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Female Founders Conference 2015 applications are open

102 points by katm 12y ago

JoergR 12y ago
While this is a good conference with amazing women speakers, let it also be noted that this means that Y Combinator means the continue being the gatekeeper of who is allowed in Tech and control the narrative by which entry and participation is allowed. With white men being on top, this is a frightening prospect.
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taprun 12y ago
I always wonder if these "female only" conferences, awards and events are beneficial for women. Many folks might (mistakenly) see them as an admission that women can't hack it on a level playing field. Such thoughts would only serve to harden their chauvinistic mental models and cause gender discrimination to be more (rather than less) likely in the future.
- krzrak 12y ago
  I wonder, what would be the reaction if somebody organises "Male Founders Conference" or "White Men Coders Group" ;)
  - zorpner 12y ago
    When the situations are asymmetrical, there's no insight to be gained by positing symmetric opposition.
  - EliRivers 12y ago
    Those have been happening on a regular basis for years.
    - tonystubblebine 12y ago
      At my first OSCON conference, they'd converted the women's bathroom into a second men's bathroom. So yeah.
    - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
      I'm not well familiar with it, so might I ask if the Female Founders Conference is strictly limited in admission to women only? If so, your analogy doesn't pan out.
      - Impossible 12y ago
        Although there isn't anything that says whether or not it's women only, the application[1] has a gender option, so at the very least they are accepting applications from men. There isn't any language that says they are explicitly excluding men, although I'm sure they'd like a more balanced ratio than other startup events, and it's likely that the majority of the attendees will be women. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/ffc https://news.ycombinator.com/ffc
  - untog 12y ago
    You don't need to organise them, they already exist by default.
    - ps4fanboy 12y ago
      To draw a parallel in an industry that went though this process some time ago, in Australia journalism was a male dominated industry and they organised programs to encourage women to enter the industry. Things like the women in journalism awards and press club events aimed at women. In the most recent one they announced the statistic that 65% of journalists in Australia are now women despite this the female targeted events continue. Once you have these events its hard to give them up and if someone was to now organised similar events aimed at the minority group men the reaction would be very hostile.
- dang 12y ago
  Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - grimtrigger 12y ago
    This conference is tightly tied into current politics. If you want to keep politics of news.ycombinator then the obvious solution is to remove this post (or the comments section entirely). -------- Edit: What I'm trying to say is that taprun didn't introduce the topic, katm did. Why are you singling out taprun and not katm?
  - JoergR 12y ago
    Really? Dude can blubber oblivious sexist things about "even playfields" but answers have to be something new? What is there new to say about the same old sexist narratives? Nothing? Right, so basically the guidelines just enforce sexism. Good job, that's exactly why I despise Hackernews.
- drcomputer 12y ago
  As a female developer / hacker / mathy techy computer science person (for 20 years) who has never been to one; my only impression of them is the commentary I see from people online talking about their controversy. Otherwise, they are like fog to me: I can comment neither positively nor negatively nor even neutrally on whether they genuinely add or detract from my experience or interests. Lots of people seem to have opinions on these conventions, but to be seriously seriously honest, it is very rare I have been involved in any tech thing where, if you mandated that 90% of the participants must be male, that it would change the demographic. That is a satirical way of demonstrating that most technical, mathematical, engineering, and computer things are male dominated purely by their origin and lineage of development. It's like asking a 14 year old boy to go lingerie shopping. People react because it's not the norm. The reaction is neither good nor bad. I react to people too.
  - lotharbot 12y ago
    Speaking as a former 14 year old boy who went on all sorts of embarrassing shopping trips with my mother (and sometimes 4 younger sisters), I would say the reactions other people had were the least significant effect. The most significant effect is that as an adult, I'm can walk into the maxi pad section and find the ones that meet the required criteria. If I ever have a daughter I need to take bra shopping, I can handle that. Developing confidence and competence to do those things is way more important than the reactions of other people. If a female founder conference helps women develop confidence or competence, or helps connect them to customers or investors or future employees, good for them. Those benefits will last a lot longer than whatever silly (over)reactions people have.
