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The problem is of course that if you open up for the possibility that women and men are different then it could simply be that women are less interested in laun

The problem is of course that if you open up for the possibility that women and men are different then it could simply be that women are less interested in launching startups, rather than a plot to keep women down.

tropdrop 6y ago
Have you been to a dry-cleaner's? A bakery? A hair-dresser's? All of those were startups. Actually, South Korea has recently seen an influx of female entrepreneurs because their barriers to entry in tech were so high, it encouraged a lot of highly educated women to pivot into the start-up scene (12% of all working age women! [1]) So it seems at least a modicum of women are somewhat interested in "launching startups," and many of them already do in domains outside of tech. But the hostility to them in tech in the west is tricky. It's not overt, which is easier to protest, but subtle, sometimes even well-intentioned – for instance, your claim in this very comment, when spoken "around the water cooler" during a lunch hour with many coworkers present will make many of the women in the room question themselves – is this true? ("Is there something wrong with me that I am interested in this?") Those instances aggregate – how often do you think that your personal failure might be a failure of your entire demographic? How debilitating is that for productivity? They'll think of the lack of female Elon Musks and hang their head in shame, and many who were considering doing something like that will be a little more discouraged, despite many powerful figures in domains outside of tech. Again, this is encapsulated into my theory of greater acquiescence to social acceptance for this group of people, and greater measures needed to fight it. 1 - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/business/south-korea-women-startups-entrepreneurs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/business/south-korea-wome...

tropdrop 6y ago

Have you been to a dry-cleaner's? A bakery? A hair-dresser's? All of those were startups. Actually, South Korea has recently seen an influx of female entrepreneurs because their barriers to entry in tech were so high, it encouraged a lot of highly educated women to pivot into the start-up scene (12% of all working age women! [1]) So it seems at least a modicum of women are somewhat interested in "launching startups," and many of them already do in domains outside of tech. But the hostility to them in tech in the west is tricky. It's not overt, which is easier to protest, but subtle, sometimes even well-intentioned – for instance, your claim in this very comment, when spoken "around the water cooler" during a lunch hour with many coworkers present will make many of the women in the room question themselves – is this true? ("Is there something wrong with me that I am interested in this?") Those instances aggregate – how often do you think that your personal failure might be a failure of your entire demographic? How debilitating is that for productivity? They'll think of the lack of female Elon Musks and hang their head in shame, and many who were considering doing something like that will be a little more discouraged, despite many powerful figures in domains outside of tech. Again, this is encapsulated into my theory of greater acquiescence to social acceptance for this group of people, and greater measures needed to fight it. 1 - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/business/south-korea-women-startups-entrepreneurs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/business/south-korea-wome...