

Will the Female Founders Please Stand Up? - martian
http://natashamooney.tumblr.com/post/3306660000/will-the-female-founders-please-stand-up

======
patio11
I recall those getting described as: _Y Combinator is trying something new to
encourage female startup founders. We're organizing a series of informal
dinners at which women interested in starting startups can learn more about it
from YC alumni._

Looks like it did what it said on the tin.

Not a fan of this choice of thread title, by the way. [Edit for context: it
was "Is YC Sexist?"] Racist and sexist are up there with kiddie porn these
days, particularly in the bluer parts of the country. (Not that the redder
parts of the country don't care, but that sort of accusation is a career ender
at e.g. a university campus.) The question mark does not excuse all
insinuations.

~~~
brudgers
Given the description of the event structure and its explicit organization as
a Women's only event, the question is legitimate particularly since describing
someone as sexist is in no way equivalent to describing them as a child
pornographer.

That's not to say that YC's motives were necessarily poor, but their execution
was less than brilliant - given a somewhat reasonable expectation of Jessica
Livingston's participation at a YC event.

~~~
birken
+1

Though I do think the author's title was (unsurprisingly) more accurate than
the poster here.

------
mindcrime
What's with the flamebait thread title? Why not just keep the title of the
original blog post: "Will the Female Founders Please Stand Up?"

I don't see anything in that post to support any suggestion that "YC is
sexist" at all. If anything, it's just the opposite; some YC founders came out
for the explicit purpose of helping aspiring female founders. What's the
problem again?

As for this bit:

 _But the circumstance produced an outrageously uneven power structure between
the men and women in attendance.

YCombinator created a dynamic where every man at the table was there to
“advise” and every woman at the table was there to “be advised”. Every man was
a “guest of honor” and every woman was a “paid attendee”.

I know my way around a conversation about startups, and I regularly earn the
respect of my male peers in conversation. Were I to meet any of these men in a
different context, we would have been on a level playing field. But at this
dinner table, for my life I could not convince these men to engage me as a
peer. My comments were interpreted as questions and were met with “well,
actually…” remarks. There was very little back and forth, and my opinion was
of no consequence. The power structure of this dinner precluded any woman from
being taken seriously at the table._

How does gender even factor into this equation? Would it have mattered if some
of attendees were men? The attendees would still have been the "aspiring"
founders and the "advisers" would still have been the "advisers," the ones
brought there to serve up knowledge. Or what if some of the advisers had been
female? Would that have made any difference to the "balance of power" bit? No.

~~~
jbooth
Women might have had a little more insight on navigating the 98% male world of
tech as a female founder. I think the dinner's a great idea and hate to
criticize YC for trying to do a good thing (good on them for trying in
general), but some successful women (from outside the YC diaspora if there
aren't enough in it) could be more encouraging and englightening, given the
topic.

~~~
mindcrime
Sure, I said in another comment that one would expect - intuitively if nothing
else - to find some female founders. But that section reads like the OP found
it to be some horrible, horrible thing just because - due to circumstance -
all the advisers were male and the attendees were female; and went off on what
felt like a bit of a weird digression.

Balance of power? Not being treated like a peer? I'm just saying that if
you're at an event where you are - by nature - positioned in something of a
"advisee" or "student" role, that you are in the "advisee" or "student" role
regardless of your gender. And sometimes it's ok to put the ego aside, quit
worrying about getting the other person to accept you, respect you, or
whatever, and just listen and learn.

I mean, nobody likes being talked down to, or patronized, right? I think
that's something that transcends gender. But sometimes we accept it because
there's something to be gained.

------
bkrausz
The OPs perspective contains a lot of false assumptions. I was one of the YC
alums who went to a dinner (though not the same one the OP was at).

The truth is YC consists of mostly men. I believe PG has said that YC accepts
the same % women and men, but they have many fewer applications from women.
This is an unfortunate situation, and is something I assume this event was
meant to help correct (I had no part in its original planning).

With that being said, there actually aren't enough female YC alums to populate
these dinners. Hopefully events like this will help create more YC alums, but
you can see the chicken-and-egg problem of demanding women hosting these
dinners.

From the article:

    
    
       YCombinator created a dynamic where every man at the table was there to “advise” and every woman at the table was there to “be advised”....
       [A]t this dinner table, for my life I could not convince these men to engage me as a peer.
    

From my perspective, every YC alum was there to advise and every prospective
founder (or prospective YCer or what have you) was there to be advised. Why
does gender have to come into play? Did any of the alums talk down to the OP
because of her gender? Possible, but I doubt it. I would have loved more women
to be alums giving advice, but only because they might be able to better
answer gender-oriented questions from a first-person perspective. Saying the
event should have only female alums, and then implying that the men did not
view you as a peer because of some gender issue rather than the context of the
event, is borderline offensive to me.

