.

By saying things like "And who cares about law school or baseball teams", you
are belittling a whole set of people. Saying "sailing solo is more admirable
than working towards law school" might be accurate, but the way I read it -
"law school? You haven't sailed solo around the world, hence your existence is
invalidated".

As for the troll remark, you're a new user with no real identity making
relatively controversial and somewhat personal statements with a relatively
disrespectful tone. I'm not too sure what the textbook definition of a troll
is, but this is the closest one I've seen over here.

------
timcederman
I'll simply point out that this is Penelope Trunk, who previous wrote about
how she had two abortions for her career.

[http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/06/17/whats-the-
connectio...](http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/06/17/whats-the-connection-
between-abortions-and-careers/)

~~~
gcheong
She seems to have the tendency to take what is true for her and extrapolate
that to a general theory of what is true for everyone else. Oh well, certainly
not the first person to do that.

------
_delirium
From the headline, I was hoping this involved some research, some sort of new
finding, at least with tentative causality ("because" is hard to prove, but
there is evidence that is more persuasive and less persuasive). But it's just
someone's opinion based on anecdotes.

And it's not really a new one: the "women do more/less of X because they want
to have a family" argument is written about _all the time_. It vies with
"inherent biological differences" and "discrimination" for the most-
frequently-suggested explanation for gender differences in any field. You can
get dozens of entire books on it.

It's also somewhat at odds with the (admittedly spotty) research that's been
done in the area. For example, one in-depth series of case studies found that
a large proportion of women who opted out of work to raise a family did so
largely because they wanted out of the work, rather than because they wanted
to raise a family and weren't able to do the work at the same time: quitting
to raise a family was the plan B that they turned to when plan A (have a
career) turned out to suck for various reasons: [http://www.amazon.com/Opting-
Out-Women-Really-Careers/dp/052...](http://www.amazon.com/Opting-Out-Women-
Really-Careers/dp/0520244354)

On the other hand, it's perfectly fine for people to write personal blog posts
about their own experiences. I think I'm mostly objecting to the attempt to
generalize it based on one example; a "why I quit my startup to raise a
family" post would've been fine.

~~~
ewjordan
Agreed, this is pretty much a shallow version of the same argument that many
people have been making for quite some time now. It would also seem to suggest
that we should see major shortages of women in other fields that are extremely
intense to start out in (medicine and law, for instance), and IIRC the gender
ratios there are much more balanced. "Working hard" is not something women
tend to be put off by; "building software", on the other hand, is, and I think
any helpful suggestion needs to avoid catching the first in the same net as
the second.

IMO the main reason this is getting attention is that it's a woman and she's
not arguing the "discrimination" line. That's fine and all, but at this point
it just seems like fanning the flames rather than adding anything new to the
conversation.

Really, most of this whole debate is a polarization issue: the only people
that care very much about this are at the fringes, either arguing the "men are
pigs" position or getting really pissed off about people arguing the same. I
think there's probably a balance between "discrimination" and "inherent
biological differences" that conspire to turn women off from programming
altogether, but each side is working so hard to shut the other side down
completely that we don't see any balanced views coming out of this debate.

~~~
_delirium
The comparison to law/medicine is particularly interesting, and I haven't seen
a good explanation of the differences with that (one might exist, but I
haven't found it). My feeling is that 20-30 years ago, computing, law, and
medicine were all seen as being fairly similar gender-wise, both in terms of
their ratios and perceptions of how friendly/attractive to women the fields
were. But in the years since, they've gone in opposite directions: women now
make up more than half of med-school students, and an ever-increasing
proportion of law-school students, but they make up a _smaller_ portion of CS
students today than they did in the 1980s.

~~~
ewjordan
Another interesting comparison, IMO, is to banking and finance, where the
atmosphere is even more distinctly "big swinging dick", yet the gender ratio
is still not as imbalanced as in IT (IIRC, the ratios in finance are more like
65:35, whereas in IT it's somewhere around 80:20 or maybe even worse,
depending what sector of IT).

This is one of the main reasons I don't buy the argument that women stay away
because men are assholes in tech: the men I've interacted with that are in
finance put the worst of the IT douchebags to shame when it comes to misogyny
(the guys in the money fields often _really_ hate women, or at least have no
respect for them, whereas in tech, they just don't really interact with than
many women, so most things tend to be male-centric, I rarely see actual
hostility), yet women work in that field far more readily than they do in
tech.

