13 ms·

How to Break Out of the 'Female Entrepreneur' Trap

51 points by itsybaev 14y ago

ahoyhere 14y ago
I very much agree with the premise but she's not a very clear writer. I think she assumes the reader already knows what the problem is. My take is that the more people focus on identity ("female" "founder" "hacker" "HNer" whatever), the less they focus on results. Everything that happens in their lives gets viewed through this lens of identity. Unfortunately, that colors things in an unrealistic way: "This guy trolled me because I am female" vs "this guy trolled me, and he trolls a lot of other people with penises too, because he's a dick". It leaves you ridiculously vulnerable to identity attacks: "Top 10 Traits of Entrepreneurs" "Are you entrepreneur enough?" "Hacker News is a wasteland" "Designers Suck At X" Identity-involvement not only reduces your ability to see reality (you look for the first fit explanation to any occurrence, and identity is always with you), it also means you are really easy to troll and manipulate. Either by insulting or questioning YOUR identity, or massaging it and propping it up ("I have the traits of an entrepreneur! Yay!") ("Hackers will inherit the earth"), or attacking your lack of support for their identities ("Why doesn't your conference have 50% women?"). Finally, identity-involvement leads to a narrowing of experience -- "Do female founders do this? Can they? Will I be fulfilling a stereotype? Will I be letting people down?" "I'm a designer… designers don't x" "I'm a hacker, and hackers care about the hottest technologies…" It becomes about grooming, enforcing, and defending an image, rather than results. I see this a lot. It's a shame. I used to fall prey to it myself, wishing I wasn't a woman because of people thought "woman" meant -- something I had no interest in (hair, makeup, purses, women's magazines, women's meetups etc) -- and those other women "made me look bad". But then I realized what an ego trip that was. "Woman," too, is just a label, and by denying it, I was implicitly buying into its legitimacy. Now I just do whatever the fuck "Amy" does, which is my stereotyped identity sample size 1. A friend of mine was concerned that her girly clothes and love of makeup make her less credible as a spokesperson for women's issues. One of these seems like a concern about sexism… but both hers and my worries are actually about the same issue (identity). Like me, my friend also has learned to simply embrace who she is and not worry that she's "letting other women down" by simply doing what she loves. It sounds to me that this is what the author is getting at, she just doesn't lay it out that clearly. That's why she says things about women's symposiums, talking about femaleness, etc., stressing about / regretting (instead of using) the fact that you're the sole female in a thing[1], because those are identity involvements. These points of hers, I agree with. To those who will say that she is saying "act like a man" -- she doesn't. To those who will say "this is glossing over very real sexism" -- please see my example above about the troll. Often people assume that if something is (OR APPEARS to be) sexually related, it's sexism. They look at the first possible answer ("she's being trolled… she's a woman… it must be because she's a woman!"). But 9 times out of 10, the guy who insults a speaker for being a woman, insults another speaker for using JavaScript or being fat or wearing a suit, or looking like a hipster. That's not sexism, that's an equal opportunity dick, who simply seizes on the most vulnerable part of his victim's identity. Yes, identity. Is there real sexism? Absolutely. But is there any proof that women's conferences and angry blog posts help? Sure, it's annoying for some dude at a meetup to assume you're there with somebody else. It's also annoying for some woman on Twitter to loop me into "sexist technology" rants because I have breasts and therefore she expects I agree with her. But that's just life. You can't control what people think, not even of you. And the annoying people in both examples are just pattern matching, which usually works, and not making a value judgment about your person (aka sexism). [1] (Aside: stressing about being "the only x" in an environment is often even more about identity-confirmation -- I need other people Who Look/Think/Act Like Me to validate my choices are okay -- as it is about exclusion. This is the same reason some people love being "the only x" -- it confirms their identity as a renegade. Also, "the only x" is often not about physical facts (sex) but also about viewpoints.)
- tptacek 14y ago
