5 ms·

> And while it's possible for women to be sexist too, if you think Jessica, Kirsty, and Carolynn are sexist, I'd like to see you say it to their faces. That...

by zorpner 13y ago

> And while it's possible for women to be sexist too, if you think Jessica, Kirsty, and Carolynn are sexist, I'd like to see you say it to their faces. That... is not an argument? There's ample evidence to show that members of underrepresented groups within individual companies/industries experience unconscious biases in hiring/ranking/etc, even towards groups of which they're a member.

saraid216 13y ago
Arguments are for little people. When you're at the upper end of the power structure, you give statements, because they're fact. Because you said so.
- jedmeyers 13y ago
  Care to provide some arguments to support your statement?
lancewiggs 13y ago
In this case are clearly not under represented if you reflect that PG also says they wield genuine power at YC.
- pyrocat 13y ago
  Uh, pg straight up states that they are under represented. "While 3 out of 12 is not 50-50,"
  - jedmeyers 13y ago
    It only works if you consider quantity to be the only measure of representation.
  - msandford 13y ago
    And men are under-represented in nursing (at 6%). Human beings bias themselves in addition to the biases that society puts on them. http://www.discovernursing.com/men-in-nursing http://www.discovernursing.com/men-in-nursing As long as the ratio isn't much worse than 3:1 (men or women are at least 25% of the workforce) either way I'd argue that it's a pretty balanced work environment all things considered. Shooting for 50/50 equality would potentially make more inequality problems than it solves, just for a different subset of the population. In other words in nursing if you paid men 2x what women make you'd sort that shit out it quite a hurry and get a bunch of dudes helping take care of people. I'm not sure you could find anyone who would agree that it's an equitable or desirable way to achieve the "right" outcome, though.
    - pyrocat 13y ago
      Equality is definitely a goal, I think we should have more male nurses, but that's not really a priority when men are over represented in most of the higher paid fields (doctors, lawyers, CEOs .etc). Let's work on helping the more disadvantaged party first, yeah?
      - stonemetal 13y ago
        I don't know if we drove some men into nursing from high paying engineering jobs then there would be more space for women in engineering. Salaries would raise for everyone still in engineering so it would become more attractive to women.
      - msandford 13y ago
        I'm an engineer. I was in grad school at the same time as some of my friends were in law school. I know lawyers who make $40k per year or even less if they're public defenders. Prosecutors don't make a lot more than public defenders. Then I moved to Houston for work. There are plenty of jobs out here that pay substantially more than what your average doctor or lawyer makes. I know of welders who are making $80/hr, quadruple what some lawyers I know earn. I know of machinists who own their house and cars and boats and whatever. I think you're confusing prestige with pay which is totally understandable. But with the education bubble having happened and the resultant unbalance in the workforce prestige != paid well, nor does "uneducated" mean bad pay. The really great part of all this is that welding or machining or some of these skilled trades are actually much easier than startup founding. It's nearly impossible to get filthy rich that way (not that a startup is any guarantee but there are more billionaire startup founders than billionaire welders) but it's much, much harder to go broke. In other words the income distribution has a shorter right tail but also a shorter left one. Trying to get more women as startup founders as a way to reduce income inequality seems like a fools errand due to the speculative nature of startups. I'm not saying that there should be fewer women founders, not at all. But to suggest that we can have more equality in the world by balancing out startups totally misses the bigger picture. It's like pushing for more women princes in Saudi Arabia. Yeah men dominate that right now, but even if you made it 100% equal you're still talking about a trivial percentage of the world's population.
  - lancewiggs 13y ago
    Sure - my wording was poor. I mean to say that the women wield enough collective and individual power to ensure that they are not an ignored minority. It's not yet close enough to 50/50, the female voices are clearly central to the group. Let's remember that this is a journey, that YC seems to be at the forefront of it and we should encourage the progress to date while maintaining high expectations for the future. Meanwhile there are genuine benefits to being at the forefront of diversity, as it widens the pool of awesome founders. Moreover other players tend to take note of what YC does, and as the evidence builds this will help change the industry. This reminds me of the industry groups going after Apple for their manufacturing practises, which turn out to be amongst the best in the game. While I felt that Apple was unjustly accused, they did open their books about their sustainable practices, and that's helped improve industry expectations.
baddox 13y ago
Can you provide an example of something that you would consider to be a valid argument or piece of evidence?
- mtrimpe 13y ago
  He's not talking about evidence as much as a lack of acknowledgement of internalized oppression: the fact that there are plenty women who believe their rightful place is indeed in the kitchen, plenty of gay men who think gay love is indeed disgusting, etc. etc. If any evidence would be relevant here it would be something like results of implicit association tests on the topic. I for one would be very interested in the (effects of the) results.
