7 ms·

There are many women, myself included, who have directly benefited from the message that I could (if not, should) do a startup. I was previously on an academic

There are many women, myself included, who have directly benefited from the message that I could (if not, should) do a startup. I was previously on an academic treadmill. It was more or less assumed that if you were capable, you wanted to be a professor. It took awhile before I could really see the pros/cons of tying my research to that particular structure. I think a lot of women -- highly competent women -- are stuck in similar treadmills -- Law School, Finance, Consulting, Grad School. If they're not presented if this alternate life path, it may take many more year for them to get started. And that may be when they have a family, and that may put a damper on startup ambitions. Absolutely people have the right to make their own choices, and it's possible that different genders/families/ethnicities/what-have-you will make statistically different choices. But I really don't think we are doing such a great job with presenting women, or the population at large really, with the full range of what's possible. There are a lot more people out there who would be happier doing a startup, or any kind of entrepreneurial endeavor focussed on something they are really passionate about, than are actually doing one. There's really a lot we can do in this arena, and I don't think this industry's exhortations or encouragement really represents some kind of dismissal of women's choices or co-opts free will.

apinstein 15y ago
Was the message you responded to a generic "startups are a viable path for you" or that message, but aimed at women? I am assuming the latter, and that you're making the case that for women to receive the argument, it has to be promoted from a women-centric perspective, is that right? If so, I can definitely believe that. I understand and agree with the author's point about women empirically being less interested in a startup lifestyle and disagreeing with how some people pitch startups to women. However anytime you're marketing an idea to people, sometimes it's best to take a niche approach to reaching them.
- DaniFong 15y ago
  It was more direct -- it was targeted specifically to me by a friend. But I also was greatly encouraged by Paul Graham's essays and Founders at Work. I had only a few role models of people doing good science outside of academia (Craig Venter was one), but it would have made it easier for me if I knew other young women doing the same thing. There still aren't many, but the numbers are growing. I do know women who felt, early on in their lives, quite specifically that they couldn't be both "smart" and "feminine." This is really tough, and it's going to be an influence for as long as technical or intellectual fields are perceived as being "guy's things." Most of us want to identify with something. When people's ideas for "woman" or "mother" or "entrepreneur" or "engineer" start to be mutually exclusive, it's going to restrict the futures they can imagine for themselves, and what they do. I mean, even "scientist" and "grad-school dropout" seemed contradictory to me, and scared me. If my stereotype for "entrepreneur" insists that I work 100 hour weeks until achieving world domination, how can that leave room for a family? More immediately, leaving the family question out of it, oftentimes I may need to force a particular issue in an engineering or business discussion. To be heard, especially in a discussion where the male-dominated norms of raised voices are common, I may need to be forceful, stubborn, insistent, controlling, resolute. I have felt like less of a woman at those times. Ugly. It hurts me, yet it may be what is demanded of a startup founder. And in dark moments, I have considered that I didn't like who I was having to become to succeed, and considered dropping out. I can see why a lot of women do. This is a fine line to walk that doesn't really go away. I think these pressures continue throughout adulthood. It leads to a lot of women downplaying their achievements and abilities. And not just socially. I think it gets into our heads and hearts. I think it's a major reason why women consistently underestimate their talents as compared to men. I think it's really a big help for a lot of people to see a diversity of role-models, living their lives happily and without contradiction. Even when I began trying to start startups, I thought I would have to do a software startup first. I pretty much started my current company by accident -- I was too afraid of doing a hardware startup and tackling the energy question head-on. I tricked myself into starting by saying I wanted to just make it an open source project, and hoping someone with more resources could take it further. A common mistake, which, once I realized I'd have to push it forward myself, I overcame. Even then, I was quite afraid that as a young woman, without many credentials, the energy industry wouldn't take me seriously. It turns out that a lot of this can be dealt with by assembling a great team around oneself. Also, even though I've been dismissed on numerous occasions, without much of a thought on their part, because I am a young woman, it turns out that, for the most part, people can have their minds changed quite readily by confident expressions of confidence. Perhaps even by being unexpectedly knowledgable, they remember me better? I will declare that misogyny still exists within the ranks of investors and engineers, which can be quite upsetting. It's far from the norm, but shows up once in a while. And it might not be so bad as to tip off everyone else that there's a problem, but it is bad enough to seriously unnerve someone, if they're unprepared.
  - sunahsuh 15y ago
