I strongly dislike the "it's not about equality it's about good business" trope, as well intentioned as it may be. There is nothing wrong with wanting to create an equal just, and fair world without regard to the impact of those things on the bottom line.
I certainly agree wanting to create a fair and just world is a good thing, but you have to be careful defining 'fair'.
I think it is completely reasonable for an investment company to hold all of the investment discussion with the identities and genders of the people seeking investment anonymous. To the extent that you can eliminate any hint of bias is a good thing.
But would it be fair to end the NBA championships with the final two teams, give them both a trophy as champions because they made it that far?
I would draw the line where you cut off competition in order to achieve a quota or to avoid making a choice.
I'll give Adam[1] the benefit of the doubt that he really believes this stuff, but it's utter crap. Sure it plays well into the narrative that there is some "secret cabal" or some other reason that Silicon Valley is a hugely powerful innovation machine. I've never seen anyone who had a solid idea and a good go to market plan get turned down, regardless of gender, religion, sexual orientation, or anything else.
But I have seen a lot of people who thought they had a great idea get turned down. And I've seen a lot of them externalize that as some external factor whether it was a grudge or a bias or some other force out of their control. Unable to accept that they just had a dumb idea.
I'm reticent to attach specific numbers and targets for improving diversity. It is then too easy to stop when the goals/targets are reached, or too easy to give up if we keep moving the goalpost when each milestone is achieved.
It doesn't help the cause at all to misappropriate data as the quotes in this article do, either. Claiming that it makes "business sense" to improve gender diversity because the startups with women executives in the study didn't fail ignores the most likely explanation: most startup don't have female executives, so most failures would happen to startups that don't have women executives. It would take a vastly different study to show that the participation of women in the business caused their successes, or that the lack of women in a business causes its failure.
Why should we work to improve diversity then? Because it's the right thing to do.
