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Ah I love these moments when I know that I am writing a risky post and I will very likely be downvoted, but here it comes! How is this fair? Doesn't it qualify

Ah I love these moments when I know that I am writing a risky post and I will very likely be downvoted, but here it comes! How is this fair? Doesn't it qualify as "sexism"? You know the thing that was heavily debated on HN in the last weeks when some people were treated based on their gender? "I mean these people are put forward because they are %s, and if they were not %s they would not even qualify to a full page article. Based on that story %s seem to have an easier time because of their gender" % ( "women", "women", "women"). Sorry for the Pythonic syntax but if you saw "men" instead of "women" you'd have totally different stories and the big S word: sexism. Plus, the ideas might be good for business but it's very very "girly". If I were a girl I would certainly feel kind of weird that out of the 4 ideas 1 is directed towards women, 2 are directly relevant to "standard" feminine tastes: clothing. Also the journalist is a woman... I want to see women promising us Big Data analysis or the new portal around cars, not some stuff that reinforce stereotypes! I am sorry but I will say that sexism is gone when EVERY trace of it will have disappeared, and there won't be any "X women that succeed and they are awesome" but the title will be "Z ideas that will help you buy clothes" with guys and girls in the same article.

euroclydon 15y ago
I didn't even know that there were that many women in YC. It's only been in the past month that I've stumbled onto women founders commenting on HN. I'm thrilled to find this article. I believe that women are underserved by software because the field has been dominated by men, too often making software targeted at other men. It's great that the ideas are girly. They know what they want better than we do. If more women are going into YC now than before, than I'll bet PG and the gang can hardly wipe the grins off their faces thinking about all the money they're going to make.
- marquis 15y ago
  Women technical founders are here. We just don't broadcast it, you generally make the assumption when reading a comment that it is from a guy unless specified otherwise. Try reading the next comment post assuming each comment is from a woman and see if that changes how you read it. Probably not?
  - novalis 15y ago
    Assuming that people respond or project because of gender is part of the problem, that does not make it so that everybody does it. Try reading this like it is from a person. See how that changes it.
    - djcapelis 15y ago
      > Assuming that people respond or project because of gender is part of the problem Having had a chance to a/b test this, the real problem is that they do actually do this, not that people simply assume they do. It's real, it happens. Either start learning about how it effects people or continue going through the world blind to these issues. Your call.
      - novalis 15y ago
        Your ultimatum and passive agressiveness combine so well with your a/b testing claim. That really makes me see how people that assume others respond or project because of gender are part of the problem. You are clearly caged in by all that scientific data that is one day to be published and reviewed. Good day.
        djcapelis 15y ago
        I'm going to ignore all your tone arguments and merely mention there's quite a bit of scientific research on this if you happen to be interested in learning. Feel free to search for it. Privilege blinds. Waking up to what you have a hard time seeing can be hard. Good luck. Or not, if you'd prefer things stay as they are.
    - marquis 15y ago
      Yes, I completely agree with you. I was directly responding to the parent, who was making the assumption that all posters here are male.
      - euroclydon 15y ago
ktothemc 15y ago
This is push-and-pull. It's step-by-step. We don't get to the magical destination you're talking about immediately. If this generation of female entrepreneurs happens to be more focused on female target markets, that's fine by me if it means women in the next generation look up to them and realize that they can be founders too.
- victork2 15y ago
  I agree, but it always bugs when I see articles that speak about a gender or a group of people. I believe it's part of a broader problem in the US. I come from another culture in Europe and that puts me in a position where I am able to analyze things from very close but still with a great deal of distance. Also forgive me for my english mistakes it is hard to develop long thoughts in a language which is not your mother language! In the US there is a culture of the celebration of differences. It's true at every level in every aspect of the organization of the society here (I live in the US). I can take a very simple example: schools. In the US the "different" students which happen to be defined by the school administrations as the smartest students have it very easy: they are put aside from the rest, put in special classes, get incredible scholarship. The "normal"(again, by the definition of the administration) students are ignored. Now take the example of the Finnish schools. In these schools the rule is: everybody should be at the same level: equal. [http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-ame...]