Going against the law that all news comments are awful, the top commenter wrote:
"How is it a problem? If it is a problem, how did it happen? What do you propose we do to fix it?
Random statistics accompanied by weak implications does not equal good journalism."
In regards to 'how is it a problem?', it's hard to tell if it is or isn't, since in Silicon Valley, it has always been skewed towards these demographics, and as such, we don't really have anything to compare to. I have a hunch though that a lack of diversity in an environment so dependent on innovation will almost always be a net negative.
Is lack of diversity in our industry a problem? I share a strong hunch that it is. That's enough for me to want to talk about it.
So bring on the correlations, the symptoms, the graphs without solutions. Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.
Sure, but what was the prior distribution of teams seeking funding? If only 1% of the teams seeking funding were all-female then it could show a bias in favor of women. I doubt that is actually the case, but just showing a skewed distribution doesn't prove sexism. I could make a similar case to the race issue. I don't know how to interpret the last graph, but it does appear to show some genuine bad news for African Americans. How to fix it? I don't know. Infographics might not be helping a whole lot, but if there is a serious issue that they are raising awareness towards then it's a good thing. If they're crying wolf for a non-issue then it's a bad thing. I suppose it's up to the individual to decide for themselves, but I hope they are more thorough in researching than just looking at three infographics.
Why does the NHL only have 5% black players while the NBA only has 17% white players? Is it that white people don't have the necessary height or that black people don't have the required thigh muscles? No, obviously not. There are just cultural differences that have lead to certain groups being over/under represented in different areas of the economy. It doesn't require there to be a grand conspiracy to keep non-whites out of SV! I don't even thing you have to go to a Larry Summers type of explanation.
What's the solution? Should we force the NBA to have at most 10% black players (and the NHL to have at least 10%) to be more representative of the population? Should we force investors to back startups that have female founders? Should we force ourselves to stop listening to Miles Davis? We're starting to realize that affirmative action doesn't work and actually creates negative outcomes (see work by Thomas Sowell for example).
Yes it obviously shows that there's a difference in the allure of SV to different groups of people.. but you could also cut the data and see that SV funding disproportionately goes to people with STEM degrees (the poor liberal arts folks!) At most this should be categorized as interesting.
Also the final stat in the article "women make 49 cents for every dollar men make in Silicon Valley" is ridiculous. Obviously, as we've learned, the composition of jobs taken by men and women in SV is different. That's going to be represented in average salaries.
Motherjones as usual seems to be trying to create a controversy where one doesn't exist.. or at least way, way, way downstream from where it truly does exist.
1) there is a point at which a distribution skews so much one way, that it at least warrants discussion.
2) By "different fields", I assume you refer to technically driven fields. Though I do agree that some fields probably do sway towards one gender more than the other, there is a wealth of research that indicates that the astonishing lack of females in almost all technical related fields is probably due to a number of factors that can be accounted for and adjusted to. [1]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing#Factors_cont...
First off, startups don't represent all of Silicon Valley so to say this is a valley problem by using startup-only-centric data is disingenuous at best.
I'll admit that I find the lack of diversity amongst founding teams problematic but this article doesn't raise any kind of awareness to the source of the diversity breakdown. The author just jumps to a broad, unsupported conclusion so quickly that it undermines any actual rational, legitimate discussion of the topic.
This would be more relevant if it were comparing the percentage of white founders who got funding versus the percentage of black/hispanic/female founders who got funding.
Hold on. This is the sort of racial pleading that we need to get away from as a society. While racism is still alive and well in places in america, i find it hard to believe that colleges, companies, and dreams have somehow left minorities by the wayside.
Children often follow their parents in profession. Let's be clear that a lack of minority engineers does NOT indicate engineering is closed in any way shape or form to minorities.
If racial bias has anything to do with blacks/hispanics fairing worse, then it begs the question why racial bias has changed as 50-60 years ago asians, blacks, hispanics were biased against pretty much the same, isn't it? If it is the case, can studying of such a racial bias evolution show the ways to the improvement of the situation with blacks/hispanics?
So I guess the real lack is black/hispanic founders.
Why?
We've got some good sexism and machoism right off the top, already know it's going to be a good one. That's where we get to the implication that women can't be coders and are all inferior in all tech roles to men.
Congratulations asshole and those upvoting him. You're the worthless pieces of shit that don't know what "privilege" means and when you hear it, all you can think is "what about us poor white straight men". People like y'all were born without the proper ability to empathize and fall into the same category as the Republicans that hate gays until their son comes out and then magically now they "get it". Jesus.