5 ms·

Damn, you started out strong and then things fell apart a bit. That's what I get for voting without reading all the way through. This whole article smacks of t

Damn, you started out strong and then things fell apart a bit. That's what I get for voting without reading all the way through. This whole article smacks of the idea that there is something fundamentally different about men and women and their capabilities at different points in their adult life Men and women are fundamentally different, and research from a wide variety of fields continues to support that. I find it ridiculous to believe that even though evolution has so completely obviously shaped our bodies differently, the male and female minds are the same, despite mounds of evidence to the contrary, both scientific and experiential. A researcher would be mocked for making the claim that men and women have the exact same body, but since the mind is murkier and not as well understood, it's fine to claim that they're the same. This seems analogous to religious claims of miraculous healing, which always seem to affect something like cancer or headaches or something we can't see or touch. They never restore lost limbs or raise the dead. It's always in intangible areas we don't fully understand, and it seems for now that the belief that men and women aren't fundamentally different in their mental and psychological processes can enjoy the same safe haven. Sorry for the rant, but it's always just struck me as the perfect example of starting with your conclusion (driven by political correctness), and then trying in vain to make the evidence fit the theory. I don't see how any honest researcher could just follow the evidence and determine that men and women are "fundamentally" the same. Now, I agree that the eradication of gender inequality (in the sense of value) as a social norm is a worthy goal, but starting from the foundation of falsehood is the wrong approach.

dieterrams 16y ago
You've got this wrong. kaens did not claim that men and women are "fundamentally the same". He's saying, don't assume there are fundamental (crippling) differences. All you've pointed out is that there are indeed fundamental differences of some kinds, but not of the sort kaens was talking about. The inconclusiveness you raise supports his point. Edit: Wow. Downvoted. What on earth for?
- adw 16y ago
  Amen. There are, obviously, some population differences between men and women; for instance, on average men are taller. Blame the hormones. But people confuse mean and variance, and this is one case where instinctive ignorance of probability is tantamount to sexism. In fact, it's plain rude to do that to people. Okay, an example. Let's say that on average, men are better fighters than women - whether that's societal or innate is neither here nor there, but take it as generally true. It doesn't change the fact that my sister could kick my arse. If I trusted in statistics there, I'd have been wearing my teeth as a necklace by the age of ten. So even if the means are different, the variances are so high that you can't know what the person in front of you, male or female, is good at. What that means is that if you go into something like this with preconceptions based on gender, then you are being unfair to the person in front of you - male or female - by not judging them on who they are and what they can do. And if you fail to allow for the gender roles that society forces people into, then you're closing yourself off to talent. And if you close yourself off to talent you can use, your company deserves to fail. I don't want to be that guy or that company. (This is pretty personal for me, actually; my mother taught me BASIC when I was seven or so. She's a much better programmer than I am.)
  - Super_Jambo 16y ago
    Which is an excellent argument not to discriminate against an individual. However, what the OP and this thread are discussing is ways of 'fixing' a low percentage of women in startups. Which could be caused by either women on average having a worse skill set for startups or on average having less of a desire to take risky economic decisions. If these are the causes then there isn't likely to be any way to 'fix' it.
    - kaens 16y ago
      I'm fairly certain that the percentage of women in startups is much lower than can be explained by purely biological means.
      - aidenn0 16y ago
        I bet it can be completely explained by a combination of biological and environmental causes. Just because the claim is made that there are biological differences between men and women does not mean that the disparity of women vs. men in startups is entirely (or even mostly) due to biological causes. If you want more women in startups then you have to either change women or change startups.
- kaens 16y ago
  Yes, that's a much more succinct way of putting it.
- Alex3917 16y ago
  "Don't assume there are fundamental (crippling) differences." I think you should assume fundamental differences, because that's what both the research and experience show. Certainly more can be done for younger women, but if you don't think that businesswomen in their 40s are on average more capable than their younger counterparts then you probably haven't spent much time around businesswomen. (For reference, I took a class on women and entrepreneurship so I've been exposed to a lot of 20ish female entrepreneurs and a lot of 40ish businesswomen.)