. They have no standardized test to set the "normal" and "different" kids apart, they are very little homework. Guess what happens next ? US pupils are just killed in the tests and Finnish students are far ahead. This example can be extended to the case of women and to many more. By celebrating the excellence of some you only reinforce the sexism because of very complex externalities, that are not fully understood from the point of view of social sciences. I truly believe that creating role models is a curse, not a cure for the problem of women absence in technologies. This subject would merit a bigger post than mine but that's my thoughts put simply. Sorry for the digression, thank you if you read until here :).
  - tesseractive 15y ago
    I understand that this must seem like an alarming difference, but it didn't happen in a vacuum. For nearly a century after the end of post-Civil War reconstruction we had nominal equality but vast inequality that was all too real. Technically colorblind laws that granted the right to vote based on whether your grandfather could. Poll taxes designed to disenfranchise people who couldn't afford them. "Seperate but equal" schools that were in no way equal. "I don't see color, I just see qualifications" was often the very first claim by a hiring manager at a company where everyone but the janitor was white. As a result, claiming to be colorblind convinces no one. People believe you will hire and promote members of disadvantaged minority groups only when tangible evidence from the makeup of your staff proves it. I understand your distate for the situation, but it's kind of like you came in to the theater in the middle of the movie. People here are like this for very good reasons. Are there problems as a result? Sure. But things are the way they are as a result of responding to a situation that was even worse.
ajross 15y ago
I am sorry but I will say that sexism is gone when EVERY trace of it will have disappear Amen. But given that we aren't there yet, why are you complaining about an article which has women in it instead of the four hundred that don't?
- victork2 15y ago
  To be honest I haven't read the others (I am totally apathetic about the Y combinator startup thing). But I'd have to the premises if they were "10 men who are awesome", trust me I would smite it as strongly as here. If none of the articles mentioned any of the women shown there this is also a problem but I truly believe it won't be solved by countering with a gender specific article (I wrote a longer post on that when I answered ktothemc ).
  - erikpukinskis 15y ago
    if they were "10 men who are awesome", trust me I would smite it as strongly as here. You must not read much tech news if you're not doing that kind of smiting several times a day.
    - sliverstorm 15y ago
      The key difference is that most of tech news is about a group of 10 people who happen to be men, not articles about 10 men and how awesome it is that they are men.
      - ktothemc 15y ago
        Your comment ironically reveals why we need to have stories like this. "The key difference is that most of tech news is about a group of 10 people who happen to be men...." It's not a group of 10 people who happen to be men. It's more like 8 or 9 of them happen to be men and 1 of them happens to be a woman. If the community keeps perceiving and portraying itself as so homogeneous, how will young women recognize that they can have a place here too?
  - 15y ago
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
naner 15y ago
How is this fair? Why does it need to be fair? This isn't grade school... (For the record, I don't think this article is unfair but I don't see why that would matter.) Doesn't it qualify as "sexism"? No... How would this be sexism (discrimination based on gender)? if you saw "men" instead of "women" you'd have totally different stories and the big S word: sexism. Huh? There's no reason to highlight "The Men of YC". There's nothing remarkable about a bunch of guys trying to get tech startups off the ground. Women are typically underrepresented in this group, so this is noteworthy. Plus, the ideas might be good for business but it's very very "girly". Websites that cater to women are few and far between, women are typically willing to spend a lot of money on these types of sites, and it shouldn't be suprising that women develop businesses that they themselves would want to use. If you haven't noticed most startups tend to be a bunch of geeky guys developing geek-related crap that only geeks are really interested in. Same difference. Also the journalist is a woman... And? Isn't that appropriate? I'm sure the article would be fine if a male journalist wrote it but you shouldn't be suprised that a female journalist was hilighting sucessful women in tech. Your weird interpretation of sexism is baffling.
