If you're in a male-dominated profession, where both the "employees" (VC's) and the "clients" (startups) are 90+% male, and the way people are to apply for your

If you're in a male-dominated profession, where both the "employees" (VC's) and the "clients" (startups) are 90+% male, and the way people are to apply for your roles (primarily) is through an introduction, you should not possibly believe you will get >10% women - you will almost certainly get far less. In addition, if the women that others can see in the profession are concentrated near the "top" (i.e. they're already VC's or they're CEO's at successful or well-known companies), and you look at their stories and they didn't move up from the "bottom," then you don't even see anybody who looks _like_ you. And saying that what you want from other candidates is "hustle" doesn't help matters much, though I won't pretend to be an expert on gender-dominated language - there are plenty of smart people out there (here?) who can comment. (I thought there was a very cogent blog post from Anil Dash on this topic some years ago, but I can't find it.) (Added: I saw Ivan's HN headline for this post and somehow missed the original. "Let's Try This Again Ladies"? Really? That certainly screams "comfortable work environment.")