    The role-model issue is huge. When you look at the kinds of people doing certain things and realize none of them look anything like you, it's easy to cross it off your list of possibilities because we're reasonable beings who conclude, "well, if no one that's like me has followed that path, there must be a reason for it." And honestly, it's true -- being a woman in tech still sucks a lot of the time. You have to fight harder to get respect because you don't look like other competent engineers that people have come across. You have to prove yourself every time you meet someone new. You face skepticism that you wouldn't if you were a man (particularly a white guy.) And I know this because I'm guilty of this too.
  - zasz 15y ago
    Yeah, I'm a female software engineer. It usually surprises people when I do anything remotely feminine. People have twice speculated that I would enjoy putting on a strap-on and taking on a, ah, masculine role.
SoftwareMaven 15y ago
I would really love to see some research on this topic, because I would love to know if that is really that different from men. Growing up, I was told many options about what I could do: Founder was never one of them. It wasn't until I took stock and looked around at my corporate career that I decided it wasn't working for me. And that doesn't sound too different from your experience. I want my daughters to have every option available to them, from stay-at-home mom to founder. I obliquely can't speak for the societal pressures of being a woman, but the educational aspects between my boys and my girls has not been noticeably different.
- DaniFong 15y ago
  I think the cleanest experiments here would be those having to do with stereotype threat. For example, women asked to write down their gender (even just with a checkbox) before a math test at the GRE level score significantly worse. Asian women asked to also write down their race are inoculated against this effect. These women are "primed" with their stereotypes and it dramatically influences performance. Even asking people to think about being a professor increases their performance! I don't know if there are any related experiments with priming subjects with the concepts of "mother" or "feminine" or what-have-you, but it's a good place to start. Maybe priming women with a reading comprehension test involving a passage with Marie Curie? Or Lynn Margulis? Or Sophie Germaine... Also, this is indirect, but the study of highly talented women and men here: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/Ferriman2009.pdf http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/Ferriman2009.pdf ...shows a strong pull toward shorter hours/working from home for women over men, and it gets stronger as women age from 25 to 35. I think this indicates some of the pressures of motherhood. To this end, I think it might be a good idea to have mixed age Montessori schools at places of business. Since it's an exploratory learning model, and the place is set up to be a cool place to learn and play and be anyway, and one of the biggest recruiting draws and factors in the choice of workplace is often the school district, and a single teacher can handle the mixed-age children of a small-mid sized company because they largely teach themselves/each other, and because that's less expensive than private school and the parents could participate more in their kids lives if they were physically close to work, I think it could be a huge benefit to forward thinking companies. Don't know, but it could help both men and women. Bonus: Check out the graph on page 477 here: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/SexDiffs.pdf http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/SexDiffs.pdf It plots surveyed personal importance for various issues, like "Developing my intellectual interests" to "Part time career for a limited time". You'll notice that the male and female responses almost entirely match, with the few exceptions, and there it doesn't deviate by much!
yummyfajitas 15y ago
None of what you say is specific to women. As a former academic, I was told that a startup is a legitimate career path precisely once (in a grad student seminar, by Stephen Wolfram). Plenty of men are stuck in the same treadmills you describe, and there are many complaints that the grad school and finance treadmills also have too few women. I don't think Trunk is asserting that encouraging women to do startups "co-opts free will". I think her main complaint is that it is bad advice for most women, i.e. many women who take such advice will be less happy than they otherwise could be.
- roguecoder 15y ago
  Though having children makes people less happy than they would otherwise be, so if that's the criteria... ;-)
- jp_sc 15y ago
  Because she think women are more happy by marrying and having kids. She is happier that way so she assume all women are the same.
  - rodw 15y ago
    I'm not sure that Ms. Trunk's biography is especially relevant to her argument here, but that's not it. She's been very public and candid about her personal life (quite possibly overly so), if you want to look into it.
  - drumdance 15y ago
    She has written very candidly about how uneven her personal life is. In particular she's written about the research arguing that having children lowers overall happiness for both men and women (but particularly women).
  - einhverfr 15y ago
    I didn't read it that way at all. I read her as saying "we know we can do it, so if we aren't doing it, we don't want to be doing it, so leave us alone." One thing I have noticed in open source work is that men tend to be willing to take on more risk than women when it comes to projects. Computer development personnel are, in the corporate world, about 1/3 women but less than one out of fifty developers in open source is a woman. Those women who are in open source tend to get there through a paying job, while for men, we tend to possibly find a job through work in open source. What this tells me is that women are choosing different approaches and different paths. It's not that they can't. It's that they don't want to. Another complaint I have heard over and over from women in open source is that there is nothing more annoying than being asked over and over "so what do we need to do to attract more women into our field?" There is a similar sense of frustration expressed in the article.
seanp2k2 15y ago
Yup. This article does more harm than good. TC is grasping at straws trying to stay relevant.