I'm sure the remunerative aspects play some role here; it's pretty easy to get
rich if you can make it through hell-year at a hedge fund, whereas being code-
monkey #8 at some random startup is likely to do little more than pay the
bills for another year or two.

But still, you'd think any financial disincentives would apply equally to men
and women.

I definitely think there's something else going on here, and it seems to have
a lot to do with _interest_ , not incentives or disincentives. To me, the main
question is whether the interest discrepancy is cause by an innate difference
between men and women (for whatever reason, men like building stuff, writing
code, solving problems or whatever, and women don't) or a social one (men are
encouraged to do it, women aren't).

Given that I ended up in this field with pretty much zero influence from
anyone (I started messing around with APL when I was about 8 and found the
executable while poking around for games on my dad's computer), and to this
day I've met a grand total of maybe 4 females that were interested enough to
learn to program _at all_ , as compared to hundreds of males, I'm skeptical of
claims that it's purely social, the numbers are just too extreme for that if
the same natural urges exist in all of us.

------
jacquesm
The internet has actually enabled a whole generation of female entrepreneurs
to 'do their start-up thing' _and_ have children to boot.

It's the perfect tool to have a company and be around the house all day long
(or as long as you want to be), I'm not exactly female but I would have found
it very hard to decide for children if I had been a person with a 9 to 5 job.

If you and your spouse can work together on a start-up (not always the best
for everybody, but there are definitely cases were it worked very well and
plenty were it worked good enough) then you can find some pretty good splits
between raising children and running a company.

Things like web design and programming go very well with working from home and
raising kids, I see it as a win for everybody.

If your idea of a start-up is to have lots of employees, a huge office and
turnover in the millions then that's another case entirely, but on a lesser
scale it is perfectly doable.

~~~
frossie
Yup. Didn't we only yesterday have an Ask HN thread on side projects that are
making money?

The great thing about software today is how much you can do on a small scale.
If her theory about commitment was correct, you would have a bunch of women
who had started small side projects and then said "oh this has really taken
off and I don't want to work 100 hours a week so I want to sell it". Where are
they then?

I am pretty convinced that the answer is a lot simpler and is simply related
to the number of women who code in the first place.

------
cperciva
The author points out that women who want to have kids can't wait very long,
generally don't have time to do a startup first, and that you'd have to be
crazy to try to do a startup _and_ raise young kids at the same time.

I'm not sure that I believe her arguments about men, though:

 _For men it’s different. We all know that men do not search all over town
finding the perfect ballet teacher. Men are more likely to settle when it
comes to raising kids. The kids are fine. Men are more likely than women to
think they themselves are doing a good job parenting. This makes sense from an
evolutionary perspective. Men have to trust that the kids will be okay so that
they can leave and go get food or make more kids._

It seems to me that she's ignoring the most important factor: Men have more
time to do a startup before having children _because men are usually older
than their wives_. The average age difference is 2 years, but I wouldn't be
surprised if the gap increases with education and income.

(Then again, maybe this is just wishful thinking from a single 29 year old who
still hopes to get married and have 2.5 children some day.)

~~~
zavulon
I'm with you as I'm also a single 29 year old working 80 hour weeks on my
startup, and still hoping one day to get married and have a lot of kids.