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  I think you've hit the nail on the head. Sure, it'd be nice to live in a world where the genders of the founders didn't matter, but we don't. Almost half the Internet population is female, yet there are very few sites catering to them. This is dogfooding, plain and simple. I would never dream of launching a site to connect consumers with the perfect pair of high heel shoes, but there's probably a massive market for such a service. Women will get attention because they're the minority, and because they pursue business opportunities that don't occur to male geeks. If we had Eskimos launching sites, they'd get covered too. There's a massive market out there that isn't getting served by the rank and file tech entrepreneur. More power to whoever finds a way to exploit it. Crying 'reverse sexism' strikes me as simply pathetic.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  Huh? There's no reason to highlight "The Men of YC". There's nothing remarkable about a bunch of guys trying to get tech startups off the ground. This is true. From an information theoretic perspective, this story more interesting than the converse would be. However, I've been told many times that information theory and probability is not a defense against charges of sexism. For example, consider the question "do you plan to have children soon?" From an information theory perspective, it provides useful information when making a hiring decision. And the information is more notable for a woman than for a man, since a woman who gives an affirmative answer is far more likely than a man to vanish from the workforce. Yet it's normally considered sexist to ask this question, particularly if you ask the question only of women. How do you reconcile this difference?
sliverstorm 15y ago
the ideas might be good for business but it's very very "girly" This is one thing that jumped out at me too at first blush, but thinking on it more, while it may be the case I don't know that it's actually objectionable. Some of the more "girly" opportunities are still untapped by the mostly-male founder base, and if women choose to tap them, isn't that just good business sense on their part?
- BadCookie 15y ago
  I am a woman who just applied to Y Combinator with a "girly" idea. I admit to feeling a little odd about it. I almost wished that I were applying with a more gender-neutral idea. On the other hand, I'm convinced that the idea is worthwhile, and it's not the sort of idea that I can envision a group of 20-something men pursuing. I think it's only natural to ask yourself what you might understand better than your competition. (In fact, that's a question on the Y Combinator application!) I suppose I'm trying to argue that sliverstorm is right here. Of course, some of it is just that women are more likely to be interested in girly things, and people in general tend to want to start companies that they are personally interested in. I don't see why that's a problem.
  - silverlake 15y ago
    I would totally invest in/work on "girly" ideas. It's a big market of big spenders that hasn't yet been reached effectively. Pinterest shows us the latent demand is phenomenal. If I knew anything at all about women I would jump in this market as well.
wulczer 15y ago
I'm really sorry, but this ticked off my code-review OCD and I couldn't help myself. You could use "Bla bla bla {0}, because {0} and {0}".format("women") to avoid using a tuple of "women". Or, if you're stuck with old Python, just use %(noun)s three times and format with {"noun": "women"}.
- victork2 15y ago
  That made me laugh! I was hoping the compiler inside everybody's brain would be able to detect this minor inefficiencies and correct them on the fly. And yes, I was using Python2.7, I wanted to use 3.0 but the sexist libraries haven't been updated. (Just joking). But thanks for pointing that out!
wilfra 15y ago
It's a fair a point but baby steps are required. A group of women founders doing women-y things is far better than no women founders. These will open the door for others in the future.
jwr 15y ago
My thoughts were similar. If you want equality between the sexes, just stop exposing the inequalities. Treat everyone the same. An article about "women in tech" makes no sense, it just promotes thinking about "men in tech" and "women in tech". If I were a woman running a company, I would prefer not to be featured in an article like that. I think these kinds of contradictions are more common in the U.S. than elsewhere. I have always wondered: if race plays no role, why does it figure as a question in the census and in most college applications?
- hackinthebochs 15y ago
  >My thoughts were similar. If you want equality between the sexes, just stop exposing the inequalities Pretending inequalities don't exist doesn't get rid of them. The only people who benefit from this line of thinking are those that are in privileged positions to begin with. >If I were a woman running a company, I would prefer not to be featured in an article like that. There goes that line again... I'm sure women can speak for themselves on this matter.
hackinthebochs 15y ago
> If I were a girl I would certainly feel kind of weird... The moment this or a similar statement is about to come out of your mouth, just stop yourself. There is no possible way a sentence that starts out like this will be anything but close-minded and/or self-serving. If women have a problem with women owned businesses being about "woman" things, they can say so. Do not presume to speak for other women from your place of privilege.