  - kaens 16y ago
    Does the research and experience show that businessmen in their 40s are on average more capable than their younger counterparts? I bet it does!
    - Alex3917 16y ago
      You can make fun of me if you want, but the fact is that there are many, many differences between men and women. We don't really know what those differences mean in the real world, but we shouldn't pretend they don't exist any more than we should assume that they're 'crippling'. As for which ones would prevent a woman from being successful as an entrepreneur in her 20s, it's impossible to say because success as an entrepreneur is multiplicative. There are dozens of factors, and only one has to be zero or near zero to make the whole thing fall apart. But the very fact that women are so different from men makes this theory quite plausible, albeit completely speculative.
      - kaens 16y ago
        I'm not making fun of you. I'm saying that women being more successful entrepreneurs in their 40s may not be tied to them being women, but to them being twice as old and experienced as a 20 year old
Tichy 16y ago
Male and female bodies are not completely different. I suspect for example knees work similarly across genders. So it does not automatically follow that the brains are different. Sure, there will be some different things. For example female brains probably have learned to not bump into things with their chests, whereas male brains have learned not to bump into things with their groins.
- klutometis 16y ago
  I find this sort of reductio ad pundenda dehumanizing: it betrays a pathological contempt for subtlety; and an autistic insensibility to humanity.
kaens 16y ago
Could you point me at some studies that suggest that there are intrinsic things about men and women that would make it more likely for women to not be capable of participating in a startup in their 20s? I don't claim that the male and female mind are the same. I suspect that the differences between them have more to do with culture and pattern-recognition than biology, even though there is some overlap there. I'm also not anything more than an armchair neuroscientist, so if you'd like to point me at this "mounds of evidence to the contrary", please go ahead. (Edit: This sentence sounds a bit more snarky than I intended it to) As far as I know, we're still in a big grey area as far as how much evidence points to the majority of someone's mind being nature, and how much nurture, and how those interact. I'm working with the assumption that people's mindsets are almost entirely a blank slate at (or a bit before) birth, and that the vast majority of what they think about the world and all the stuff that comes with that is created via pattern-recognition over the course of their lives, with patterns they're exposed to frequently when young being more strongly ingrained than others. Am I wrong here? That is, I'm saying that I think that if you took a baby female, and raised it in an environment where the only exposure she had to what a "female" was and how a "female" differs from a "male" were manufactured (reversed even), that she would have those ideas about being a female instead of the ones in common usage. My conclusion isn't driven by political correctness either, although I can see how you would make that assumption. I don't give a shit about political correctness.
- Super_Jambo 16y ago
  Startups are very risky, men are more predisposed to risk: http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/ep062942.pdf http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/ep062942.pdf
  - kaens 16y ago
    I do not doubt that men are more predisposed to risk, or that testosterone does not play a role in the decision-making process of humans, but I do not think that these studies show enough of a discrepancy to account for the low amount of women involved in startups, or the low ratio of women in tech fields in general. I would not be surprised if there were a somewhat higher percentage of males versus females in tech. As it is, that is not the case, unless you're using very large values of "somewhat". (It's getting better though, and seems to be getting better as the idea that programming or tech stuff "isn't for girls" becomes less common).
oldgregg 16y ago
Thank you. If you really want to attract scorn the question could extend to race as well. Too often we confuse equality with uniformity. Woman tend to be worse at math, black guys tend to be great at basketball. Who cares? We're all people. Political correctness puts a thin outward veneer over real the issue -- that deep inside of us we all want to be better than the people around us-- race, gender, physical disabilities and class are only the most obvious ways that we all play the game.
- kaens 16y ago
  I think that there are many things done in the same vein with the intent of alleviating minority's struggles due to racism that do more to promote the concept of racism than not. I'm not confusing equality with uniformity, although it's hard to express why that is clearly. deep inside of us we all want to be better than the people around us I disagree with this, particularly strongly with the absoluteness of it, and I think that it's an attitude that is mostly propagated by a weird bunch of cultural catch-22s.