The difference is though, we as men can (hopefully) keep spending 80 hour
weeks on work now, get insanely rich by 35, meet a woman of our dreams at 40,
get married at 45, and have kids at 50. Women don't have that option.

~~~
leftnode
Alternatively, I have a 6 month old and I'm only 26. I'm glad I had him early:
being up late has allowed me to work on my startup and maintain a full time
job. I'd love to be independently wealthy by 35. He'd be set up for life, and
I would have plenty of time to spend with him and pursue other ventures. No
way I'd want the burden of a child at age 50.

------
arithmetic
I'd like to call bullshit on this one. Disclaimer: I'm probably one of those
insane women who wants to do a startup.

1) I'm tired of articles like these which have little to no research backing
up their claims on why there are so few women doing startups. Penelope isn't
making a sweeping generalization in the article, but she might as well make a
generalization here - the effect is quite the same.

2) I'm also tired of the set of women I refer to as "the angry feminists" who
are easily insulted everytime someone (especially a male author/speaker)
points out that there are so few women in tech or that women lack qualities X
and Y to do a startup. To all the women of the afore-mentioned category,
you're wasting your time. An ounce of action is better than a ton of theories.

3) And last, I honestly don't know why there are so few women in tech. I don't
have theories. All I know is that there ARE few women in tech (and fewer doing
startups). I don't think we are all risk-averse. Sure, some of us may not like
taking chances, but I'm pretty sure it's not every one of us.

I've been involved in writing software all my adult life. I'd like to do a
startup one day. It's a tough world out there if you're doing anything on your
own, irrespective of your gender. So stop analyzing and start doing.

------
untamedmedley
Had this article been written by a man, people would zero in immediately on
Penelope's real issue:

 _She is trying to blame her failure on being a woman._

She's started several startups, and each time has failed to create anything
that matched her original entrepreneurial dreams. Unfortunately, because this
is such a hot topic in tech, and it "verifies" (with purely anecdotal
evidence) many people's biases on the issue, people aren't even pointing this
out.

I'm calling BS. Trunk is looking for an excuse to explain why her failures
aren't her fault (Biology). Instead of writing a meaningful postmortem on how
difficult entrepreneurship can be, we get this tripe that's supposed to apply
to all (or most) women. Nevermind that there are women in a variety of
incredibly demanding professions with children.

Beyond that, I really don't get this notion that you have to be in your
children's faces every moment of the day in order for them to be well-
adjusted. There's a huge difference between parenting/discipline and
hovering/coddling.

------
patio11
This model of doing business is broken. It can be fixed.

~~~
zdw
Exactly. Working smarter/slower at first, and focusing on a well thought out
minimal viable product, then scaling up makes more sense than working insane
hours to bang out something fast then burn out.