    - drcomputer 12y ago
      Yea. I have managed to develop confidence over the years. Despite the fact that I continue to obsess over hair, perfume, lots of makeup and fancy clothes, every time I go to code or work on something hard, I remember who I am. I'm the kid who spent hours pouring over numerical patterns and graphs after I learned about prime numbers. I'm the kid who grew up playing titles like "the logical zoombinis", " the incredible machine" and "treasure math storm". I had chemistry kits and microscopes, and I hacked my tamagotchis, neopets, and PC games with whatever I could figure out. These are the things that help me, when I stand in front of my wrote board, alone, trying to teach myself category theory while mashing together MVCs and relational databases in order to have a formalized way of reasoning no matter what systems I exist in. I at least have demonstrated to myself so far that set theory is useful for development. This stuff just makes me feel like I might one day achieve my goal of being 'crazy genius'. I hate when I let culture make me feel like I don't even fit into that group of people, just because I don't look like them.
- lotharbot 12y ago
  There are a lot of people who are affected by conferences like this, with some positive and some negative effects. I suspect the balance is strongly positive. The possible increased discrimination from those with pre-existing chauvinistic mental models can be weighed against decreased discrimination from those whose pre-existing chauvinistic models are challenged by seeing capable female founders, which I think would be the larger effect. And there are bigger and more direct benefits: networking with other founders, getting your startup / product out there in front of more potential customers and investors, media coverage, etc.
  - gizmo686 12y ago
    The concern isn't (exclusively) increased discrimination from those with pre-existing chauvinistic mental models; you also have to be concerned about people who see this type of event and subconsciously infer that it means that females are inferior.
    - tptacek 12y ago
      You have to worry about those people anyways, because they are broken.
      - gizmo686 12y ago
        How so? They are incorrect, as subconscious inferences often are, but the conclusion is not a-priori unreasonable, and giving a group a handicap is often done because, all else being equal, they are not as good as the other group. Again, you can (as I do) disagree with this assessment and think that it should be obviously wrong with a little bit of thought and knowledge of the actual situation, but as a subconsious inference it seams reasonable. In fact, if you recall the "separate cannot be equal" ruling in relationship to racial discrimination, one of the arguments was that even if the separate accommodations were in fact equal (which they weren't) simply having black only schools creates a feeling of inferiority. EDIT: Minor correction. After looking up the opinion for separate cannot be equal (Brown v Board of education [1]), it turns out that, in the opinion of the court, accommodations were in fact equal (or being equalized), which is what forced an examination of the separate but equal doctrine itself. I'll just leave this quote here: "To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone." [1] [1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/347/483#writing-USSC_CR_0347_0483_ZO http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/347/483#writing...
- santacluster 12y ago
  "Let's not provoke them" is a survival strategy, not a winning strategy. I don't think mere survival is the goal here.
- smokey_the_bear 12y ago
  I used to doubt the need for conferences like this, when I was in college in a 6% female major. I had tons of male friends and was completely comfortable. But as I've gotten older and worked and become a mother, I've really started to appreciate the opportunities to meet technical women. It seems to me it's a socially different experience to be a woman in engineering than a man in engineering. So perhaps some men sit around and use these conferences as an excuse to be chauvinistic, but the conference isn't for them, it's for women. Though, ironically, last year I couldn't go because I didn't have a babysitter.
  - nobodyshere 12y ago
    Just for a second imagine a men-only conference for developers. Shit-storm would be stronger than anything you've ever seen. While I agree that IT industry is generally dominated by white men (no racism implied, I simply haven't seen a single black programmer yet), such events might be useful for women, but still would be interesting for me as a man to attend. I'd like to know what's going on on the other side of this whole situation. How are we going to bring equality here if we are separating ourselves from each other? I recently visited a conference in Moscow (Highload++), and there wasn't a single woman presenting. That's just sad. In the company I work for right now, there are probably about 10 women writing code vs over a 1000 men.