apinstein 15y ago

Was the message you responded to a generic "startups are a viable path for you" or that message, but aimed at women? I am assuming the latter, and that you're making the case that for women to receive the argument, it has to be promoted from a women-centric perspective, is that right? If so, I can definitely believe that. I understand and agree with the author's point about women empirically being less interested in a startup lifestyle and disagreeing with how some people pitch startups to women. However anytime you're marketing an idea to people, sometimes it's best to take a niche approach to reaching them.

DaniFong 15y ago
It was more direct -- it was targeted specifically to me by a friend. But I also was greatly encouraged by Paul Graham's essays and Founders at Work. I had only a few role models of people doing good science outside of academia (Craig Venter was one), but it would have made it easier for me if I knew other young women doing the same thing. There still aren't many, but the numbers are growing. I do know women who felt, early on in their lives, quite specifically that they couldn't be both "smart" and "feminine." This is really tough, and it's going to be an influence for as long as technical or intellectual fields are perceived as being "guy's things." Most of us want to identify with something. When people's ideas for "woman" or "mother" or "entrepreneur" or "engineer" start to be mutually exclusive, it's going to restrict the futures they can imagine for themselves, and what they do. I mean, even "scientist" and "grad-school dropout" seemed contradictory to me, and scared me. If my stereotype for "entrepreneur" insists that I work 100 hour weeks until achieving world domination, how can that leave room for a family? More immediately, leaving the family question out of it, oftentimes I may need to force a particular issue in an engineering or business discussion. To be heard, especially in a discussion where the male-dominated norms of raised voices are common, I may need to be forceful, stubborn, insistent, controlling, resolute. I have felt like less of a woman at those times. Ugly. It hurts me, yet it may be what is demanded of a startup founder. And in dark moments, I have considered that I didn't like who I was having to become to succeed, and considered dropping out. I can see why a lot of women do. This is a fine line to walk that doesn't really go away. I think these pressures continue throughout adulthood. It leads to a lot of women downplaying their achievements and abilities. And not just socially. I think it gets into our heads and hearts. I think it's a major reason why women consistently underestimate their talents as compared to men. I think it's really a big help for a lot of people to see a diversity of role-models, living their lives happily and without contradiction. Even when I began trying to start startups, I thought I would have to do a software startup first. I pretty much started my current company by accident -- I was too afraid of doing a hardware startup and tackling the energy question head-on. I tricked myself into starting by saying I wanted to just make it an open source project, and hoping someone with more resources could take it further. A common mistake, which, once I realized I'd have to push it forward myself, I overcame. Even then, I was quite afraid that as a young woman, without many credentials, the energy industry wouldn't take me seriously. It turns out that a lot of this can be dealt with by assembling a great team around oneself. Also, even though I've been dismissed on numerous occasions, without much of a thought on their part, because I am a young woman, it turns out that, for the most part, people can have their minds changed quite readily by confident expressions of confidence. Perhaps even by being unexpectedly knowledgable, they remember me better? I will declare that misogyny still exists within the ranks of investors and engineers, which can be quite upsetting. It's far from the norm, but shows up once in a while. And it might not be so bad as to tip off everyone else that there's a problem, but it is bad enough to seriously unnerve someone, if they're unprepared.
- sunahsuh 15y ago
  The role-model issue is huge. When you look at the kinds of people doing certain things and realize none of them look anything like you, it's easy to cross it off your list of possibilities because we're reasonable beings who conclude, "well, if no one that's like me has followed that path, there must be a reason for it." And honestly, it's true -- being a woman in tech still sucks a lot of the time. You have to fight harder to get respect because you don't look like other competent engineers that people have come across. You have to prove yourself every time you meet someone new. You face skepticism that you wouldn't if you were a man (particularly a white guy.) And I know this because I'm guilty of this too.
- zasz 15y ago
  Yeah, I'm a female software engineer. It usually surprises people when I do anything remotely feminine. People have twice speculated that I would enjoy putting on a strap-on and taking on a, ah, masculine role.