I figure I have about 60-80 good hours of applied, useful thought a week (not
all of which is spent on work related items).

~~~
mahmud
The slow start approach doesn't work well for novel, or large-scale fast
growing businesses.

The former case, one needs repeated iteration and trial and error to
discover/create a new market. You will deviate several degrees from your
original direction within the first 2-3 years.

In the later case, you have no choice to grow "smart" if you have something
viral. You don't choose your scale or the speed of your growth once a few
people discover you. You will end up working insane hours just to keep the
infrastructure alive. (this is strictly for software businesses, btw. but I
can think of an instance of D.C. hole in the wall sandwitch joint that got
reviewed on NPR. Nothing like a flesh-DoS, and you can't tell that guy he
doesn't need to put in insane hours.)

------
Swoopey
I'm a 29 year old start-up founder in Tokyo, I'm also carrying my first child.

I don't know all of the stats regarding women and start-ups and to be honest,
I don't care. I have learned that in order to be successful in anything--
sacrifice, hard work, knowing your stuff and the right people goes a long way
and opens up a lot of opportunities, especially for Americans or start-ups in
the US. The amount of support I receive being pregnant and founding a start-up
is unbelievable, and I'm and American in Japan.

Penelope is known for writing articles like these, which do more harm than
good in my humble opinion.

If you want to start a company, male or female, recognize that it won't be
easy, be prepared to work harder than anyone else and dismiss the naysayers.

------
dgabriel
There are still questions about nature vs nurture. There are lots of social
pressures to be a certain kind of woman, a certain kind of mom, etc. I'm not
sure any of her examples prove that things are _biologically_ this way, just
that they are. I wish she would just ask the questions, and not answer them.
Why aren't men full partners in parenting? Who's fault is that? Why aren't
young women encouraged to take on greater risks in their lives? Is it really
true that you can only have a successful start-up if you surround yourself
with exploitable young men who will work long hours for a minimal payoff?

------
SabrinaDent
Couple of points:

1\. If by "startup" you mean tech startups as opposed to bricks and mortar
businesses, there are fewer women programmers around to front tech startups.
The law of averages is at work there, but I don't think it accounts for the
whole disparity.

2\. The VC model specific to tech startups is not what you'd call kid
friendly. Please note that we are discussing this issue at Y Combinator.
Submitting your startup to YC requires that you be willing to _move to the
Valley_ for three months. This is incredibly difficult if you have kids; if
you are primary custodial parent, it is virtually impossible.

3\. When women do run tech startups, they are not necessarily granted the
credibility or profile. Penelope Trunk's article appears on Techcrunch.
Ravelry has 850,000 members. It's been covered exactly once by TC, when it
rolled into beta, with the line "If you’re a knitter, join the waiting list
immediately. Everyone else, nothing to see here." Thanks, Michael.

All of that said, it is being done - just not necessarily according to the
popular startup formula Penelope herself followed for Brazen Careerist.

------
seldo
"Running a startup" and "being in tech" are very different things. It's
totally possible to work in tech without running a startup, so if her thesis
is correct you'd expect women engineers to be equally represented in medium to
large tech companies and under-represented at startups. Instead, they are
vanishingly rare at both.

So I don't buy it. One datapoint does not yield a conclusion.

------
MrFlibble
One thing I find interesting is that with the ever increasing ability to
telecommute and work from home, many very talented women are able to stay
employed and have kids at the same time. Employment is there if you can think
and work "outside the box".

Example: My father is an attorney who started hiring skilled female lawyers
with young children to handle a few hours of legal calls a day from home (the
business design was phone-based legal services). The structure meant these
women could work reduced hours from their own homes while taking care of their
kids. Best of all they earned some income while not letting their skills go to
waste.

There are so many creative ways to find/create employment for those willing to
think beyond traditional work structure parameters.

------
Mz
I think children and the whole biological clock thing are a huge factor in
this (and in the low percentage of women in _any_ job that has crazy long
hours, like law or medicine). But I also believe that the effect is both more
subtle and far-reaching than is generally appreciated.

There are studies that show that people from a racist culture who believe
"racism is wrong" will still tend to believe secondary and tertiary things
that are basically racist but aren't directly about skin color per se -- like
conversations I have had with people who say they would vote for or hire a
black person if they were articulate enough and claim it is not racist, it is
just that most blacks aren't educated/articulate enough. My reply to that is
"If articulation were the issue, then George W Bush should have never been
elected president. He is infamous for butchering the English language." Of
course, he's white and male and went to the right schools and came from the
right family. It makes people very uncomfortable to point out the flaw in
their logic and point out that this is a social form of "Jim Crow Law".

So, basically, I think there is kind of a female version of social "Jim Crow
Law" going on: Even women who don't specifically want to have kids may still
make choices that are rooted in the goal of having mom available to the kids.
Or may be discouraged by subtle social things that are rooted in those
assumptions. People who make such assumptions usually don't even realize they
are making them. So it gets hard to root out.

My 2 cents.

------
petercooper
"Men Don't Want To Run Startups Because They'd Rather Watch Football"

~~~
joelmichael
Watching football isn't a very good comparison with having children, let's
try...

Men Don't Want To Have Children Because They'd Rather Run Startups

------
jscore
Now, that's some serious linkpaid or commentbait. Surprised it wasn't written
by MG Siegler.

------
ajju
Let us say that the writer actually believes that every single assumption (and
oh, there's so many you will lose count) in this article is true (they are
not) and it is not just flamebait/linkbait (it most certainly is).

Even so, surely she believes in exceptions. Surely, she does not think that
every woman in the world is exactly like her? Why the $$$$ would she advise
other people who run startups to "stick with..men in their 20s".

What a shameful way to get attention!

------
maxawaytoolong
_Running the company has been absolute hell. Not that I didn’t know it would
be hell. It’s my third startup. Each has had its own hell before we were
solidly funded, but this one was so bad that my electricity was turned off,
and I really thought I was going to die from stress._

Male or female, babies or not... maybe she's just in the wrong line of work?
I've been the first tech hire at 3 startups, and I'm kind of undecided as to
how much I actually like programming, but they were all kind of fun. There
were a few stressful moments, but I wouldn't describe any of the experience as
"hell," nor did we ever get our electricity shut off.

I mean, if it's always hell and you're on the brink of disaster, why would you
bother doing it again... 3 times?

------
sbov
I generally find the use of "never" interesting.

There was a time when I never wanted to work in tech because of what my
parents went through. How fun could working for 12 hours a day, 6-7 days a
week be? Not all that fun. Now, I work in tech. I guess I was wrong.