  I think the angry blog posts help. I think most of HN is not aware of how pervasive sexism and gender privilege assumptions are in Startuplandia. We're commenting on Hacker News, a site run by someone who's most famous essay says outright that he wouldn't want to work at an early-stage startup with a woman with small children. In other words, I think even the people pushing gender privilege aren't fully aware that they're doing it. The angry posts keep the conversation alive, and that's the only way the culture is going to change. Women's conferences, no idea. I think the idea sounds silly, but then, I'm a guy. My wife, also a developer, also a startup person, is probably more on your side than on my side. Ironically, we started out with the opposite conflict: I didn't buy that male privilege was a real issue, and trusted on meritocracy to sort all this shit out. Now that's become her spiel, and mine the opposite. (Look, here's her disagreeing with me on this very thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5287829 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5287829)
  - ahoyhere 14y ago
    What we think and what there's evidence for are diff things. Obviously everybody's entitled to their opinions. There is research that suggests, however… * priming people to remind them that they belong to a stereotyped group actually causes people to perform worse (stereotypically) -- this is called stereotype threat, lots available if you googles * guilting people about their culture's bad behavior / their personal bad behavior actually causes them to dig in their heels, not to feel bad and then change (because feeling bad is an identity threat (irony)) -- the study I'm thinking of for this one took young Germans and primed them to think about the abuses perpetrated by nazis (before they were ever born) and then polled them on attitudes towards Jews and found that the people who were exposed to the priming were less sympathetic, not more; the researchers had reason to believe this was due to the emotional knee-jerk reaction to guilt And on and on. The research suggests that the furor is probably paradoxically counter-productive. Furthermore, people who speak about "women in x" presume to speak for everyone, but they sure don't speak for me or most of my female friends. But they are painting us with the same brush because we've got the same genitals. Bothersome. As for pg's opinions about startup-women-with-young-kids, it fits well with his other writing (programmers aren't just programmers, they're hackers; hackers are artists; nerds are unpopular in high school because they're way too awesome, etc) which is all about reinforcing identity. And of course he runs a business which depends on extraordinary (I would say over-)involvement with, and (over-)commitment to work. He also says he won't work with people who won't or can't move, too -- a non-gendered but identical outcome based on "devotion," not body parts or reproductive status.
helipad 14y ago
Title of article: "How to Break Out of the 'Female Entrepreneur' Trap" First line of article: "As the lone female founder of a bustling incubator..." - or is that whooshing sound the joke going over my head?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
tptacek 14y ago
Shelley Prevost has never been a startup operator. Her background is in psychological counseling, and she serves that role (in what looks like a team-coach or leadership-coach kind of role) at an incubator. That doesn't disqualify her from having opinions about how women should handle gender-based bias, team dynamic, and motivational challenges in startups. But it doesn't automatically qualify her, either. Meanwhile, I read this piece twice and it seems like it's full of platitudes. Maybe women leading startups face problems that are not best addressed by "Find other ways to get support, then keep moving" and "not living in the sting" and "amplifying your problems".
- zallarak 14y ago
  Actually, what she says makes total sense to me. I have an anecdote. After 9/11 (I look Eastern enough to face discrimination) a lot of my family and friends faced discrimination - some of them joined support groups, others campaigned, etc. I found that those that just focused on their work and vision, as opposed to the negativity, did far better than those who got sucked into amplifying their own problems. Time is so fleeting.
- Mz 14y ago
  It also commits the irony of talking about "women's issues" solely to badmouth the idea of doing just that, in essence. Count me as not a fan of the piece.
- Anechoic 14y ago
  "Find other ways to get support, then keep moving" As longs as those "other ways" don't including attending a women's symposium, and small talk. Sigh...
- chacham15 14y ago
  "Saying that an author lacks the authority to write about a topic is a variant of ad hominem—and a particularly useless sort, because good ideas often come from outsiders. The question is whether the author is correct or not. If his lack of authority caused him to make mistakes, point those out. And if it didn't, it's not a problem."[1] [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
adsenseclient 14y ago
Let me be frank: I received a 1 page resume of a female computer scientist, where the word "women" was mentioned 8 times (organizations, etc). We did not interview that person, since frankly we were scared.
- rdouble 14y ago
  Women are scary to computer nerds.
  - Mz 14y ago