    - lotharbot 12y ago
      I've seen no indication that men would be blocked from attending this conference.
      - parennoob 12y ago
        "If you are thinking about starting a startup or are in the midst of running one, we hope hearing stories from other women will inspire you to take the leap (or keep going!)." This wording would seem to imply that the conference attendance, or at least the expected audience is restricted to women. The invitation request (https://news.ycombinator.com/ffc https://news.ycombinator.com/ffc) doesn't explicitly state it one way or the other, but does have a field for "Gender".
- colmvp 12y ago
  Indeed. Should we also make Black men only conferences to encourage more male Black engineers and cofounders?
  - oldmanjay 12y ago
    Why not? Does the existence of something not aimed at you somehow make your life less worth living?
    - philipjoubert 12y ago
      Actually this kind of thing gets fairly complex. Consider for instance a scenario where the government was sponsoring an event like this - would that be OK? Or consider a company that has a table reserved in their cafeteria specifically for black men. Would that be OK? It seems as a society we've decided that a certain basis of discrimination is fine while others are not. For example having a table exclusively for executives is fine, while one based on race or gender is not.
      - oldmanjay 12y ago
        You can spin up hypotheticals until sundown if that helps you feel good, but I would be a lot more interested in the conversation if you even pretended to address the point I raised. It wasn't that discrimination is fine, it was "the existence of things not aimed at you does not ruin your life"
  - kaitai 12y ago
    That would be great! I'd be interested in hearing a panel discussion.
- Jun8 12y ago
  Check out the spot on top answer to this SE question about why there are separate tournaments for men and women in chess: http://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/6282/why-are-there-separate-tournaments-for-men-and-women http://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/6282/why-are-there-.... The gist is: At novice level women-only events are very useful, at expert level they tend to be constricting.
sremani 12y ago
I am not against conferences like these - women to women connection is different from women to mixed crowd. Actually, I would not mind men only conferences either if they improve the social environment for all the attendees.
- w1ntermute 12y ago
  > women to women connection is different from women to mixed crowd Why is it socially acceptable to say this, but it's not socially acceptable to say "men to men connection is different from men to mixed crowd"?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - jobu 12y ago
    It's only taboo in a business sense. No women I know have ever had an issue with my friends and I going on a "guys weekend" trip. Men to men is a very different connection and we do things that just don't happen around wives and girlfriends - drinking, fishing, shooting things, etc. In the business world it's taboo because it would be seen as colluding against women and minorities. Historically (and even currently), business and politics have been dominated by white males, and that tends to give an advantage of familiarity and incumbency. Women-only, or minority-only conferences like these are a chance to balance the scales a little.
  - rockmeamedee 12y ago
    It's not unacceptable to say it. To say "We should have men only events because of that"(or for any reason to benefit men) is mean. The reason it's mean is that we've had thousands of years of men-only events in places that should have been mixed, and now men have an incredible upper hand in tech. When men are the minority gender here, we can talk about setting those up.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    Because men are collectively better off than women in this sector. Your handle refers to a character in the sci-fi novel Neuromancer, an artificial intelligence that is prevented from linking up with another one to pursue their mutual destiny by an arbitrary human prejudice against artificial intelligence enforced by administrative fiat. In fact, the urge to circumvent this established power structure is the motivating force that drives the plot. Perhaps you can find a way to generalize from one disenfranchised class that you identify or empathize with in some fashion, artificial intelligences, to another that you apparently don't, women.
ps4fanboy 12y ago
If women only conferences are good at helping women network and communicate safely, I really think we could apply the same argument to men, do we just disregard men who are to afraid or feel uncomfortable around women because we already have too many successful men who dont suffer from this problem?
