Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

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There are a lot of hidden prejudices both in this article and in the entire discussion around women in technology and the startup world.

I have a startup. I love startups. So should everybody else love startups too? Not at all.

A more direct question: roughly 50% of people are females. Should 50% of startup founders be female?

I don't think so, but I find it difficult to continue the conversation past this conclusion. The reason I don't think so is that I know that my judgment on how cool startups are doesn't extend to everybody else. I intuitively feel that being a founder involves complex traits and personal decisions that I cannot fathom. To simply say the ratio should be the same sounds wrong. It sounds like the same kind of mental error that makes me want to believe everybody should be in startups. Likewise to say that women should not be in startups sounds wrong also. Or to say startups should have more women in them than men. Each possible conclusion is undefendable.

You could try to attack this problem by taking it the level of personal choices: assuming women are rational actors making informed choices, why do so many choose not to be in startups? Is it the environment? The difference in the sexes? Chemicals in the water?

Of course, that doesn't work, because once you try to start making general assumptions about the behaviors of millions of people you're going to start stereotyping and using guesswork. It can't be helped.

So at the end of the day I understand that other people don't want to be founders. And I accept that. Heck, for all I know the people who are not in startups are the smart ones, and I'm the guy who has something wrong with him. Not only am I not sure how to reasonably investigate this issue, I'm not even sure I have my head screwed on well enough to know what a good or bad outcome is.

I think it's one of those things that you can endlessly argue about, and I choose not to. If folks want to discuss why Person A made her personal decision not to stay in the startup or tech world, we could do that. But when generalizing to all women, and to all startups, in my opinion it's just too much abstraction to be a tractable issue.

In this discussion startup = hi-tech/software/web. But if you step back and think profit making business, women are not under-represented. An article linked to in the original post says that 44% of all business are partially ow wholly women owned. If you include part-time profit making business, I suspect most are women owned.

Some anecdotal data points from my family: my ex runs a daycare that provides her a nice income. My older daughter works for her but has a side business making tutus for babies, which is an absurdly small business. She says it gives her something to do while she watches television and pays for her Starbucks addiction. However, it is real. She had to learn all about selling internationally. My sister is a traveling consultant in theater costume design. My partner is an artist.

I have done several startups. My son started a hardware startup and his share of the exit was in the high 6 figures. Our startups were hi-tech, but overall we were outnumbered by the women.

Agreed. In fact I would argue two things at least historicaly in the US:

1) Men tend to take risks more than women.

2) Women tend to focus more on family than men.

Additionally, I would add, that it's likely that the bulk of businesses owned at any given time in history, counting part-time businesses have always been owned by women. Indeed the great influx of women into the work force in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had to do with industrial processes undermining their businesses!

However, the fact that the patterns of behavior aren't random does clue you in that there are systemic factors involved, which can be analyzed and tested. Yes, every person makes an individual decision based on countless variables but that doesn't mean you can't make reliable conclusions based on the aggregate.

This is like the reverse of the probabalistic fallacy that the 100th coin flip will be affected by the fact that the previous 99 flips landed on heads. If you know for sure that your coin isn't biased the probabilities on the 100th flip is 50/50 but gosh, at that point wouldn't you question your assumptions and take a closer look at the coin?

"However, the fact that the patterns of behavior aren't random does clue you in that there are systemic factors involved, which can be analyzed and tested."

That's exactly what I was going to say.

With regards to the article, everyone can bash Penelope Trunk all they want, but the fact remains that she's right. As an entrepreneur and adviser, she is correct.

People are always complaining about the lack of women in certain fields or the gender imbalance in science and technology--there are even organizations like "Change the Ratio" trying to affect that imbalance. But here's a question no one ever asks: is it in everyone's best interest to have more women in science, technology and business?

It drives me insane when people say that the whole child-rearing argument is sexist. No, it isn't sexist. That's one major thing that separates women from men--the former have the ability to carry and give birth to children. Many women sometimes find the urge to suddenly have children, and you can't predict when or if it will happen.

When it comes to matters of the sexes, you can't ignore biology.

I'm sure biology has something to do with it but that's another simplistic assumption that hasn't been adequately tested (and is convenient for some to believe), and there's a lot of evidence that immense societal pressures push women to do the majority of the work around the home (and that basically tell them that's their responsibility.)

There are other, more equitable ways to sustain civilization besides having the women stay at home and rear children but it would require sacrifice from men that honestly, most seem unwilling to make. Or worse, men aren't cognizant of the full extent of the sacrifices that their partners are making for the family.

I say this as a gay woman that has dated men and am finding negotiating responsibilities and compromises in a same-sex relationship eye-opening to the mostly hidden inequalities in the ways hetero partners relate to each other and divvy up responsibilities. It's the little things that add up -- the assumption about who will pick up the kids from day care [[if a child is in daycare, the parents are presumably both working.. but why are there so many more moms picking up the kids than dads?]], who does the grocery shopping that week, who does the laundry... the default is too often the woman. There might be men on HN that read this that are very good to their partners and try very hard to create an equitable household and feel that this comment is unfair or doesn't reflect their own home situations. That may be true, but the chances are that if you took a very careful accounting over time and paid attention, you'd see a pattern that skews toward particular heteronormative conventions. It's just incredibly hard not to let our society's very rigid and prevalent gender roles creep into our relationships. I have a friend who considers himself a feminist and he is the one that is more vocal and careful about sharing chores than his wife. Why does that seem so noteworthy and laudable? If things were really fair, shouldn't that be more normal?

And I say this understanding that it's not all gravy for men either -- the expectations that are associated with being a man are often unfair and also cause unhappiness. Honestly, though, when it comes to things like resource and opportunity distribution, these differences tend to favor men (for instance, there's evidence that gender roles and expectations play a big part in the salary disparity between men and women.) I'd say that's a major problem. The article's author says that many women would rather work part-time and raise children and find that a fulfilling life. That's wonderful. The question I'd like to raise is, if they had the opportunity to work full-time or even do something demanding like a startup and still feel like they had the time and energy to raise their children well (perhaps because their husbands are willing to work part-time and pitch in more toward raising the kids), would they rather take that option? And if so, what can we do as a society to help make that a reality?

You know men have children too. The difference is more that fewer men are completely dedicated to being a father than mothers dedicated to being mothers. This is a significant societal issue where many men don't take responsibility for raising their children.

If it was equal, as the article highlights, you would see an even percentage of men taking time off work to raise their children. Giving birth is a very small part of being a parent.

Expecting women to serve as brood mares sounds pretty sexist to me, no matter how you want to dress it up.

Troll. He didn't say women should be brood mares. He did point out that biological differences aren't just physical. They extend to include the desire to have children.

This is the most reasonable and fair analysis that I've seen of this issue on HN. What have we learned, after how many threads with 100+ comments have there been on this subject now? Everyone just seems to chime in with their one-bit comment, based on some generalization based on anecdote. Discussion would be a lot more direct and on-point if each thread about the intersection of startups and gender politics had this comment near the top.

Science is hard, but don't lose heart: in due time we WILL know.

A reasonable and level-headed response. Thank you.

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