I was a toys'r'us kid. I didn't ever want to grow up. When I hit 27, I changed
my mind. I guess I was wrong.

Today, I never want to have kids. But I've felt this with many things - many
more than I mention here, most of which I've likely long forgotten. Instead, I
tell my girlfriend that I don't think I want to have kids, but can't promise
anything. Previous experience with the term proves it a rather dubious
conclusion. Afterall, never is a long time.

------
ashedryden
Women did not evolve against risk taking and startups:
[http://restructure.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/women-did-not-
ev...](http://restructure.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/women-did-not-evolve-
against-risk-taking-and-tech-startups/)

~~~
dgabriel
This blog is fantastic. Thank you for sharing.

------
annajohnson
Not this woman. Ever since I was young I wanted to build a big business (i.e.
NOT a 'lifestyle' business) and also raise a family. I never, ever saw it as
an 'either/or' decision and maybe that's why I'm doing both.

------
qeorge
I'd love to hear the author say this to the women in my family with a straight
face.

\- My mother and her best friend (also a woman) started a business last year
(her 2nd), and she's looking at starting a third.

\- My stepmother founded/runs a non-profit (her 2nd or 3rd, not sure).

\- My sister declared she wanted to be a dean at age 18. 12 years and 3
degrees later, she's now a dean at American.

\- All 4 of my aunts run their own businesses, three have done several and the
fourth started hers this week. One currently owns/runs one of the larger
companies in Germany.

Anecdotal evidence be damned!

------
callmeed
If there was an "education blogosphere", I wonder if they'd have a constant
stream of articles trying explain why there are so few male elementary school
teachers (14%).

------
sliverstorm
> My startup is me and a bunch of twenty-something guys. And if you’re a woman
> launching a startup, my advice is to stick with this crowd. They never stop
> working because it’s so exciting to them: the learning curve is high, they
> can move anywhere, they can live on nothing, and they can keep wacky hours.

Certainly, as a 20-something guy, that DOES sound pretty exciting, and I can't
imagine any of my female friends going for it.

------
joshcrews
I think children themselves _are_ startups. They require a ton of effort and
long hours getting started, have a growth phase, and then start to pay returns
and become more self-sufficient.

In a sense, women are involved in startups when they choose to have kids.

Background info: In the past year, I've started my family (first baby) and
worked on several startups as a Rails developer (FYI, I'm a man).

------
dennisgorelik
To see why women focus on children I'd recommend this article by the same
author: [http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2006/06/01/get-married-
first-t...](http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2006/06/01/get-married-first-then-
focus-on-career/)

------
QuantumGood
Hey, a child _IS_ a startup...and you can't be risk averse to create one.

------
fablednet
On a pure headline level, this is more suited for The Onion than TechCrunch.

------
ax0n
This seems like much more of a cultural phenomenon than a biological one.

------
ashedryden
As a woman (and someone who is friends with the Brazen peeps) this is highly
insulting. It assumes that all women want to have children, that men are
mostly absent/dismissive in their children's lives (if they have them), and
insinuates that women just aren't biologically fit to run a company. I know
Penelope has kind of made a name for herself in saying things that shock
people, so I wouldn't doubt that this is in the same vein. I run a company,
work ridiculous hours, and the other devs on my team are male. I don't think
any of us puts it fewer hours or energy based on the number of ovaries each
has.

~~~
cperciva
_It assumes that all women want to have children_

Headlines omit qualifiers. If you read the headline as " _Fewer_ women _than
men_ want to run startups because _many of them_ would rather have children",
I think it's entirely accurate. Sure, there are women who don't want children,
just like there are men who want nothing more than to be stay-at-home dads --
but they're the exception, not the rule.

~~~
ashedryden
I know tons of successful women who run businesses who are fine without having
children; I also know quite a few who have children and are still able to run
a business.

This whole argument goes back to the beginning of the feminist movement and
people not being willing to hire women because they should be making some man
sandwiches and popping out babies.

The trend is leaning towards more women having fewer children, if they are
having them at all
([http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=fewer+women+having+children)).

~~~
notauser
Just like almost everyone on HN, you are a statistical anomaly.

(This is nothing to do with you being a woman - that just increases the factor
by an order of magnitude or two.)