- deleted 12y ago
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  - ps4fanboy 12y ago
    While I understand what you are saying, it isnt a fair assertion as some men are very much on fire not every male has the same perceived privileges afforded to the "straight white male" stereo type.
    - michaelchisari 12y ago
      Maybe, but not because they're men. I'd love to see more people from blue collar backgrounds in tech, since I think we have much more in common with carpentry than we'd like to admit. Men fit within that venn diagram of exclusion. But not because they're men.
      - rayiner 12y ago
        We have a winner.
        ps4fanboy 12y ago
        I think people are getting confused about whats being spoken about here, this isnt a discussion about women being in tech this is about women being founders in tech. Being a founder is a very small % of the total people working in tech, what I am saying is there are plenty of people from both genders that could benefit from same sex networking functions, I am not arguing against the female targeted events.
    - deleted 12y ago
viiralvx 12y ago
When are we going to have the Black or Latino/Hispanic Founders Conference, YC?
freedom123 12y ago
"Lets fight for equality by segregating"
d0m 12y ago
I understand where a lot of people commenting here come from, but I think Female only tech events are actually amazing. I believe the main reason why there's less women in tech is because there's less women in tech(!) It's really hard to jump in a new field where you're the extreme minority. Just as a crude example, imagine getting into nursing school as a guy. That would take a lot of guts. I know because I have a friend who did it and you can easily imagine the kind of comments he's getting all the time from families, strangers, administrators, etc. However, if there were more guys in nursing, it wouldn't be as hard. You can also think about being gay in San-Francisco right now vs 50 years ago. Yes, a lot of things changed, but part of the reason why it's getting much better is because there simply are more gays, you know you're not alone. I'm not sure if this was a good example. But women in tech are a bit similar. It's hard to jump in when you're the minority. It's much easier to take the easy route and get a profession where there's already a good ratio of men/women. Why am I saying all this? Because I think women-only events help girls looking to move into tech understand that there actually are women in tech. If we'd only have mixed-in events, the few women in the crowd would easily be missed by the overwhelming majority of guys. Someone also posted something about Black, Latino/Hispanic Founders. That's extremely related. A black friend of mine told me that one of the hardest thing about being black in the tech community is that he's almost always the only one. It takes a lot of guts to be the only different one in the room. Some people like that, but for lots of people it's hard. Personally, as an introvert, I'd hate to have everyone in the room looking at me the second I enter the room, all the time.
- DAddYE 12y ago
  > Some people like that, but for lots of people it's hard. Personally, as an introvert, I'd hate to have everyone in the room looking at me the second I enter the room, all the time. If in 2014 you are still feeling different for a __color__, I think the problem is more on you than others. I'm not saying that racism or things like that don't exist. That is another thing. I'm saying that really I'm pretty annoyed when I read these things. So what I'm Italian and I'm always the only Italian in the room, and so what? Also, we want the same sex thing? What if we do Only Man Conferences? ? How much bad press will that get? We want to be all equal? So what if a site of the weight of oKcupid will be like okWhiteCupid as this: www.blackpeoplemeet.com Would be fun to read on hacker news: "Ok Cupid" now becomes only for whites. But if we want to be really equal no one should be upset right? -- Long thing... I'm sayin' that while I'm for the parity of things and equality in general I just see most of them just taking advantage of being a minority to complain when things gets wrong. As far I can tell you, mostly in my day to day life I don't see this white male dominance. I never judged someone just from the color or for being a girl, gay or whatever could be. I'm pretty sure that is the same for most of us. I'm not saying that there aren't problems about that. TL;DR; humans seems to like to create problems (on both sides). NOTE: I know is not really female only NOTE 2: After the down-vote please explain.
