I do. People often ask about the number of female founders we fund. It would be interesting to know whether it's low because of something about startups, or just a reflection of the larger pool from which they're drawn.
Actually, when a magazine interviewer asked Jessica about the percent of women among ycombinator-funded founders, I was very interested in her answer. Not because I suspected YC of bias - I didn't - but rather because I thought this percent would say something about the risks and rewards of small technical startups as perceived by women. Being a technical woman working on a startup idea, this information seemed useful to me: a possible glimpse into my personal future.
I think it may have more to do with the latter. A quick Google Scholar query of "why is computer programming dominated by males" provides some interesting results, including an abstract with the key finding that "men had more confidence in using computers than did women even when statistically controlling quantitative ability. In fact, female CS majors had less computer confidence than did male non-majors." (Beyer et al., 2003)
i believe tolerance and respect require concerted attention to counteract cultural ignorance and bias. treating differences with equality is not about not caring or not thinking about differences--many racial and gender prejudices result from not questioning or investigating preconceived notions. it takes work to sufficiently care about ones interactions with others and thus conscientiously react to and surmount differences.
it may be that you know as many or more female hackers, founders and entrepreneurs as male, and that your cultural norm is completely surprised by the notion of gender inequality in this context. in that case: cool. your experience validates the irrelevance of gender in these roles.
or it may be that you are ignorant to inequality. whenever i want to blurt out "who cares" or "why do people care", i try to stop and think about other people's perspectives. i guess the short answer is: equality is often useful.
I like Erlang fine, I just don't think it has anything to do with gender. And if I'd seen Erlang articles in recent days instead of articles about gender, I would find this poll rather odd myself. As it stands, I think the question is apropos.
We should care. We like to believe that all our differences do not make a difference, but fortunately and unfortunately they do.
For example if YC funds more startups with women you will not see the impact in the next 2 years. But 10 years from now those veterans would have encouraged several younger women to get into technical fields. Everyone will benefit from that.
I have had the chance to meet and work with a couple of female programmers, and although I am not a coder I was most certainly thrilled.
YC may consider diversity in their portfolio a positive trait. They may also consider the PR value of female startup founders (which is worth considering...it is quite high). And, they may consider their reputation as a forward-thinking, out on the edge of progress, sort of investor. Maybe it's a trend, and maybe they want to be ahead of it.
I don't think one needs to look at what good could come of it in the future to consider investing in female-led startups a good idea.
Well, quite frankly, I'm glad YC look at other criteria. Positive discrimination is a terrible thing. Imagine being a woman funded by an investor making an effort to focus on female-led startups. The world knows you were only funded because of your chromosomes. Self-esteem is a big enough problem as it is!
I think a venture firm that privileges woman ran startups with a focus on women-markets would be great. After all who does most of the spending in a household? Remember that web apps represents only a tiny tiny fraction of consumers' expenditures.
If we're playing the household card, then there are plenty of women-led kitchen table startups that will never see, nor need, venture funding. There are also plenty of women-led startups that don't focus on female markets, and male-led startups that do, inadvertently or otherwise (time for a quote about how most car purchases are down to the woman in the household).
What exactly is "forward thinking" about funding startups based on biological traits of the founders instead of their skills, aptitudes, and achievements?
Simultaneous optimization of multiple functions is impossible in the general case. But if there is one function being optimized, then there is some trade-off being made, so that--to some extent--one parameter is being selected for instead of another.
pg has said they fund as many great groups as they can find. So, if that's correct, then giving an additional point or two for being female founded, while assuming some base level of competence and dedication, is not "instead of" it is "in addition to".
Note that we're all speculating here. We don't actually really know anything about YC and female founded companies (except that the number of female founders amongst YC companies is strikingly low, but is representative of the applicant pool).
Because PG has finite time, there are two fundamental possibilities at work here:
(1) PG can find more "great groups" that he would want to fund than he has the time to work with. This, I expect, is almost certainly the case; PG then has to determine which amongst these groups of founders with whom to work. The question becomes, what function of the group of founders selected should be maximized. If you "give an additional point or two for being female founded" then the function you are optimizing is not just a matter of competence and dedication--either you aren't actually altering your behavior towards female founded groups, or there is some sufficiently pathological example of groups being very similar in which there is a female founded group that is slightly less competent/dedicated than a male only group competing over one remaining slot, and the slot is given to the female group. If no such example ever occurs in practice, then there is no point in giving female founded groups "an additional point or two" since it never altered the decision.
(2) PG has more time available than "great groups" with whom to work. In this case, taking on additional groups simply because they are female-founded, in addition to being discriminatory, seems likely to be a net negative, assuming the original meaning to the term "great groups" was set to be at whatever level is necessary to have positive expected outcome.
Looking at this dichotomy another way, we can think of PG's time as a market resource. In the first case, it is scarce, and should sell to the highest bidders (those with highest expected value, measured as utility for PG). In the second case, it is abundant, and every consumer gets what they need/want. In reality, it is probably either directly scarce (falling into the first category), or made scarce by the presence of other high utility alternatives (e.g., spending time with his family).