mtrimpe 13y ago
I also still can't reconcile how a month and a half ago pg apparently believed that Silicon Valley is a near perfect meritocracy (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6795606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6795606) and now he's been working hard(er than average) to address systemic inequalities. For the record though; I thoroughly applaud his efforts on improving gender equality and I very much appreciate the first baby steps he's taking here on behalf of the industry. I really hope though that one day he'll be able to look back on this essay and realise this was really only just the start of it.
- the_watcher 13y ago
  In general, meritocracy's tend to have market inefficiencies. It's one of their traits that allows those who should rise based on merit but may be held back by other factors to thrive: by exploiting those inefficiencies. Female founders may currently be the market inefficiency that will be corrected next, the same way young founders were when YC was founded. It's not a perfect analogy, but the Rays and A's have been able to be some of the most successful franchises in baseball simply by targeting those inefficiencies. Hopefully something similar happens in the founder world soon. Also, a bit unrelated but since Billy Beane became GM, the A's have never won less that 74 games. It seems like exploiting market inefficiencies is extraordinarily effective at minimizing downside risk.
- jkrems 13y ago
  Let's stay with what he said: > Which it presumably isn't, entirely, but only because nothing is entirely. He's saying that a useful definition of meritocracy does not mean that everyone is only judged by his abilities. He's saying explicitly that such a thing does not exist. Further: > And if SV is only as much of a meritocracy as math, that's pretty good. I don't know how you jump from "pretty good" to "near perfect meritocracy".
  - mtrimpe 13y ago
    This was on an article about one of Silicon Valley's particular problems with diversity being that it thought it was more meritocratic than it actually was. Given that context pg then goes on to use math as a rhetoric device to illustrate an inherently perfect meritocracy and then states SV is nearly as good; hence 'near perfect'.
Crito 13y ago
What evidence is there that these particular women are sexist? You are judging particular people based on statistics that you think you know about groups of people. I don't think I have to explain the irony here.
- zorpner 13y ago
  I'm not judging particular people (I have no opinion on the individuals mentioned), and I honestly haven't kept up with this whole narrative so there are certainly no statistics I can cite. I'm saying that stating that someone belongs to a class is entirely insufficient to demonstrate the assertion that they are not biased against that class, particularly in a context where that class is systemically biased against.
  - Crito 13y ago
    PG is asserting that these particular women, Jessica, Kirsty, and Carolynn, are not sexists. Responding with statistics about women in general, rather than relevant information about those particular women, is problematic.
    - _delirium 13y ago
      The personal opinions of individuals are pretty irrelevant when discussing systemic issues, so I don't see that as very productive to focus on. In either direction, actually; personally well-meaning people can nonetheless be complicit in systemic racism/sexism/etc., and personally bigoted people might not be. I do think YC is probably more open to women as founders than the VC norm, but it's the overall statistics that convince me of that more than some attempt to discern what its principals personally think about things. That was the most interesting part of this post as well, talking about what YC is actually doing.
      - Crito 13y ago
        Systems are made of (or by) people. Systematic biases are not curses handed down by gods, they originate from somewhere within organizations. It is therefore relevant to consider the individuals involved when we are talking about systematic biases of the system which is composed of them. You cannot talk about the biases of YC without talking about the biases of the people who comprise YC. It would be like talking about the structural integrity of a building while trying to never consider the physical properties of the building materials. (Of course, even if we strike off this entire thread of conversation as irrelevant, that does not make the comment I was responding to any less problematic.)
mwetzler 13y ago
Everyone is sexist to some degree, even women, even me. We all have unconscious biases because that's the way the human brain works. We do pattern matching. And we currently live in an environment where women are _usually_ not amazing programmers and startup CEOS. Admitting that would add a lot more strength to PG's piece. For more info and facts on unconscious bias and women in tech: http://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/ncwit_thefacts_rev2010.pdf http://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/ncwit_the... Unconscious bias is the reason a resume with a female name is rated more poorly, even by women.
wpietri 13y ago
Yes. A fine example is that female bio professors are biased against female bio grad students: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/science/bias-persists-against-women-of-science-a-study-says.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/science/bias-persists-agai... Sexism is everybody's problem. (Although as a guy who has benefited from it, I think it's my job to use that unearned power to reduce the inequity.)

