5 ms·

> Given that 50% of population is women, for every country (more or less), then they should get 50% of the funding. Your "they" betrays you. The women in the p

> Given that 50% of population is women, for every country (more or less), then they should get 50% of the funding. Your "they" betrays you. The women in the population are not the women founders the article focuses on. The 1.3% relates to the absolute share of money raised for woman-founded companies. Women are not 50% of the founders, nor are female-founded companies valued at 50% of the market total (using this as a proxy for how much they raise, but agree this is not 1:1), nor are all companies asking for funding at the same time, nor are investors meeting with all companies, nor, nor, nor... I come back to the original point: sex does not predicate founding, nor should it.

supergirl 6y ago
I don't follow your logic. You say "sex does not predicate founding". That's exactly what I'm saying too. Since there are 50% women in the population then they should account for 50% of founders, right? If sex does not matter, then the distribution stays the same.
- ominous 6y ago
  > That's exactly what I'm saying too. No. You focus on sex, instead of focusing on the process of assigning funding. The process cannot be wrong just because the outcome is not 50/50 man/woman. Look into the process first, instead of dismissing it and pointing out only the imbalance. > Since there are 50% women in the population then they should account for 50% of founders, right? Wrong. Unless you think founder selection is a random process.
- throwawasdf 6y ago
  > Since there are 50% women in the population then they should account for 50% of founders, right? Your intention is in the right place but that's just not how biology works. Women will be underrepresented in these categories mainly because women (on average, as a population – not individually) don't want to do this type of work. The real problem would be if the ones that do aren't being able to because they're women. This would then indeed be sexism. You can find the mirrored argument when it comes to male kindergarten teachers, for example. Ideally every male that wants to become one should be able to, but there won't ever be 50% of the distribution because males (on average, as a population – not individually) don't want to do this type of work. My wife is a STEM scientist / data-scientist with a background in economics. Much more of a numbers person than I am, better at calculation and numerical visualisation than I am. I'm a male who would much rather be a homemaker and take care of our kid and households. People like us exist, but we don't represent the population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox
  - supergirl 6y ago
    > Women will be underrepresented in these categories mainly because women (on average, as a population – not individually) don't want to do this type of work. That's actually also sexist. What is the type of work that women do want to do then? And what is it about being a founder that is not appealing to women, in your view?
    - throwawasdf 6y ago
      > That's actually also sexist. I understand how this can be read as sexist within a context that's not informed in the psychometric measurements that have been performed over many cultures, for many decades. > What is the type of work that women do want to do then? And what is it about being a founder that is not appealing to women, in your view? First of all I want to clarify this is not my view. I'm not a psychologist. I'm simply reproducing information that I consumed. This is pretty much the current scientific consensus within a framework of psychometry. Let me try to give you some more context: Over the course of a long time, through questionnaires, self-reporting, observations, etc, psychologists and other scientists have worked on grading individuals within populations on a series of personality traits. How likely a given person may be to become violent, for example. Or to want to work in a team. Or to take specific risks. These are just examples. Often, these personality traits are graded among a framework of the "Big Five"[0]: Openness, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Extraversion and Conscientiousness. These words are domain terms, that is, they don't mean their normal meaning in English. In this context, they mean specifically defined meanings within psychometry that you can read more about on your own. What's been observed is that, among other differences, there are clear distinctions, on average, of where given individuals lie on these spectrums, which are associated with sex. You will find specific individual women and specific individual men who want to perform, and do well, and do badly, at all sorts of activities and work. So this is not about specific individuals. I'm not saying "women can't maths" or "men can't be caring". This is not what is being said. What's being said is basically two things: On the extremes, there are certain groups that are overrepresented. For example, while there will be men and women distributed along the whole spectrum for, let's say, Agreeableness, the individuals scoring the highest in Agreeableness will overwhelmingly tend to be women, and the individuals scoring the lowest in Agreeableness