SoftwareMaven 15y ago

I would really love to see some research on this topic, because I would love to know if that is really that different from men. Growing up, I was told many options about what I could do: Founder was never one of them. It wasn't until I took stock and looked around at my corporate career that I decided it wasn't working for me. And that doesn't sound too different from your experience. I want my daughters to have every option available to them, from stay-at-home mom to founder. I obliquely can't speak for the societal pressures of being a woman, but the educational aspects between my boys and my girls has not been noticeably different.

DaniFong 15y ago
I think the cleanest experiments here would be those having to do with stereotype threat. For example, women asked to write down their gender (even just with a checkbox) before a math test at the GRE level score significantly worse. Asian women asked to also write down their race are inoculated against this effect. These women are "primed" with their stereotypes and it dramatically influences performance. Even asking people to think about being a professor increases their performance! I don't know if there are any related experiments with priming subjects with the concepts of "mother" or "feminine" or what-have-you, but it's a good place to start. Maybe priming women with a reading comprehension test involving a passage with Marie Curie? Or Lynn Margulis? Or Sophie Germaine... Also, this is indirect, but the study of highly talented women and men here: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/Ferriman2009.pdf http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/Ferriman2009.pdf ...shows a strong pull toward shorter hours/working from home for women over men, and it gets stronger as women age from 25 to 35. I think this indicates some of the pressures of motherhood. To this end, I think it might be a good idea to have mixed age Montessori schools at places of business. Since it's an exploratory learning model, and the place is set up to be a cool place to learn and play and be anyway, and one of the biggest recruiting draws and factors in the choice of workplace is often the school district, and a single teacher can handle the mixed-age children of a small-mid sized company because they largely teach themselves/each other, and because that's less expensive than private school and the parents could participate more in their kids lives if they were physically close to work, I think it could be a huge benefit to forward thinking companies. Don't know, but it could help both men and women. Bonus: Check out the graph on page 477 here: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/SexDiffs.pdf http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/SexDiffs.pdf It plots surveyed personal importance for various issues, like "Developing my intellectual interests" to "Part time career for a limited time". You'll notice that the male and female responses almost entirely match, with the few exceptions, and there it doesn't deviate by much!

yummyfajitas 15y ago

None of what you say is specific to women. As a former academic, I was told that a startup is a legitimate career path precisely once (in a grad student seminar, by Stephen Wolfram). Plenty of men are stuck in the same treadmills you describe, and there are many complaints that the grad school and finance treadmills also have too few women. I don't think Trunk is asserting that encouraging women to do startups "co-opts free will". I think her main complaint is that it is bad advice for most women, i.e. many women who take such advice will be less happy than they otherwise could be.

roguecoder 15y ago
Though having children makes people less happy than they would otherwise be, so if that's the criteria... ;-)
jp_sc 15y ago
Because she think women are more happy by marrying and having kids. She is happier that way so she assume all women are the same.
- rodw 15y ago
  I'm not sure that Ms. Trunk's biography is especially relevant to her argument here, but that's not it. She's been very public and candid about her personal life (quite possibly overly so), if you want to look into it.
- drumdance 15y ago
  She has written very candidly about how uneven her personal life is. In particular she's written about the research arguing that having children lowers overall happiness for both men and women (but particularly women).
- einhverfr 15y ago
  I didn't read it that way at all. I read her as saying "we know we can do it, so if we aren't doing it, we don't want to be doing it, so leave us alone." One thing I have noticed in open source work is that men tend to be willing to take on more risk than women when it comes to projects. Computer development personnel are, in the corporate world, about 1/3 women but less than one out of fifty developers in open source is a woman. Those women who are in open source tend to get there through a paying job, while for men, we tend to possibly find a job through work in open source. What this tells me is that women are choosing different approaches and different paths. It's not that they can't. It's that they don't want to. Another complaint I have heard over and over from women in open source is that there is nothing more annoying than being asked over and over "so what do we need to do to attract more women into our field?" There is a similar sense of frustration expressed in the article.

seanp2k2 15y ago

Yup. This article does more harm than good. TC is grasping at straws trying to stay relevant.