euroclydon 15y ago

I didn't even know that there were that many women in YC. It's only been in the past month that I've stumbled onto women founders commenting on HN. I'm thrilled to find this article. I believe that women are underserved by software because the field has been dominated by men, too often making software targeted at other men. It's great that the ideas are girly. They know what they want better than we do. If more women are going into YC now than before, than I'll bet PG and the gang can hardly wipe the grins off their faces thinking about all the money they're going to make.

marquis 15y ago
Women technical founders are here. We just don't broadcast it, you generally make the assumption when reading a comment that it is from a guy unless specified otherwise. Try reading the next comment post assuming each comment is from a woman and see if that changes how you read it. Probably not?
- novalis 15y ago
  Assuming that people respond or project because of gender is part of the problem, that does not make it so that everybody does it. Try reading this like it is from a person. See how that changes it.
  - djcapelis 15y ago
    > Assuming that people respond or project because of gender is part of the problem Having had a chance to a/b test this, the real problem is that they do actually do this, not that people simply assume they do. It's real, it happens. Either start learning about how it effects people or continue going through the world blind to these issues. Your call.
    - novalis 15y ago
      Your ultimatum and passive agressiveness combine so well with your a/b testing claim. That really makes me see how people that assume others respond or project because of gender are part of the problem. You are clearly caged in by all that scientific data that is one day to be published and reviewed. Good day.
      - djcapelis 15y ago
        I'm going to ignore all your tone arguments and merely mention there's quite a bit of scientific research on this if you happen to be interested in learning. Feel free to search for it. Privilege blinds. Waking up to what you have a hard time seeing can be hard. Good luck. Or not, if you'd prefer things stay as they are.
  - marquis 15y ago
    Yes, I completely agree with you. I was directly responding to the parent, who was making the assumption that all posters here are male.
    - euroclydon 15y ago

ktothemc 15y ago

This is push-and-pull. It's step-by-step. We don't get to the magical destination you're talking about immediately. If this generation of female entrepreneurs happens to be more focused on female target markets, that's fine by me if it means women in the next generation look up to them and realize that they can be founders too.

victork2 15y ago
I agree, but it always bugs when I see articles that speak about a gender or a group of people. I believe it's part of a broader problem in the US. I come from another culture in Europe and that puts me in a position where I am able to analyze things from very close but still with a great deal of distance. Also forgive me for my english mistakes it is hard to develop long thoughts in a language which is not your mother language! In the US there is a culture of the celebration of differences. It's true at every level in every aspect of the organization of the society here (I live in the US). I can take a very simple example: schools. In the US the "different" students which happen to be defined by the school administrations as the smartest students have it very easy: they are put aside from the rest, put in special classes, get incredible scholarship. The "normal"(again, by the definition of the administration) students are ignored. Now take the example of the Finnish schools. In these schools the rule is: everybody should be at the same level: equal. [http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-ame...]. They have no standardized test to set the "normal" and "different" kids apart, they are very little homework. Guess what happens next ? US pupils are just killed in the tests and Finnish students are far ahead. This example can be extended to the case of women and to many more. By celebrating the excellence of some you only reinforce the sexism because of very complex externalities, that are not fully understood from the point of view of social sciences. I truly believe that creating role models is a curse, not a cure for the problem of women absence in technologies. This subject would merit a bigger post than mine but that's my thoughts put simply. Sorry for the digression, thank you if you read until here :).
- tesseractive 15y ago
  I understand that this must seem like an alarming difference, but it didn't happen in a vacuum. For nearly a century after the end of post-Civil War reconstruction we had nominal equality but vast inequality that was all too real. Technically colorblind laws that granted the right to vote based on whether your grandfather could. Poll taxes designed to disenfranchise people who couldn't afford them. "Seperate but equal" schools that were in no way equal. "I don't see color, I just see qualifications" was often the very first claim by a hiring manager at a company where everyone but the janitor was white. As a result, claiming to be colorblind convinces no one. People believe you will hire and promote members of disadvantaged minority groups only when tangible evidence from the makeup of your staff proves it. I understand your distate for the situation, but it's kind of like you came in to the theater in the middle of the movie. People here are like this for very good reasons. Are there problems as a result? Sure. But things are the way they are as a result of responding to a situation that was even worse.