    Women scare a lot of men. That is no doubt the real subtext of imagery of armed to the teeth, chain mail bikini clad women in certain types of fiction. But I have found it is socially unacceptable to remark on that fact.
  - unconed 14y ago
    More precisely, it's the way women can wind other computer nerds around their finger. The sword of attention cuts both ways.
  - mediacrisis 14y ago
    Wasn't aware the two were distinct.
  - dspeyer 14y ago
    You have completely missed the point of the comment that you are responding to. It's not that she's a woman, but that she put so much of her efforts into that identity. Or maybe you're joking, but jokes don't go well in discussions like this.
- drhayes9 14y ago
  Scared of what?
  - TallGuyShort 14y ago
    I believe they're referring to a fear of legal problems because the individual was obviously very passionate about the issue of women in tech. Not commenting on the legality of such a concern, just pointing out what they were likely concerned about.
hkmurakami 14y ago
This sounds alarmingly close to the dangerous "women can only succeed in business by acting like men" attitude that is prevalent in much of more traditional businesses and particularly in more conservative cultures around the world. There are real biases and subconscious prejudices against female entrepreneurs, female engineers, and female professionals in many industries in general that will most likely perpetuate if ignored (which imo is what this article suggests). While ignoring the possibility of potential pitfalls might work, it definitely doesn't seem like an elixir that will cure all ills.
- dspeyer 14y ago
  Your post seems to imply that solving problems and focusing on goals are male-specific patterns of action. That's a rather more dangerous meme.
tgrass 14y ago
Ignoring reality does not make it go away. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/05/171196714/the-jobs-with-the-biggest-and-smallest-pay-gaps-between-men-and-women http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/05/171196714/the-jobs...
- omonra 14y ago
  It has been mostly debunked - and is attributed to choices people make: Here is Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, explaining that the portion of the gender wage gap due to bias and prejudice is about 25% of the total gap. That is 75% of the gap is due to various career choices and career preferences that differ between men and women, and the remaining 25% is due to bias and prejudice. So if the wage gap is 24 cents on the dollar, the wage gap due to bias and prejudice is 6 cents. Still something to think about and work on, but a whole lot less inflammatory than 24 cents. http://www.freakonomics.com/2008/05/01/robert-reich-answers-your-labor-questions/ http://www.freakonomics.com/2008/05/01/robert-reich-answers-... “Q: I’d be interested to know your thoughts on the feminisation of poverty and the male-female wage differential. How much of that is due to career choice? A: Rough estimate: About 50 percent of the differential has to do with different career choices made by women and men. Twenty-five percent involves greater time women spend on care-taking of children and elderly relatives. The other 25 percent is due to bias and prejudice in the labor market.” (citation - this comment: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2012/12/17/profit-opportunity-if-women-earn-less-than-men/#comment-194717 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2012/12/17/profit-opportu...)
  - tgrass 14y ago
    Your second citation only cites your first, which is not a debunking but a comment in an interview - which says 75% of the gap is due to career choice - but the link I provided shows gaps by career, making that distinction moot.
    - omonra 14y ago
      Apologies - I included the citation because I just copied someone else's comment that I found appropriate. I felt bad not citing where it was from. With regard to your article - it does not analyze difference in hours worked. Perhaps someone working 3 days a week after taking a few years off for maternity leave should earn less than someone working full-time with no experience gaps? Please see my other comment in this thread that cites more thorough research.
kategleason 14y ago
holla!
startuup 14y ago
Being a woman entrepreneur, and having been part of an incubator for startups (ImagineK12), I have to agree with what she is saying in this article. Even though we were the ONLY women founder team in an incubator with more then 30 men, I never saw myself as different from my male co-founder peers. Its important to focus on results. Driving product, customers, team, company requires similar skills whether you are a woman, man, white, black, gay, straight. Using your contraint as an excuse will not let you see your full potential. I personally dont have anything against women organizations, but I try to not partake in them often because I dont feel the need to. I am happy to help other women succeed, but I am happy to help other men succeed too. If you stop looking at the world as 'us against them', there is a whole lot of new opportunity you will open up for yourself.