will overwhelmingly tend to be men. The second thing that's being said is: Even though most people as individuals fall roughly along the broad middle in these groups, if you cluster by sex, you can see clear distinction between populations. You would be able to see women being, on average, more agreeable than men. In general, one can broadly summarise these into saying that, on average (again, we're not talking about individuals, we're talking about populations), men will prefer to work with things while women will prefer to work with people. So it's not that being a founder is "not appealing to women". I'm sure there are literally millions of women to whom being a founder would be much more appealing than to literally millions of men. It's just that, when clustering by data, most people who would have the psychometric characteristics to want to become founders would be men. Most people who would have the psychometric characteristics to become, let's say, nurses, would be women. Are there no great women founders? Of course there are. Can women be founders? Women be whatever they want! Are there no great men nurses? Of course there are. Can men be nurses? Men can be whatever they want! However when analysing as a population, trying to reach the equivalent outcome of 50% men and 50% women is bound, for most things, to fail. Because of the psychometric differences between men and women. This is what the Gender-equality Paradox[1] shows: In countries where women have less freedom (let's say, Pakistan), you will find a higher relative rate of women being, let's say, engineers. In countries where women have more freedom (let's say, Sweden), you will find a lower relative rate. Because in countries where they have the freedom to do what they want, women will tend to cluster around occupations dealing with people; while in countries where earnings and stability are of higher concern and freedom is low, women will do what they need to do (go for high-paying work) in order to survive in these societies. Instead, a better framework would be to think about opportunity. Women and men should have equal opportunity to access whatever fields they choose to. However the corollary of that is that, when given this equal opportunity, they simply won't choose to do things in a perfect 50:50 distribution. A simpler example would be, let's say, Basketball. Is Basketball a racist sport because most people in the high-performing leagues are Black? No. Simply, Basketball is a sport that selects for height and strength, and within this clustering, there are more Black people who are tall and strong than, let's say, Asians. Does that mean that all Black people are tall and strong? No. I'm sure Kevin Heart wouldn't stand a chance in the NBA. Does that mean that there are no tall strong Asians? No. You have high-performing Asian athletes such as Yao Ming who are tall and strong and perform well at Basketball. However, on average, Black people will tend to be overrepresented in such a sport because on average (not individuals) they are as a group better suited for that specific selection criteria. Or, for example, artistic swimming, as a sport, will tend to select people who are short and compact and easy to be thrown around. Or how most marathon high-performing people come from a specific ethnicity in Kenya which has over thousands of years been subjected to evolutive pressure that benefits those who can run long distances [2]. Or how there was a study performed on a tribe of free-diving fishermen who have enlarged spleens (which contract releasing oxigen) compared to most other humans, because they were subjected over a long time to a selective pressure where the successful reproducing ones would be the ones better at free-diving.[3] Now, a valid question, back to the men/women differences, would be, ok – sure, this is the data – but, why? Then, I'm afraid I cannot answer you. I can simply point out that, firstly, this doesn't seem to be culturally dependent: there is very similar data in many cultures, cultures from very different places around the world. Secondly, I can point out that women, as humans who get pregnant and give birth, and then breastfeed, have within our sexual dimorphism a greater role for the care of infants than men, both historically, but mainly, biologically. So probably these differences arose naturally as evolutionary adaptations to the needs of humans in the wild. However this is just my guess, and as far as I know, there are no conclusive evidences in this regard. I hope I'm able to at least clear up that, while you may think that I'm wrong (and so is modern psychology, then), and you're free to disagree, and do your own research, etc, it doesn't come from a place of sexism, but from a place of observational data. One last time stressing the point: this has nothing to do with individual men and women. This is simply what we observe when crunching the numbers for human populations. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/why-kenyans-make-such-great-runners-a-story-of-genes-and-cultures/256015/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/wh... [3] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/04/bajau-sea-nomads-free-diving-spleen-science/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/04/bajau-sea-no...