Even the people you know are probably outliers. So you have to be a bit
careful relying on your experience and instead look at broader demographic
trends.

Nearly all of the people I know well have no TV. Should I assume that TV is
hugely unpopular with everyone?

------
_corbett
it saddens me that such linkbait generalizations make it to the frontpage of
HN

it strikes me as insane that discussion on these issues centers around the
mean (pun intended). being an entrepreneur one is a few sigma away already; we
can't even see the average from here so why are we wasting time chatting about
it?

------
atari
In other news, this is called the "biased sample" fallacy.

1\. Sample S, which is biased, is taken from population P.

2\. Conclusion C is drawn about Population P based on S.

<http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/biased-sample.html>

------
mfukar
Oh my, the extrapolation is making my brain shrink!

------
ahoyhere
I do wish women with a chip on their shoulders would stop getting all aggro
about _observations_ that are not _prescriptions_. You saying "that's not
true" is just as globalizing as "this is true."

There is just something about women and product businesses that's weird. I
recently put on a conference about bootstrapping paying products only, and I
looked for ages to find a single woman bootstrapper like myself. They can't be
found.

There are uncountable zillions of women freelancers, women running agencies,
women coding, women designing, women writing, women coaching.

There are way more women running tech startups that have VC funding than there
are with bootstrapping.

I can name 5 to 7 female founders with VC off the top of my head -- to my
mind, they have better brand name recognition than male founders (the only men
I can think of by name, I know personally).

But, after days and days of searching and mining my (RL) social networks, I
was able to identify only ONE single fellow bootstrapper (and she's "only"
part of a 4-person team). And she's not from The Land of Opportunity, if you
know what I mean.

Outside of tech, there are lots of women who've gotten loans or other capital
to make ands sell physical goods, of all the risky-ass things they could do.
Or restaurants, shops and cafes.

So, obviously there are many women who are not afraid of entrepreneurship and
not really risk-averse. Selling specialty shoes or front-end web dev is much,
much riskier than creating a paying digital product, and less remunerative
than doing a startup with funding. (And most of those funded startups are
"social long shots" -- not product businesses.)

I don't have the answer, but there is something weird going on there. But I
don't think it's an external thing. Nobody is keeping those other women down.

That said, I'm a married woman in my mid-20s. I married when I was 24 and
launched my product business right after. If I ever wanted to have kids (which
I do not), I would definitely wait, because the "have it all" thing is
definitely a myth. You end up either shortchanging your kids or your work,
unless you're totally unstoppable (and who is?).

~~~
lizzy
_There are way more women running tech startups that have VC funding than
there are with bootstrapping._

Really? I'm not so sure. Perhaps it is just hard to hear about the women that
are bootstrapping tech companies. Companies that are being bootstrapped
typically are pre-traction, and have not received the buzz in the tech media
that comes with raising a funding round.

~~~
ahoyhere
There are lots of bootstrapped companies that are not "pre-traction," and, in
fact, making hundreds of thousands of dollars (or millions). You'd be very
surprised. The "startup" press (including HN) is a real echochamber, and this
lack of awareness about bootstrapping is one of the side effects. Check out my
speaker list at <http://schnitzelconf.com>.

That's why I asked everyone I knew - and asked them to ask everyone they knew.
I have my feet planted very high on the hierarchy of "famous devs" in more
than one circle, so my reach is greater than the average joe. In addition to
browsing every women entrepreneur's directory I could find. Including
<http://startupprincess.com>. No joy.

Nary a female product bootstrapper around. Except the lady who's part of the
team at Mite.

~~~
marilyn
I'm a pre-traction bootstrapping lady. Pleasure to meet you.

~~~
ahoyhere
Hi Marilyn. Awesome. But by "pre-traction" are you referring to List Central?
Because, by my definition, that isn't a product. Bootstrapping to me means you
have to charge.

It's not that hard to find women heading up traditional web 2.0 properties,
like social networks and social media tools (that don't charge).

~~~
lizzy
Totally get your definition of bootstrapping. But it is also in common usage
in a much looser sense -- at least i hear it used that way quite a lot!

Good luck Marilyn!

~~~
ahoyhere
You're absolutely right, which is why I used all those "my opinion" etc.
qualifiers :) Trying to not be a douchebag.

