3 ms·

Uh, pg straight up states that they are under represented. "While 3 out of 12 is not 50-50,"

by pyrocat 13y ago

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.
  - Dewie 13y ago
    First, it's not only a question of paychecks but about how it affects society as a whole. That you want more women leaders because you want the decision makers to have less biases and blindsights, on average. Perhaps you also want more men elementary school teachers because you want more male role models for children, and perhaps less chances of biased behaviour towards schoolchildren based on gender. Not just because you want the men who are already wanting to be elementary teachers to have an easier time. These two seem more important on the societal level than bringing more women in to tech and more men into nursing. Secondly, this looks similar to the argument that 'men are over represented in positions of power, so men are better off as a whole'. This assumes that men are a collective soup that automatically benefits from being collectively better off. Perhaps by assuming that more men in positions of wealth and power means that all men have an easier time getting into it, ignoring that men come from different backgrounds and social classes and may not ever get a shot at something like that, anyway. I doubt that many have the conundrum of becoming a big-shot CEO, or taking on a high-risk fisherman job because he needs the risk premium (yes, you've probably already read about men being over-represented in some jobs that aren't really featured items on 'career day'. They come up often enough in these threads). Another assumption behind this is that men necessarily benefit from other men being in power. That's a problematic assumption. Why would all men necessarily benefit from that? In fact, assume that a man in power things of women as inferior, and only think that men are a threat to his position of power; then he has a motivation to keep men down, or at least the swaths of men that aren't immediately useful to him.
  - klipt 13y ago
    > Let's work on helping the more disadvantaged party first, yeah? You're right, we should pay garbagemen and janitors more. Maybe that will encourage more women to go into those fields.
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.

Uh, pg straight up states that they are under represented. "While 3 out of 12 is not 50-50,"

by 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.
- Dewie 13y ago
  First, it's not only a question of paychecks but about how it affects society as a whole. That you want more women leaders because you want the decision makers to have less biases and blindsights, on average. Perhaps you also want more men elementary school teachers because you want more male role models for children, and perhaps less chances of biased behaviour towards schoolchildren based on gender. Not just because you want the men who are already wanting to be elementary teachers to have an easier time. These two seem more important on the societal level than bringing more women in to tech and more men into nursing. Secondly, this looks similar to the argument that 'men are over represented in positions of power, so men are better off as a whole'. This assumes that men are a collective soup that automatically benefits from being collectively better off. Perhaps by assuming that more men in positions of wealth and power means that all men have an easier time getting into it, ignoring that men come from different backgrounds and social classes and may not ever get a shot at something like that, anyway. I doubt that many have the conundrum of becoming a big-shot CEO, or taking on a high-risk fisherman job because he needs the risk premium (yes, you've probably already read about men being over-represented in some jobs that aren't really featured items on 'career day'. They come up often enough in these threads). Another assumption behind this is that men necessarily benefit from other men being in power. That's a problematic assumption. Why would all men necessarily benefit from that? In fact, assume that a man in power things of women as inferior, and only think that men are a threat to his position of power; then he has a motivation to keep men down, or at least the swaths of men that aren't immediately useful to him.
- klipt 13y ago
  > Let's work on helping the more disadvantaged party first, yeah? You're right, we should pay garbagemen and janitors more. Maybe that will encourage more women to go into those fields.

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.