by zorpner 13y ago

saraid216 13y ago

Arguments are for little people. When you're at the upper end of the power structure, you give statements, because they're fact. Because you said so.

jedmeyers 13y ago
Care to provide some arguments to support your statement?

lancewiggs 13y ago

In this case are clearly not under represented if you reflect that PG also says they wield genuine power at YC.

pyrocat 13y ago
Uh, pg straight up states that they are under represented. "While 3 out of 12 is not 50-50,"
- jedmeyers 13y ago
  It only works if you consider quantity to be the only measure of representation.
- msandford 13y ago
  And men are under-represented in nursing (at 6%). Human beings bias themselves in addition to the biases that society puts on them. http://www.discovernursing.com/men-in-nursing http://www.discovernursing.com/men-in-nursing As long as the ratio isn't much worse than 3:1 (men or women are at least 25% of the workforce) either way I'd argue that it's a pretty balanced work environment all things considered. Shooting for 50/50 equality would potentially make more inequality problems than it solves, just for a different subset of the population. In other words in nursing if you paid men 2x what women make you'd sort that shit out it quite a hurry and get a bunch of dudes helping take care of people. I'm not sure you could find anyone who would agree that it's an equitable or desirable way to achieve the "right" outcome, though.
  - pyrocat 13y ago
    Equality is definitely a goal, I think we should have more male nurses, but that's not really a priority when men are over represented in most of the higher paid fields (doctors, lawyers, CEOs .etc). Let's work on helping the more disadvantaged party first, yeah?
    - stonemetal 13y ago
      I don't know if we drove some men into nursing from high paying engineering jobs then there would be more space for women in engineering. Salaries would raise for everyone still in engineering so it would become more attractive to women.
    - msandford 13y ago
      I'm an engineer. I was in grad school at the same time as some of my friends were in law school. I know lawyers who make $40k per year or even less if they're public defenders. Prosecutors don't make a lot more than public defenders. Then I moved to Houston for work. There are plenty of jobs out here that pay substantially more than what your average doctor or lawyer makes. I know of welders who are making $80/hr, quadruple what some lawyers I know earn. I know of machinists who own their house and cars and boats and whatever. I think you're confusing prestige with pay which is totally understandable. But with the education bubble having happened and the resultant unbalance in the workforce prestige != paid well, nor does "uneducated" mean bad pay. The really great part of all this is that welding or machining or some of these skilled trades are actually much easier than startup founding. It's nearly impossible to get filthy rich that way (not that a startup is any guarantee but there are more billionaire startup founders than billionaire welders) but it's much, much harder to go broke. In other words the income distribution has a shorter right tail but also a shorter left one. Trying to get more women as startup founders as a way to reduce income inequality seems like a fools errand due to the speculative nature of startups. I'm not saying that there should be fewer women founders, not at all. But to suggest that we can have more equality in the world by balancing out startups totally misses the bigger picture. It's like pushing for more women princes in Saudi Arabia. Yeah men dominate that right now, but even if you made it 100% equal you're still talking about a trivial percentage of the world's population.
- lancewiggs 13y ago
  Sure - my wording was poor. I mean to say that the women wield enough collective and individual power to ensure that they are not an ignored minority. It's not yet close enough to 50/50, the female voices are clearly central to the group. Let's remember that this is a journey, that YC seems to be at the forefront of it and we should encourage the progress to date while maintaining high expectations for the future. Meanwhile there are genuine benefits to being at the forefront of diversity, as it widens the pool of awesome founders. Moreover other players tend to take note of what YC does, and as the evidence builds this will help change the industry. This reminds me of the industry groups going after Apple for their manufacturing practises, which turn out to be amongst the best in the game. While I felt that Apple was unjustly accused, they did open their books about their sustainable practices, and that's helped improve industry expectations.

baddox 13y ago

Can you provide an example of something that you would consider to be a valid argument or piece of evidence?

mtrimpe 13y ago
He's not talking about evidence as much as a lack of acknowledgement of internalized oppression: the fact that there are plenty women who believe their rightful place is indeed in the kitchen, plenty of gay men who think gay love is indeed disgusting, etc. etc. If any evidence would be relevant here it would be something like results of implicit association tests on the topic. I for one would be very interested in the (effects of the) results.