dieterrams 16y ago

You've got this wrong. kaens did not claim that men and women are "fundamentally the same". He's saying, don't assume there are fundamental (crippling) differences. All you've pointed out is that there are indeed fundamental differences of some kinds, but not of the sort kaens was talking about. The inconclusiveness you raise supports his point. Edit: Wow. Downvoted. What on earth for?

adw 16y ago
Amen. There are, obviously, some population differences between men and women; for instance, on average men are taller. Blame the hormones. But people confuse mean and variance, and this is one case where instinctive ignorance of probability is tantamount to sexism. In fact, it's plain rude to do that to people. Okay, an example. Let's say that on average, men are better fighters than women - whether that's societal or innate is neither here nor there, but take it as generally true. It doesn't change the fact that my sister could kick my arse. If I trusted in statistics there, I'd have been wearing my teeth as a necklace by the age of ten. So even if the means are different, the variances are so high that you can't know what the person in front of you, male or female, is good at. What that means is that if you go into something like this with preconceptions based on gender, then you are being unfair to the person in front of you - male or female - by not judging them on who they are and what they can do. And if you fail to allow for the gender roles that society forces people into, then you're closing yourself off to talent. And if you close yourself off to talent you can use, your company deserves to fail. I don't want to be that guy or that company. (This is pretty personal for me, actually; my mother taught me BASIC when I was seven or so. She's a much better programmer than I am.)
- Super_Jambo 16y ago
  Which is an excellent argument not to discriminate against an individual. However, what the OP and this thread are discussing is ways of 'fixing' a low percentage of women in startups. Which could be caused by either women on average having a worse skill set for startups or on average having less of a desire to take risky economic decisions. If these are the causes then there isn't likely to be any way to 'fix' it.
  - kaens 16y ago
    I'm fairly certain that the percentage of women in startups is much lower than can be explained by purely biological means.
    - aidenn0 16y ago
      I bet it can be completely explained by a combination of biological and environmental causes. Just because the claim is made that there are biological differences between men and women does not mean that the disparity of women vs. men in startups is entirely (or even mostly) due to biological causes. If you want more women in startups then you have to either change women or change startups.
kaens 16y ago
Yes, that's a much more succinct way of putting it.
Alex3917 16y ago
"Don't assume there are fundamental (crippling) differences." I think you should assume fundamental differences, because that's what both the research and experience show. Certainly more can be done for younger women, but if you don't think that businesswomen in their 40s are on average more capable than their younger counterparts then you probably haven't spent much time around businesswomen. (For reference, I took a class on women and entrepreneurship so I've been exposed to a lot of 20ish female entrepreneurs and a lot of 40ish businesswomen.)
- kaens 16y ago
  Does the research and experience show that businessmen in their 40s are on average more capable than their younger counterparts? I bet it does!
  - Alex3917 16y ago
    You can make fun of me if you want, but the fact is that there are many, many differences between men and women. We don't really know what those differences mean in the real world, but we shouldn't pretend they don't exist any more than we should assume that they're 'crippling'. As for which ones would prevent a woman from being successful as an entrepreneur in her 20s, it's impossible to say because success as an entrepreneur is multiplicative. There are dozens of factors, and only one has to be zero or near zero to make the whole thing fall apart. But the very fact that women are so different from men makes this theory quite plausible, albeit completely speculative.
    - kaens 16y ago
      I'm not making fun of you. I'm saying that women being more successful entrepreneurs in their 40s may not be tied to them being women, but to them being twice as old and experienced as a 20 year old

Tichy 16y ago

Male and female bodies are not completely different. I suspect for example knees work similarly across genders. So it does not automatically follow that the brains are different. Sure, there will be some different things. For example female brains probably have learned to not bump into things with their chests, whereas male brains have learned not to bump into things with their groins.

klutometis 16y ago
I find this sort of reductio ad pundenda dehumanizing: it betrays a pathological contempt for subtlety; and an autistic insensibility to humanity.

kaens 16y ago

Could you point me at some studies that suggest that there are intrinsic things about men and women that would make it more likely for women to not be capable of participating in a startup in their 20s? I don't claim that the male and female mind are the same. I suspect that the differences between them have more to do with culture and pattern-recognition than biology, even though there is some overlap there. I'm also not anything more than an armchair neuroscientist, so if you'd like to point me at this "mounds of evidence to the contrary", please go ahead. (Edit: This sentence sounds a bit more snarky than I intended it to) As far as I know, we're still in a big grey area as far as how much evidence points to the majority of someone's mind being nature, and how much nurture, and how those interact. I'm working with the assumption that people's mindsets are almost entirely a blank slate at (or a bit before) birth, and that the vast majority of what they think about the world and all the stuff that comes with that is created via pattern-recognition over the course of their lives, with patterns they're exposed to frequently when young being more strongly ingrained than others. Am I wrong here? That is, I'm saying that I think that if you took a baby female, and raised it in an environment where the only exposure she had to what a "female" was and how a "female" differs from a "male" were manufactured (reversed even), that she would have those ideas about being a female instead of the ones in common usage. My conclusion isn't driven by political correctness either, although I can see how you would make that assumption. I don't give a shit about political correctness.

Super_Jambo 16y ago
Startups are very risky, men are more predisposed to risk: http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/ep062942.pdf http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/ep062942.pdf
- kaens 16y ago
  I do not doubt that men are more predisposed to risk, or that testosterone does not play a role in the decision-making process of humans, but I do not think that these studies show enough of a discrepancy to account for the low amount of women involved in startups, or the low ratio of women in tech fields in general. I would not be surprised if there were a somewhat higher percentage of males versus females in tech. As it is, that is not the case, unless you're using very large values of "somewhat". (It's getting better though, and seems to be getting better as the idea that programming or tech stuff "isn't for girls" becomes less common).

oldgregg 16y ago

Thank you. If you really want to attract scorn the question could extend to race as well. Too often we confuse equality with uniformity. Woman tend to be worse at math, black guys tend to be great at basketball. Who cares? We're all people. Political correctness puts a thin outward veneer over real the issue -- that deep inside of us we all want to be better than the people around us-- race, gender, physical disabilities and class are only the most obvious ways that we all play the game.

kaens 16y ago
I think that there are many things done in the same vein with the intent of alleviating minority's struggles due to racism that do more to promote the concept of racism than not. I'm not confusing equality with uniformity, although it's hard to express why that is clearly. deep inside of us we all want to be better than the people around us I disagree with this, particularly strongly with the absoluteness of it, and I think that it's an attitude that is mostly propagated by a weird bunch of cultural catch-22s.