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This doesn’t sound very inclusive. If inclusivity is so important, why do the loudest advocates for it eschew it whenever they get the chance to turn the table

This doesn’t sound very inclusive. If inclusivity is so important, why do the loudest advocates for it eschew it whenever they get the chance to turn the tables?

pmiller2 8y ago
Maybe because the people excluding them don't do anything about it. If you're not getting a slice of the pie because other people are eating it and not inviting you, it's reasonable to make your own damn pie.
- gtrfreewifi 8y ago
  Then why not just be honest about it? You can't simultaneously be for equality and favoring one gender. It doesn't matter how good you are at twisting words, in reality you just can't.
  - pmiller2 8y ago
    Then what’s your solution? What would you do in their place if you were a female founder looking for funding? It already favors one gender when 97.8% of the funding goes to one gender. This is an equalizing measure.
    - ve55 8y ago
      Applying equalizing measures post-hoc without adjusting for baseline rates or confounders cannot be done in a reasonably fair way. Not only is the baseline rate of women seeking funding much lower, but there may be many other variables that influence the capital distribution, such as women asking for less funding than men do even when they do seek it. You can't "remove the bias" from situations without knowing what a fair distribution would look like to begin with (If you think 50% of the capital should go to women, I'll wish you good luck in either funding them an order of magnitude more than men, or funding them equally and somehow getting an order of magnitude more women interested in becoming founders).
      - pmiller2 8y ago
        The percentage of startups with female founders is about 17%[0]. Do you think having 17% of the companies only getting 2.2% of the funding is fair? Would you be interested in being a founder with those odds? Clearly, the existence of programs like those described in the article, which were started by women, indicates that women don’t think they’re getting a fair shake. IMO, a fair distribution would be approximately equal to the ratio of companies with female founders. What’s your solution, if any look like? [0]: https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/15/the-portion-of-vc-backed-startups-founded-by-women-stays-stubbornly-stagnant/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/15/the-portion-of-vc-backed-s...
        pravda 8y ago
        I suppose we will have to look at the future returns of VCs like "iFundWomen". If they get higher returns then "sexist" old-school male dominated VCs, then we will have some strong evidence that "sexism" is getting in the way of big returns.
        pmiller2 8y ago
        Why do the returns have to be higher, and not just comparable?
        pravda 8y ago
        A fair point! I am not sure what the returns are for VCs, with either male or female founders. Certainly 'goop.com' has done very well. Theranos, not so well. It would seem to me that if women founders are being actively discriminated against, investing in women founders should produce returns that are higher than normal. Of those 2.2% of female-led startups, what has been the return to investors? I have no idea if anyone has ever looked into that.
        pmiller2 8y ago
        Assuming that women are just as good at founding companies as men, I don't see how funding women at higher rates should produce higher than normal returns. Higher returns would imply that VCs are able to tell the best female-lead companies apart from the rest (and apart from the more marginal male-lead companies). It's not clear to me that many, if any of them can do that, given the number of successful companies that have been passed on by multiple VCs before finding their first investment.
olliej 8y ago
This is a bastion comment for biased communities: We're allowed to be biased, but the people who call us out on this aren't allow to have a bias to compensate for our existence. This is no different from religious bigots who claim it violates their "religious freedom" to remove their "right" to discriminate.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

This doesn’t sound very inclusive. If inclusivity is so important, why do the loudest advocates for it eschew it whenever they get the chance to turn the tables?

pmiller2 8y ago

Maybe because the people excluding them don't do anything about it. If you're not getting a slice of the pie because other people are eating it and not inviting you, it's reasonable to make your own damn pie.

gtrfreewifi 8y ago
Then why not just be honest about it? You can't simultaneously be for equality and favoring one gender. It doesn't matter how good you are at twisting words, in reality you just can't.
- pmiller2 8y ago
  Then what’s your solution? What would you do in their place if you were a female founder looking for funding? It already favors one gender when 97.8% of the funding goes to one gender. This is an equalizing measure.
  - ve55 8y ago
    Applying equalizing measures post-hoc without adjusting for baseline rates or confounders cannot be done in a reasonably fair way. Not only is the baseline rate of women seeking funding much lower, but there may be many other variables that influence the capital distribution, such as women asking for less funding than men do even when they do seek it. You can't "remove the bias" from situations without knowing what a fair distribution would look like to begin with (If you think 50% of the capital should go to women, I'll wish you good luck in either funding them an order of magnitude more than men, or funding them equally and somehow getting an order of magnitude more women interested in becoming founders).
    - pmiller2 8y ago
      The percentage of startups with female founders is about 17%[0]. Do you think having 17% of the companies only getting 2.2% of the funding is fair? Would you be interested in being a founder with those odds? Clearly, the existence of programs like those described in the article, which were started by women, indicates that women don’t think they’re getting a fair shake. IMO, a fair distribution would be approximately equal to the ratio of companies with female founders. What’s your solution, if any look like? [0]: https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/15/the-portion-of-vc-backed-startups-founded-by-women-stays-stubbornly-stagnant/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/15/the-portion-of-vc-backed-s...
      - pravda 8y ago
        I suppose we will have to look at the future returns of VCs like "iFundWomen". If they get higher returns then "sexist" old-school male dominated VCs, then we will have some strong evidence that "sexism" is getting in the way of big returns.
        pmiller2 8y ago
        Why do the returns have to be higher, and not just comparable?
        pravda 8y ago
        A fair point! I am not sure what the returns are for VCs, with either male or female founders. Certainly 'goop.com' has done very well. Theranos, not so well. It would seem to me that if women founders are being actively discriminated against, investing in women founders should produce returns that are higher than normal. Of those 2.2% of female-led startups, what has been the return to investors? I have no idea if anyone has ever looked into that.
        pmiller2 8y ago
        Assuming that women are just as good at founding companies as men, I don't see how funding women at higher rates should produce higher than normal returns. Higher returns would imply that VCs are able to tell the best female-lead companies apart from the rest (and apart from the more marginal male-lead companies). It's not clear to me that many, if any of them can do that, given the number of successful companies that have been passed on by multiple VCs before finding their first investment.

olliej 8y ago

This is a bastion comment for biased communities: We're allowed to be biased, but the people who call us out on this aren't allow to have a bias to compensate for our existence. This is no different from religious bigots who claim it violates their "religious freedom" to remove their "right" to discriminate.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]