ajross 15y ago

I am sorry but I will say that sexism is gone when EVERY trace of it will have disappear Amen. But given that we aren't there yet, why are you complaining about an article which has women in it instead of the four hundred that don't?

victork2 15y ago
To be honest I haven't read the others (I am totally apathetic about the Y combinator startup thing). But I'd have to the premises if they were "10 men who are awesome", trust me I would smite it as strongly as here. If none of the articles mentioned any of the women shown there this is also a problem but I truly believe it won't be solved by countering with a gender specific article (I wrote a longer post on that when I answered ktothemc ).
- erikpukinskis 15y ago
  if they were "10 men who are awesome", trust me I would smite it as strongly as here. You must not read much tech news if you're not doing that kind of smiting several times a day.
  - sliverstorm 15y ago
    The key difference is that most of tech news is about a group of 10 people who happen to be men, not articles about 10 men and how awesome it is that they are men.
    - ktothemc 15y ago
      Your comment ironically reveals why we need to have stories like this. "The key difference is that most of tech news is about a group of 10 people who happen to be men...." It's not a group of 10 people who happen to be men. It's more like 8 or 9 of them happen to be men and 1 of them happens to be a woman. If the community keeps perceiving and portraying itself as so homogeneous, how will young women recognize that they can have a place here too?
- 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

naner 15y ago

How is this fair? Why does it need to be fair? This isn't grade school... (For the record, I don't think this article is unfair but I don't see why that would matter.) Doesn't it qualify as "sexism"? No... How would this be sexism (discrimination based on gender)? if you saw "men" instead of "women" you'd have totally different stories and the big S word: sexism. Huh? There's no reason to highlight "The Men of YC". There's nothing remarkable about a bunch of guys trying to get tech startups off the ground. Women are typically underrepresented in this group, so this is noteworthy. Plus, the ideas might be good for business but it's very very "girly". Websites that cater to women are few and far between, women are typically willing to spend a lot of money on these types of sites, and it shouldn't be suprising that women develop businesses that they themselves would want to use. If you haven't noticed most startups tend to be a bunch of geeky guys developing geek-related crap that only geeks are really interested in. Same difference. Also the journalist is a woman... And? Isn't that appropriate? I'm sure the article would be fine if a male journalist wrote it but you shouldn't be suprised that a female journalist was hilighting sucessful women in tech. Your weird interpretation of sexism is baffling.

