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I do think if you're putting on a Female Founders event, you are under obligation to show up with some female founders. Like many other types of relationships,

by Charuru 16y ago

I do think if you're putting on a Female Founders event, you are under obligation to show up with some female founders. Like many other types of relationships, having mentors are as much about empathy, understanding, and having good role models as it is about actual business advice. The women can get advice from many other places, having Female in the title means the advice should have something to do with females. > YCombinator created a dynamic where every man at the table was there to “advise” and every woman at the table was there to “be advised”. Every man was a “guest of honor” and every woman was a “paid attendee”. No. This is just self victimization. It's called a coincidence, and something that should be changed. But reading into it too deeply will hurt you more than it helps you.

sp332 16y ago
I voted you up for "you are under obligation to show up with some female founders", but I disagree with your self-victimization paragraph. She went out of her way to engage the adivsers as peers, and they shut her down. Repeatedly. I don't know if it was sexism in particular, or just a badly-considered power structure for the evening, but whatever the reason, that's not how founders are supposed to encourage each other.
mindcrime 16y ago
The women can get advice from many other places, having Female in the title means the advice should have something to do with females. I can certainly see how someone might have shown up and found a disconnect between their expectations and reality. It would be natural to assume that some - if not all - if the advisers would be female for something like this. Fair enough. But just making the event "females only" for the attendees does make it "something to do with females." To hear the stories you hear, some women are intimidated by the possibility of attending an event and finding that they are the only woman present, or something of that nature. At least by restricting the attendees to females, they created an environment where women could feel secure about coming out, knowing there would - at a minimum - be other female attendees to mingle with, etc. That's still a win, even if the advisers weren't female, so far as I can tell. If I'm wrong, I'd love to hear the female take on how this wasn't still better than a similar event without the "females only" restriction.

by Charuru 16y ago

sp332 16y ago

I voted you up for "you are under obligation to show up with some female founders", but I disagree with your self-victimization paragraph. She went out of her way to engage the adivsers as peers, and they shut her down. Repeatedly. I don't know if it was sexism in particular, or just a badly-considered power structure for the evening, but whatever the reason, that's not how founders are supposed to encourage each other.

mindcrime 16y ago

The women can get advice from many other places, having Female in the title means the advice should have something to do with females. I can certainly see how someone might have shown up and found a disconnect between their expectations and reality. It would be natural to assume that some - if not all - if the advisers would be female for something like this. Fair enough. But just making the event "females only" for the attendees does make it "something to do with females." To hear the stories you hear, some women are intimidated by the possibility of attending an event and finding that they are the only woman present, or something of that nature. At least by restricting the attendees to females, they created an environment where women could feel secure about coming out, knowing there would - at a minimum - be other female attendees to mingle with, etc. That's still a win, even if the advisers weren't female, so far as I can tell. If I'm wrong, I'd love to hear the female take on how this wasn't still better than a similar event without the "females only" restriction.