jcr 12y ago
Anyone can apply to attend the Female Founders Conference so it's not "female only" as some have mistakenly claimed. If you are notable in the given specialization and you want to speak at the conference, I'm sure you could contact them and ask if they need more speakers. Like most YC-related events and functions (e.g. funding batches, startup school, hack weekend, etc.), the main problem they face is most likely limited space/resources. If you know anything about YC, then you know they will optimize for quality and growth/scale. If you're unable to attend, YC does provide videos of the talks [1] so you can still learn from them. Though I'd definitely learn a lot at this conference, I'm not going to apply for an invitation because I'd rather see the limited invitations go to people who can make the most of them. I'm not founder material, so I should wait until the videos get released. If I was mistakenly given an invitation, I'd politely and humorously report it as a bug in their optimization algorithms. ;-) HN users tptacek and cpercival are known representatives of a specific minority in tech, namely, people with a reasonable grasp of crypto. If there was a specialized conference of this crypto-cogent minority, the people who would gain the most from the conference are either already crypto-cogent, or are considering becoming crypto-cogent. The rest of us crypto-ignorant people (myself included as an admitted crypto-failure) are much better off always trying to learn from the experiences they generously share. If the title of this story was, "Crypto Conference 2015 Applications Are Open," I'd like to believe people on HN would not be arguing whether specialized cryptography conferences should exist. All conferences are specialized in some sense. Learning from the unique perspectives and experiences of said specialization is one of the main reasons for going to any conference. The other reason is networking with your peers. The specialization can be a field, topic, group, or some other commonality. In this case, the specialization is Female Founders and the chance to learn from them is a fantastic but rare opportunity. The same is true for any specialized group of notable people speaking on topics where they have the benefit of experience and perspective. My challenge to you, the regular HN user, is can you tell me something interesting about the accomplishments of any of the speakers? I'll start. Jessica Livingston wrote a book called "Founders At Work" and it's one of my absolute favorites. I've nearly broken the binding on my copy with all the sticky-note page markers. Though my server will probably melt from the load, proof of my assertion is available [2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ-uHSnFig5PSIanlQ_x6FApB4cX84aKX https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ-uHSnFig5PSIanlQ_x6... [2] http://designtools.org/pix/DSCN0022.JPG http://designtools.org/pix/DSCN0022.JPG
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benhamner 12y ago
This is phenomenal & a huge thanks to YC for promoting this. The massive gender disparity in tech is painfully clear to anyone walking the halls of a SF startup, attending a team meeting at a large corporation, or observing . It is a multifaceted and highly complex challenge, but hopefully strong leadership on this issue from central players like YC will help things move in a positive trajectory. To those saying "what about an Latino/African American/etc. founders conference?": you can't be everything to everyone, and you have to start somewhere. Looking at this as a binary world view where "you can only have nonexclusive events" or "you need to have an exclusive event for every potentially underrepresented group" is counterproductive and gets us nowhere. Supporting one underrepresented group will hopefully have positive downstream effects across the board. If things like this are successful in moving one underrepresented group on a better trajectory, then that model can be more easily replicated. To those saying "why not a YC conference just for male founders?" or "this isn't necessary" or the like: you're being petty and this isn't for you. The tech industry has plenty of open opportunities for people to connect across the board, and stronger connections tend to be forged within smaller sub-communities. If this and events like this encourage more females to become founders, then that's a great outcome.
zaroth 12y ago
It will be interesting to see how they tailor the content to be most useful/motivating/supportive/educational for their target audience. There is plenty to founding a company which is entirely gender neutral, and yet, there's a morass of unique challenges (and benefits) that female founders in particular may face. Catering to a specific field of expertise is orthogonal to catering to a specific pool of genetics. I think the actual reason why it would make no sense at all to have a 'Male Founders Conference' versus the obvious appeal of a 'Female Founders Conference' is because male founders simply don't have to deal with their gender as part of their identity as a Founder. I don't ever stop and think, "Is X happening because of my gender?" I very rarely have to stop and think, "Do I need to approach this problem differently because I'm a man?" Whereas a female founder is almost certainly going to have their gender become a notable / discussion-worthy factor tied into their popular identity as a Founder (whether they want it to or not). They are going to be faced with situations, perhaps regularly, when they will question how much their gender played a role in a particular outcome. They will actually encounter discrimination with some regularity, and need the tools to deal with it, and the experience and support system to decide how they should best respond. The way I see it, when there's nothing left to talk about at a Female Founders conference, then we can happily stop having them.