51 points by itsybaev 14y ago

I very much agree with the premise but she's not a very clear writer. I think she assumes the reader already knows what the problem is. My take is that the more people focus on identity ("female" "founder" "hacker" "HNer" whatever), the less they focus on results. Everything that happens in their lives gets viewed through this lens of identity. Unfortunately, that colors things in an unrealistic way: "This guy trolled me because I am female" vs "this guy trolled me, and he trolls a lot of other people with penises too, because he's a dick". It leaves you ridiculously vulnerable to identity attacks: "Top 10 Traits of Entrepreneurs" "Are you entrepreneur enough?" "Hacker News is a wasteland" "Designers Suck At X" Identity-involvement not only reduces your ability to see reality (you look for the first fit explanation to any occurrence, and identity is always with you), it also means you are really easy to troll and manipulate. Either by insulting or questioning YOUR identity, or massaging it and propping it up ("I have the traits of an entrepreneur! Yay!") ("Hackers will inherit the earth"), or attacking your lack of support for their identities ("Why doesn't your conference have 50% women?"). Finally, identity-involvement leads to a narrowing of experience -- "Do female founders do this? Can they? Will I be fulfilling a stereotype? Will I be letting people down?" "I'm a designer… designers don't x" "I'm a hacker, and hackers care about the hottest technologies…" It becomes about grooming, enforcing, and defending an image, rather than results. I see this a lot. It's a shame. I used to fall prey to it myself, wishing I wasn't a woman because of people thought "woman" meant -- something I had no interest in (hair, makeup, purses, women's magazines, women's meetups etc) -- and those other women "made me look bad". But then I realized what an ego trip that was. "Woman," too, is just a label, and by denying it, I was implicitly buying into its legitimacy. Now I just do whatever the fuck "Amy" does, which is my stereotyped identity sample size 1. A friend of mine was concerned that her girly clothes and love of makeup make her less credible as a spokesperson for women's issues. One of these seems like a concern about sexism… but both hers and my worries are actually about the same issue (identity). Like me, my friend also has learned to simply embrace who she is and not worry that she's "letting other women down" by simply doing what she loves. It sounds to me that this is what the author is getting at, she just doesn't lay it out that clearly. That's why she says things about women's symposiums, talking about femaleness, etc., stressing about / regretting (instead of using) the fact that you're the sole female in a thing[1], because those are identity involvements. These points of hers, I agree with. To those who will say that she is saying "act like a man" -- she doesn't. To those who will say "this is glossing over very real sexism" -- please see my example above about the troll. Often people assume that if something is (OR APPEARS to be) sexually related, it's sexism. They look at the first possible answer ("she's being trolled… she's a woman… it must be because she's a woman!"). But 9 times out of 10, the guy who insults a speaker for being a woman, insults another speaker for using JavaScript or being fat or wearing a suit, or looking like a hipster. That's not sexism, that's an equal opportunity dick, who simply seizes on the most vulnerable part of his victim's identity. Yes, identity. Is there real sexism? Absolutely. But is there any proof that women's conferences and angry blog posts help? Sure, it's annoying for some dude at a meetup to assume you're there with somebody else. It's also annoying for some woman on Twitter to loop me into "sexist technology" rants because I have breasts and therefore she expects I agree with her. But that's just life. You can't control what people think, not even of you. And the annoying people in both examples are just pattern matching, which usually works, and not making a value judgment about your person (aka sexism). [1] (Aside: stressing about being "the only x" in an environment is often even more about identity-confirmation -- I need other people Who Look/Think/Act Like Me to validate my choices are okay -- as it is about exclusion. This is the same reason some people love being "the only x" -- it confirms their identity as a renegade. Also, "the only x" is often not about physical facts (sex) but also about viewpoints.)