In summary, there is no "in addition to" as far as criteria with respect to which you want to maximize. There can only be "instead of", or a (possibly zero) conversion factor.
As a side note, in another comment on this page (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=591537) PG noted that they don't ask the gender of founders when considering funding.
OK. So, what's actually far more interesting to me is how much attention my idle ramblings about why a company like YC might (not that they do) encourage or even prefer female founders have gotten. I didn't realize reverse discrimination was such a sensitive area amongst the technical elite, particularly since males have had a dramatic lead for as long as technology has existed (a more pronounced lead than in pretty much any other field in modern first world economies).
Part of what makes this sort of thing a touchy subject for so many people is that, in the event of this sort of process being practiced (1) men who aren't selected feel angry about the nature of the process instead of feeling that they need to improve themselves to improve their chances for the next round, and (2) women who are selected are sometimes (often?) demeaned by men as needing additional assistance in order to make the cut (this is contrary to a common view I have encountered; that this sort of thing is fundamentally victimless). People subject to either of these circumstances (or close to such a person) are likely to have strong feelings on this subject.
As to why I personally supplied such a detailed response; it's mostly an opportunity to procrastinate by trying to change some minds regarding an issue important to me instead of working on something I've been avoiding.
As to why I personally supplied such a detailed response; it's mostly an opportunity to procrastinate by trying to change some minds regarding an issue important to me instead of working on something I've been avoiding.
We're all more alike than we are different around here, aren't we? I've been working on, and not enjoying, some PHP code all weekend long. Procrastination is the mother of silly arguments on the Internets, it seems.
YC should fund startups that have a chance to succeed. If women entrepreneurs come in with unique perspectives to target the under-served community of women on the intertubes, then great. Otherwise, it is a waste of money that doesn't benefit YC which hurts other startups and ultimately the startup community as a whole.
I take it you don't. Is it because you think there are no meaningful differences across sexes? Really, give this a shot: http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm.
"Is it because you think there are no meaningful differences across sexes?"
I agree with the GP, but not with this comment. Obviously there are meaningful differences between the sexes. But there are other ways to group people, as well:
- Gender (already covered, here)
- Age
- Nationality
- Ethnicity
- Sexual Orientation
- Political Orientation
- Religious Orientation
- Number of Older Siblings
- ... the list goes on
All of these factors are significant in the sense that they help to establish our unique identity, and there are meaningful differences in each category. Should we poll for each factor? At some point..... well, I can't say it more succinctly than the GP:
Certainly, we've had polls for some of these (I remember age specifically) in the past, and we'll probably have them again as the user base changes. With the context of an increasing number of gender-related articles, I think this information is valuable.
I agree that if the data can't be applied, then we're satisfying only trivial curiosities. Like if I asked about your gender - who cares? But this data can be applied. Here we're testing the hypothesis of the above-linked essay. It's a poor test, though I think that HN users are better behaved in voluntary online polls.
More importantly, it lets us know how our community stacks up. Genetically-encoded risk-taking aside, many of us want to see equal proportions in this poll, or would like to imagine that this poll would come out more equal than not. Yet it currently comes out 20:1, and this matters to me. (As a consequence, I'm probably going to make an effort to recommend this site or its discussions more often to women that I know.)
I said that I would recommend this site, not that I would attempt genetic modification. The linked article is descriptive, not normative. If women might, due to genetic differences, be missing out on a lot of great information because of a 'male' or risky (startups?) or socially transient (discussions only last one day?) climate, then we should try to remedy this.
Sure, I'd definitely recommend it to women who are into hacking, but the number of women who are into hacking is low. Success rate is probably going to be similar to women recommending a site about fashion to male friends.
I agree with making sure people are aware what they can do, what is possible etc, but trying to make everything a 50/50 split between sexes is an unachievable waste of time IMHO. Lets embrace and celebrate the differences between the sexes rather than pretend they don't exist.
Why must it be? Who is to say not having equal proportions of men and women in engineering is bad? If women choose not to go that way and instead choose what they like, who are we to judge that it is wrong? Being ourselves is more important than any artificially imposed equality. And recognizing and celebrating this uniqueness is in no way a 'bad idea'.
And attentiveness to fashion is not merely a 'cultural difference'; in every culture in the world, the female gender on an average gives more importance to such concerns than the male. Cultural differences do exist, but they form only the base level; the females deviate positively from it more than the males.
>> "Attentiveness to fashion is a cultural difference, not a gender difference."
In my experience, and on average, to boys, what they wear doesn't matter one bit. It's irrelevant. Girls like nice colors etc from the earliest ages - before any culture can play any part.
There are more gay men in the fashion industry than straight men. Do you think that's also a 'cultural difference' rather than something biological? Is being gay a 'cultural difference'?
>> Girls like nice colors etc from the earliest ages - before any culture can play any part.
Are you basing that on research or personal experience? From what I gather we like to give babies that are female different stuff than males, so pretty much right of the away babies are being influenced culturally. Or has there been a controlled test done that I'm unaware of?
>> Is being gay a 'cultural difference'?
Is it with any certainty possible to answer that question, as far as I know, we have no idea. Or have I missed something?
I'm sorry if it seems like I'm nitpicking, I'm genuinely curious.