redthrowaway 15y ago
I think you've hit the nail on the head. Sure, it'd be nice to live in a world where the genders of the founders didn't matter, but we don't. Almost half the Internet population is female, yet there are very few sites catering to them. This is dogfooding, plain and simple. I would never dream of launching a site to connect consumers with the perfect pair of high heel shoes, but there's probably a massive market for such a service. Women will get attention because they're the minority, and because they pursue business opportunities that don't occur to male geeks. If we had Eskimos launching sites, they'd get covered too. There's a massive market out there that isn't getting served by the rank and file tech entrepreneur. More power to whoever finds a way to exploit it. Crying 'reverse sexism' strikes me as simply pathetic.
yummyfajitas 15y ago
Huh? There's no reason to highlight "The Men of YC". There's nothing remarkable about a bunch of guys trying to get tech startups off the ground. This is true. From an information theoretic perspective, this story more interesting than the converse would be. However, I've been told many times that information theory and probability is not a defense against charges of sexism. For example, consider the question "do you plan to have children soon?" From an information theory perspective, it provides useful information when making a hiring decision. And the information is more notable for a woman than for a man, since a woman who gives an affirmative answer is far more likely than a man to vanish from the workforce. Yet it's normally considered sexist to ask this question, particularly if you ask the question only of women. How do you reconcile this difference?

sliverstorm 15y ago

the ideas might be good for business but it's very very "girly" This is one thing that jumped out at me too at first blush, but thinking on it more, while it may be the case I don't know that it's actually objectionable. Some of the more "girly" opportunities are still untapped by the mostly-male founder base, and if women choose to tap them, isn't that just good business sense on their part?

BadCookie 15y ago
I am a woman who just applied to Y Combinator with a "girly" idea. I admit to feeling a little odd about it. I almost wished that I were applying with a more gender-neutral idea. On the other hand, I'm convinced that the idea is worthwhile, and it's not the sort of idea that I can envision a group of 20-something men pursuing. I think it's only natural to ask yourself what you might understand better than your competition. (In fact, that's a question on the Y Combinator application!) I suppose I'm trying to argue that sliverstorm is right here. Of course, some of it is just that women are more likely to be interested in girly things, and people in general tend to want to start companies that they are personally interested in. I don't see why that's a problem.
- silverlake 15y ago
  I would totally invest in/work on "girly" ideas. It's a big market of big spenders that hasn't yet been reached effectively. Pinterest shows us the latent demand is phenomenal. If I knew anything at all about women I would jump in this market as well.

wulczer 15y ago

I'm really sorry, but this ticked off my code-review OCD and I couldn't help myself. You could use "Bla bla bla {0}, because {0} and {0}".format("women") to avoid using a tuple of "women". Or, if you're stuck with old Python, just use %(noun)s three times and format with {"noun": "women"}.

victork2 15y ago
That made me laugh! I was hoping the compiler inside everybody's brain would be able to detect this minor inefficiencies and correct them on the fly. And yes, I was using Python2.7, I wanted to use 3.0 but the sexist libraries haven't been updated. (Just joking). But thanks for pointing that out!

wilfra 15y ago

It's a fair a point but baby steps are required. A group of women founders doing women-y things is far better than no women founders. These will open the door for others in the future.

jwr 15y ago

My thoughts were similar. If you want equality between the sexes, just stop exposing the inequalities. Treat everyone the same. An article about "women in tech" makes no sense, it just promotes thinking about "men in tech" and "women in tech". If I were a woman running a company, I would prefer not to be featured in an article like that. I think these kinds of contradictions are more common in the U.S. than elsewhere. I have always wondered: if race plays no role, why does it figure as a question in the census and in most college applications?

hackinthebochs 15y ago
>My thoughts were similar. If you want equality between the sexes, just stop exposing the inequalities Pretending inequalities don't exist doesn't get rid of them. The only people who benefit from this line of thinking are those that are in privileged positions to begin with. >If I were a woman running a company, I would prefer not to be featured in an article like that. There goes that line again... I'm sure women can speak for themselves on this matter.

hackinthebochs 15y ago

> If I were a girl I would certainly feel kind of weird... The moment this or a similar statement is about to come out of your mouth, just stop yourself. There is no possible way a sentence that starts out like this will be anything but close-minded and/or self-serving. If women have a problem with women owned businesses being about "woman" things, they can say so. Do not presume to speak for other women from your place of privilege.