tptacek 14y ago
I think the angry blog posts help. I think most of HN is not aware of how pervasive sexism and gender privilege assumptions are in Startuplandia. We're commenting on Hacker News, a site run by someone who's most famous essay says outright that he wouldn't want to work at an early-stage startup with a woman with small children. In other words, I think even the people pushing gender privilege aren't fully aware that they're doing it. The angry posts keep the conversation alive, and that's the only way the culture is going to change. Women's conferences, no idea. I think the idea sounds silly, but then, I'm a guy. My wife, also a developer, also a startup person, is probably more on your side than on my side. Ironically, we started out with the opposite conflict: I didn't buy that male privilege was a real issue, and trusted on meritocracy to sort all this shit out. Now that's become her spiel, and mine the opposite. (Look, here's her disagreeing with me on this very thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5287829 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5287829)
- ahoyhere 14y ago
  What we think and what there's evidence for are diff things. Obviously everybody's entitled to their opinions. There is research that suggests, however… * priming people to remind them that they belong to a stereotyped group actually causes people to perform worse (stereotypically) -- this is called stereotype threat, lots available if you googles * guilting people about their culture's bad behavior / their personal bad behavior actually causes them to dig in their heels, not to feel bad and then change (because feeling bad is an identity threat (irony)) -- the study I'm thinking of for this one took young Germans and primed them to think about the abuses perpetrated by nazis (before they were ever born) and then polled them on attitudes towards Jews and found that the people who were exposed to the priming were less sympathetic, not more; the researchers had reason to believe this was due to the emotional knee-jerk reaction to guilt And on and on. The research suggests that the furor is probably paradoxically counter-productive. Furthermore, people who speak about "women in x" presume to speak for everyone, but they sure don't speak for me or most of my female friends. But they are painting us with the same brush because we've got the same genitals. Bothersome. As for pg's opinions about startup-women-with-young-kids, it fits well with his other writing (programmers aren't just programmers, they're hackers; hackers are artists; nerds are unpopular in high school because they're way too awesome, etc) which is all about reinforcing identity. And of course he runs a business which depends on extraordinary (I would say over-)involvement with, and (over-)commitment to work. He also says he won't work with people who won't or can't move, too -- a non-gendered but identical outcome based on "devotion," not body parts or reproductive status.

helipad 14y ago

Title of article: "How to Break Out of the 'Female Entrepreneur' Trap" First line of article: "As the lone female founder of a bustling incubator..." - or is that whooshing sound the joke going over my head?

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

tptacek 14y ago

Shelley Prevost has never been a startup operator. Her background is in psychological counseling, and she serves that role (in what looks like a team-coach or leadership-coach kind of role) at an incubator. That doesn't disqualify her from having opinions about how women should handle gender-based bias, team dynamic, and motivational challenges in startups. But it doesn't automatically qualify her, either. Meanwhile, I read this piece twice and it seems like it's full of platitudes. Maybe women leading startups face problems that are not best addressed by "Find other ways to get support, then keep moving" and "not living in the sting" and "amplifying your problems".

zallarak 14y ago
Actually, what she says makes total sense to me. I have an anecdote. After 9/11 (I look Eastern enough to face discrimination) a lot of my family and friends faced discrimination - some of them joined support groups, others campaigned, etc. I found that those that just focused on their work and vision, as opposed to the negativity, did far better than those who got sucked into amplifying their own problems. Time is so fleeting.
Mz 14y ago
It also commits the irony of talking about "women's issues" solely to badmouth the idea of doing just that, in essence. Count me as not a fan of the piece.
Anechoic 14y ago
"Find other ways to get support, then keep moving" As longs as those "other ways" don't including attending a women's symposium, and small talk. Sigh...
chacham15 14y ago
"Saying that an author lacks the authority to write about a topic is a variant of ad hominem—and a particularly useless sort, because good ideas often come from outsiders. The question is whether the author is correct or not. If his lack of authority caused him to make mistakes, point those out. And if it didn't, it's not a problem."[1] [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

adsenseclient 14y ago

Let me be frank: I received a 1 page resume of a female computer scientist, where the word "women" was mentioned 8 times (organizations, etc). We did not interview that person, since frankly we were scared.