supergirl 6y ago

I don't follow your logic. You say "sex does not predicate founding". That's exactly what I'm saying too. Since there are 50% women in the population then they should account for 50% of founders, right? If sex does not matter, then the distribution stays the same.

ominous 6y ago
> That's exactly what I'm saying too. No. You focus on sex, instead of focusing on the process of assigning funding. The process cannot be wrong just because the outcome is not 50/50 man/woman. Look into the process first, instead of dismissing it and pointing out only the imbalance. > Since there are 50% women in the population then they should account for 50% of founders, right? Wrong. Unless you think founder selection is a random process.
throwawasdf 6y ago
> Since there are 50% women in the population then they should account for 50% of founders, right? Your intention is in the right place but that's just not how biology works. Women will be underrepresented in these categories mainly because women (on average, as a population – not individually) don't want to do this type of work. The real problem would be if the ones that do aren't being able to because they're women. This would then indeed be sexism. You can find the mirrored argument when it comes to male kindergarten teachers, for example. Ideally every male that wants to become one should be able to, but there won't ever be 50% of the distribution because males (on average, as a population – not individually) don't want to do this type of work. My wife is a STEM scientist / data-scientist with a background in economics. Much more of a numbers person than I am, better at calculation and numerical visualisation than I am. I'm a male who would much rather be a homemaker and take care of our kid and households. People like us exist, but we don't represent the population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox
- supergirl 6y ago
  > Women will be underrepresented in these categories mainly because women (on average, as a population – not individually) don't want to do this type of work. That's actually also sexist. What is the type of work that women do want to do then? And what is it about being a founder that is not appealing to women, in your view?
  - throwawasdf 6y ago
    > That's actually also sexist. I understand how this can be read as sexist within a context that's not informed in the psychometric measurements that have been performed over many cultures, for many decades. > What is the type of work that women do want to do then? And what is it about being a founder that is not appealing to women, in your view? First of all I want to clarify this is not my view. I'm not a psychologist. I'm simply reproducing information that I consumed. This is pretty much the current scientific consensus within a framework of psychometry. Let me try to give you some more context: Over the course of a long time, through questionnaires, self-reporting, observations, etc, psychologists and other scientists have worked on grading individuals within populations on a series of personality traits. How likely a given person may be to become violent, for example. Or to want to work in a team. Or to take specific risks. These are just examples. Often, these personality traits are graded among a framework of the "Big Five"[0]: Openness, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Extraversion and Conscientiousness. These words are domain terms, that is, they don't mean their normal meaning in English. In this context, they mean specifically defined meanings within psychometry that you can read more about on your own. What's been observed is that, among other differences, there are clear distinctions, on average, of where given individuals lie on these spectrums, which are associated with sex. You will find specific individual women and specific individual men who want to perform, and do well, and do badly, at all sorts of activities and work. So this is not about specific individuals. I'm not saying "women can't maths" or "men can't be caring". This is not what is being said. What's being said is basically two things: On the extremes, there are certain groups that are overrepresented. For example, while there will be men and women distributed along the whole spectrum for, let's say, Agreeableness, the individuals scoring the highest in Agreeableness will overwhelmingly tend to be women, and the individuals scoring the lowest in Agreeableness will overwhelmingly tend to be men. The second thing that's being said is: Even though most people as individuals fall roughly along the broad middle in these groups, if you cluster by sex, you can see clear distinction between populations. You would be able to see women being, on average, more agreeable than men. In general, one can broadly summarise these into saying that, on average (again, we're not talking about individuals, we're talking about populations), men will prefer to work with things while women will prefer to work with people. So it's not that being a founder is "not appealing to women". I'm sure there are literally millions of women to whom being a founder would be much more appealing than to literally millions of men. It's just that, when clustering by data, most people who would have the psychometric characteristics to want to become founders would be men. Most people who would have the psychometric characteristics to become, let's say, nurses, would be women. Are there no great women founders? Of course there are. Can women be founders? Women be whatever they want! Are there no great men nurses? Of course there are. Can men be nurses? Men can be whatever they want! However when analysing as a population, trying to reach the equivalent outcome of 50% men and 50% women is bound, for most things, to fail. Because of the psychometric differences between men and women. This is what the Gender-equality Paradox[1] shows: In countries where women have less freedom (let's say, Pakistan), you will find a higher relative rate of women being, let's say, engineers. In countries where women have more freedom (let's say, Sweden), you will find a lower relative rate. Because in countries where they have the freedom to do what they want, women will tend to cluster around occupations dealing with people; while in countries where earnings and stability are of higher concern and freedom is low, women will do what they need to do (go for high-paying work) in order to survive in these societies. Instead, a better framework would be to think about opportunity. Women and men should have equal opportunity to access whatever fields they choose to. However the corollary of that is that, when given this equal opportunity, they simply won't choose to do things in a perfect 50:50 distribution. A simpler example would be, let's say, Basketball. Is Basketball a racist sport because most people in the high-performing leagues are Black? No. Simply, Basketball is a sport that selects for height and strength, and within this clustering, there are more Black people who are tall and strong than, let's say, Asians. Does that mean that all Black people are tall and strong? No. I'm sure Kevin Heart wouldn't stand a chance in the NBA. Does that mean that there are no tall strong Asians? No. You have high-performing Asian athletes such as Yao Ming who are tall and strong and perform well at Basketball. However, on average, Black people will tend to be overrepresented in such a sport because on average (not individuals) they are as a group better suited for that specific selection criteria. Or, for example, artistic swimming, as a sport, will tend to select people who are short and compact and easy to be thrown around. Or how most marathon high-performing people come from a specific ethnicity in Kenya which has over thousands of years been subjected to evolutive pressure that benefits those who can run long distances [2]. Or how there was a study performed on a tribe of free-diving fishermen who have enlarged spleens (which contract releasing oxigen) compared to most other humans, because they were subjected over a long time to a selective pressure where the successful reproducing ones would be the ones better at free-diving.[3] Now, a valid question, back to the men/women differences, would be, ok – sure, this is the data – but, why? Then, I'm afraid I cannot answer you. I can simply point out that, firstly, this doesn't seem to be culturally dependent: there is very similar data in many cultures, cultures from very different places around the world. Secondly, I can point out that women, as humans who get pregnant and give birth, and then breastfeed, have within our sexual dimorphism a greater role for the care of infants than men, both historically, but mainly, biologically. So probably these differences arose naturally as evolutionary adaptations to the needs of humans in the wild. However this is just my guess, and as far as I know, there are no conclusive evidences in this regard. I hope I'm able to at least clear up that, while you may think that I'm wrong (and so is modern psychology, then), and you're free to disagree, and do your own research, etc, it doesn't come from a place of sexism, but from a place of observational data. One last time stressing the point: this has nothing to do with individual men and women. This is simply what we observe when crunching the numbers for human populations. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/why-kenyans-make-such-great-runners-a-story-of-genes-and-cultures/256015/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/wh... [3] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/04/bajau-sea-nomads-free-diving-spleen-science/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/04/bajau-sea-no...