The OPs perspective contains a lot of false assumptions. I was one of the YC alums who went to a dinner (though not the same one the OP was at). The truth is

The OPs perspective contains a lot of false assumptions. I was one of the YC alums who went to a dinner (though not the same one the OP was at). The truth is YC consists of mostly men. I believe PG has said that YC accepts the same % women and men, but they have many fewer applications from women. This is an unfortunate situation, and is something I assume this event was meant to help correct (I had no part in its original planning). With that being said, there actually aren't enough female YC alums to populate these dinners. Hopefully events like this will help create more YC alums, but you can see the chicken-and-egg problem of demanding women hosting these dinners. From the article: 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”.... [A]t this dinner table, for my life I could not convince these men to engage me as a peer. From my perspective, every YC alum was there to advise and every prospective founder (or prospective YCer or what have you) was there to be advised. Why does gender have to come into play? Did any of the alums talk down to the OP because of her gender? Possible, but I doubt it. I would have loved more women to be alums giving advice, but only because they might be able to better answer gender-oriented questions from a first-person perspective. Saying the event should have only female alums, and then implying that the men did not view you as a peer because of some gender issue rather than the context of the event, is borderline offensive to me. When I'm put in the situation of giving advice as a YC alum, I do just that: I give advice. My primary mindset, regardless of the people at the event, is that of a question answerer. I was sharing my experiences, just as most would do if you were at any event where you were the "alumni". When one views everything as a male-female breakdown, any situation where there are more women receiving information than doling it out is going to seem sexist.