mtrimpe 13y ago

I also still can't reconcile how a month and a half ago pg apparently believed that Silicon Valley is a near perfect meritocracy (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6795606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6795606) and now he's been working hard(er than average) to address systemic inequalities. For the record though; I thoroughly applaud his efforts on improving gender equality and I very much appreciate the first baby steps he's taking here on behalf of the industry. I really hope though that one day he'll be able to look back on this essay and realise this was really only just the start of it.

the_watcher 13y ago
In general, meritocracy's tend to have market inefficiencies. It's one of their traits that allows those who should rise based on merit but may be held back by other factors to thrive: by exploiting those inefficiencies. Female founders may currently be the market inefficiency that will be corrected next, the same way young founders were when YC was founded. It's not a perfect analogy, but the Rays and A's have been able to be some of the most successful franchises in baseball simply by targeting those inefficiencies. Hopefully something similar happens in the founder world soon. Also, a bit unrelated but since Billy Beane became GM, the A's have never won less that 74 games. It seems like exploiting market inefficiencies is extraordinarily effective at minimizing downside risk.
jkrems 13y ago
Let's stay with what he said: > Which it presumably isn't, entirely, but only because nothing is entirely. He's saying that a useful definition of meritocracy does not mean that everyone is only judged by his abilities. He's saying explicitly that such a thing does not exist. Further: > And if SV is only as much of a meritocracy as math, that's pretty good. I don't know how you jump from "pretty good" to "near perfect meritocracy".
- mtrimpe 13y ago
  This was on an article about one of Silicon Valley's particular problems with diversity being that it thought it was more meritocratic than it actually was. Given that context pg then goes on to use math as a rhetoric device to illustrate an inherently perfect meritocracy and then states SV is nearly as good; hence 'near perfect'.

Crito 13y ago

What evidence is there that these particular women are sexist? You are judging particular people based on statistics that you think you know about groups of people. I don't think I have to explain the irony here.

zorpner 13y ago
I'm not judging particular people (I have no opinion on the individuals mentioned), and I honestly haven't kept up with this whole narrative so there are certainly no statistics I can cite. I'm saying that stating that someone belongs to a class is entirely insufficient to demonstrate the assertion that they are not biased against that class, particularly in a context where that class is systemically biased against.
- Crito 13y ago
  PG is asserting that these particular women, Jessica, Kirsty, and Carolynn, are not sexists. Responding with statistics about women in general, rather than relevant information about those particular women, is problematic.
  - _delirium 13y ago
    The personal opinions of individuals are pretty irrelevant when discussing systemic issues, so I don't see that as very productive to focus on. In either direction, actually; personally well-meaning people can nonetheless be complicit in systemic racism/sexism/etc., and personally bigoted people might not be. I do think YC is probably more open to women as founders than the VC norm, but it's the overall statistics that convince me of that more than some attempt to discern what its principals personally think about things. That was the most interesting part of this post as well, talking about what YC is actually doing.
    - Crito 13y ago
      Systems are made of (or by) people. Systematic biases are not curses handed down by gods, they originate from somewhere within organizations. It is therefore relevant to consider the individuals involved when we are talking about systematic biases of the system which is composed of them. You cannot talk about the biases of YC without talking about the biases of the people who comprise YC. It would be like talking about the structural integrity of a building while trying to never consider the physical properties of the building materials. (Of course, even if we strike off this entire thread of conversation as irrelevant, that does not make the comment I was responding to any less problematic.)

mwetzler 13y ago

Everyone is sexist to some degree, even women, even me. We all have unconscious biases because that's the way the human brain works. We do pattern matching. And we currently live in an environment where women are _usually_ not amazing programmers and startup CEOS. Admitting that would add a lot more strength to PG's piece. For more info and facts on unconscious bias and women in tech: http://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/ncwit_thefacts_rev2010.pdf http://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/ncwit_the... Unconscious bias is the reason a resume with a female name is rated more poorly, even by women.

wpietri 13y ago

Yes. A fine example is that female bio professors are biased against female bio grad students: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/science/bias-persists-against-women-of-science-a-study-says.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/science/bias-persists-agai... Sexism is everybody's problem. (Although as a guy who has benefited from it, I think it's my job to use that unearned power to reduce the inequity.)