When I'm put in the situation of giving advice as a YC alum, I do just that: I
give advice. My primary mindset, regardless of the people at the event, is
that of a question answerer. I was sharing my experiences, just as most would
do if you were at any event where you were the "alumni".

When one views everything as a male-female breakdown, any situation where
there are more women receiving information than doling it out is going to seem
sexist.

------
Klinky
I'd look at it this way. If you were hyping a product, but then never showed
any working code. It'd be hard to take you seriously.

If you're hyping up a female founders meeting, yet you bring no "working
code"(female founders), it's going to be hard to take you seriously.

The same could be said if someone put on an event to encourage "African
American startups" and yet when people show up the only people there who were
"successful" were white people. It'd piss people off.

If the notice really said "females only", then it should have actually been
females only. If it was being hyped by a successful female founder, then
perhaps there should have been some female founders there. You need some
examples, some role models people can relate to. Male founders, while possibly
having good advice, are obviously not female founders.

People say they're disappointed that more women aren't in the tech field, but
then they don't actually track down some prime examples of successful females
in the field to pick their brains and find out why that might be. Rather silly
if you ask me.

~~~
108
its a chicken-egg situation - dont fund female founders, wont find female
mentors. Not surprising at all.

------
nlmooney
As the author of this post, I want to make clear that I did not originally
title this thread or submit it. In this post, I made every effort to convey
respect to the hosts of this event who quite obviously had great motives.

For all of the people out there who are interested in fostering female tech
founders, I hope my feedback was useful.

------
TGJ
Hard to tell if this person didn't simply walk into the event completely hyped
up on a female gathering walked in and saw men and put up a wall immediately.
From there did she simply see everything from a biased view because she was
disappointed in not attending her hopeful venue?

~~~
jbooth
Well, assuming the story's accurate, the event's pitched with Mrs Livingston's
name, billed as a meetup for female founders, then she gets there and it's 4
dudes telling them how to be successful in business? I'd be pissed, too. I
wouldn't go as far as "sexist" but maybe "put on a really crappy Female
Founders event".

~~~
Dylanlacey
I think this was the greater crime, that a disparity existed between what Y
Combinator was offering and what they were perceived as offering.

I wonder if Ms Livingston or other women founders were perhaps unable to make
it, or if there was a greater flaw in choosing the advisors. It may be that,
rather then being sexist, Y Combinator is strenuously avoiding the issue of
gender, and it just so happens that most of their founders are men. In fact, I
_think_ this dinner might have been about that issue...

I also think that the issue of having all the woman there as "Paid Attendees"
and the men as "Advisors" is less an issue then it seems... It's a fallout
issue of their not being any woman founders (and there might be fair or foul
reasons why THAT happened). It was an event where ONLY women could pay to go,
so naturally all the Paid Attendees were women.

Calling the behaviour sexist (Because the ? is really only there to soften the
blow) without all the information would one of the least respectful forms of
criticism... Using terms charged with negative emotions in lieu of thoughtful
criticisms.

------
erik_landerholm
No /thread

------
johngalt
Seems there is no way to win this one. If men don't share it's a "boy's club",
if they do share it's condescenion.

Also my bias detector is beeping. Reverse the genders. What if I found it
insulting that a startup event wasn't "men only"? If I acted like it was a
waste of time because female advisors can't teach me anything?

------
kooshball
OP, are you the writer of this post? If not, was it really necessary to change
the original title of the article?

------
endlessvoid94
Anyone else find the link between the title of this thread and PG's point (in
one of his essays) about "-ism"s?

------
Charuru
I do think if you're putting on a Female Founders event, you are under
obligation to show up with some female founders. Like many other types of
relationships, having mentors are as much about empathy, understanding, and
having good role models as it is about actual business advice. The women can
get advice from many other places, having Female in the title means the advice
should have something to do with females.

> _YCombinator created a dynamic where every man at the table was there to
> “advise” and every woman at the table was there to “be advised”. Every man
> was a “guest of honor” and every woman was a “paid attendee”._

No. This is just self victimization. It's called a coincidence, and something
that should be changed. But reading into it too deeply will hurt you more than
it helps you.

~~~
sp332
I voted you up for "you are under obligation to show up with some female
founders", but I disagree with your self-victimization paragraph. She went out
of her way to engage the adivsers as peers, and they shut her down.
Repeatedly. I don't know if it was sexism in particular, or just a badly-
considered power structure for the evening, but whatever the reason, that's
not how founders are supposed to encourage each other.

------
waterflow
I say no, because on the internet no one is aware of your gender unless you
tell them, and YCombinator is by and large a website, and a non-sexist one at
that.

However, for 100% of the experts at that conference to be male, is rather
surprising.