rdouble 14y ago
Women are scary to computer nerds.
- Mz 14y ago
  Women scare a lot of men. That is no doubt the real subtext of imagery of armed to the teeth, chain mail bikini clad women in certain types of fiction. But I have found it is socially unacceptable to remark on that fact.
- unconed 14y ago
  More precisely, it's the way women can wind other computer nerds around their finger. The sword of attention cuts both ways.
- mediacrisis 14y ago
  Wasn't aware the two were distinct.
- dspeyer 14y ago
  You have completely missed the point of the comment that you are responding to. It's not that she's a woman, but that she put so much of her efforts into that identity. Or maybe you're joking, but jokes don't go well in discussions like this.
drhayes9 14y ago
Scared of what?
- TallGuyShort 14y ago
  I believe they're referring to a fear of legal problems because the individual was obviously very passionate about the issue of women in tech. Not commenting on the legality of such a concern, just pointing out what they were likely concerned about.

hkmurakami 14y ago

This sounds alarmingly close to the dangerous "women can only succeed in business by acting like men" attitude that is prevalent in much of more traditional businesses and particularly in more conservative cultures around the world. There are real biases and subconscious prejudices against female entrepreneurs, female engineers, and female professionals in many industries in general that will most likely perpetuate if ignored (which imo is what this article suggests). While ignoring the possibility of potential pitfalls might work, it definitely doesn't seem like an elixir that will cure all ills.

dspeyer 14y ago
Your post seems to imply that solving problems and focusing on goals are male-specific patterns of action. That's a rather more dangerous meme.

tgrass 14y ago

Ignoring reality does not make it go away. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/05/171196714/the-jobs-with-the-biggest-and-smallest-pay-gaps-between-men-and-women http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/05/171196714/the-jobs...

omonra 14y ago
It has been mostly debunked - and is attributed to choices people make: Here is Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, explaining that the portion of the gender wage gap due to bias and prejudice is about 25% of the total gap. That is 75% of the gap is due to various career choices and career preferences that differ between men and women, and the remaining 25% is due to bias and prejudice. So if the wage gap is 24 cents on the dollar, the wage gap due to bias and prejudice is 6 cents. Still something to think about and work on, but a whole lot less inflammatory than 24 cents. http://www.freakonomics.com/2008/05/01/robert-reich-answers-your-labor-questions/ http://www.freakonomics.com/2008/05/01/robert-reich-answers-... “Q: I’d be interested to know your thoughts on the feminisation of poverty and the male-female wage differential. How much of that is due to career choice? A: Rough estimate: About 50 percent of the differential has to do with different career choices made by women and men. Twenty-five percent involves greater time women spend on care-taking of children and elderly relatives. The other 25 percent is due to bias and prejudice in the labor market.” (citation - this comment: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2012/12/17/profit-opportunity-if-women-earn-less-than-men/#comment-194717 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2012/12/17/profit-opportu...)
- tgrass 14y ago
  Your second citation only cites your first, which is not a debunking but a comment in an interview - which says 75% of the gap is due to career choice - but the link I provided shows gaps by career, making that distinction moot.
  - omonra 14y ago
    Apologies - I included the citation because I just copied someone else's comment that I found appropriate. I felt bad not citing where it was from. With regard to your article - it does not analyze difference in hours worked. Perhaps someone working 3 days a week after taking a few years off for maternity leave should earn less than someone working full-time with no experience gaps? Please see my other comment in this thread that cites more thorough research.

kategleason 14y ago

holla!

startuup 14y ago

Being a woman entrepreneur, and having been part of an incubator for startups (ImagineK12), I have to agree with what she is saying in this article. Even though we were the ONLY women founder team in an incubator with more then 30 men, I never saw myself as different from my male co-founder peers. Its important to focus on results. Driving product, customers, team, company requires similar skills whether you are a woman, man, white, black, gay, straight. Using your contraint as an excuse will not let you see your full potential. I personally dont have anything against women organizations, but I try to not partake in them often because I dont feel the need to. I am happy to help other women succeed, but I am happy to help other men succeed too. If you stop looking at the world as 'us against them', there is a whole lot of new opportunity you will open up for yourself.