102 points by katm 12y ago

While this is a good conference with amazing women speakers, let it also be noted that this means that Y Combinator means the continue being the gatekeeper of who is allowed in Tech and control the narrative by which entry and participation is allowed. With white men being on top, this is a frightening prospect.

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taprun 12y ago

I always wonder if these "female only" conferences, awards and events are beneficial for women. Many folks might (mistakenly) see them as an admission that women can't hack it on a level playing field. Such thoughts would only serve to harden their chauvinistic mental models and cause gender discrimination to be more (rather than less) likely in the future.

krzrak 12y ago
I wonder, what would be the reaction if somebody organises "Male Founders Conference" or "White Men Coders Group" ;)
- zorpner 12y ago
  When the situations are asymmetrical, there's no insight to be gained by positing symmetric opposition.
- EliRivers 12y ago
  Those have been happening on a regular basis for years.
  - tonystubblebine 12y ago
    At my first OSCON conference, they'd converted the women's bathroom into a second men's bathroom. So yeah.
  - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
    I'm not well familiar with it, so might I ask if the Female Founders Conference is strictly limited in admission to women only? If so, your analogy doesn't pan out.
    - Impossible 12y ago
      Although there isn't anything that says whether or not it's women only, the application[1] has a gender option, so at the very least they are accepting applications from men. There isn't any language that says they are explicitly excluding men, although I'm sure they'd like a more balanced ratio than other startup events, and it's likely that the majority of the attendees will be women. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/ffc https://news.ycombinator.com/ffc
- untog 12y ago
  You don't need to organise them, they already exist by default.
  - ps4fanboy 12y ago
    To draw a parallel in an industry that went though this process some time ago, in Australia journalism was a male dominated industry and they organised programs to encourage women to enter the industry. Things like the women in journalism awards and press club events aimed at women. In the most recent one they announced the statistic that 65% of journalists in Australia are now women despite this the female targeted events continue. Once you have these events its hard to give them up and if someone was to now organised similar events aimed at the minority group men the reaction would be very hostile.
dang 12y ago
Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- grimtrigger 12y ago
  This conference is tightly tied into current politics. If you want to keep politics of news.ycombinator then the obvious solution is to remove this post (or the comments section entirely). -------- Edit: What I'm trying to say is that taprun didn't introduce the topic, katm did. Why are you singling out taprun and not katm?
- JoergR 12y ago
  Really? Dude can blubber oblivious sexist things about "even playfields" but answers have to be something new? What is there new to say about the same old sexist narratives? Nothing? Right, so basically the guidelines just enforce sexism. Good job, that's exactly why I despise Hackernews.
drcomputer 12y ago
As a female developer / hacker / mathy techy computer science person (for 20 years) who has never been to one; my only impression of them is the commentary I see from people online talking about their controversy. Otherwise, they are like fog to me: I can comment neither positively nor negatively nor even neutrally on whether they genuinely add or detract from my experience or interests. Lots of people seem to have opinions on these conventions, but to be seriously seriously honest, it is very rare I have been involved in any tech thing where, if you mandated that 90% of the participants must be male, that it would change the demographic. That is a satirical way of demonstrating that most technical, mathematical, engineering, and computer things are male dominated purely by their origin and lineage of development. It's like asking a 14 year old boy to go lingerie shopping. People react because it's not the norm. The reaction is neither good nor bad. I react to people too.
- lotharbot 12y ago
  Speaking as a former 14 year old boy who went on all sorts of embarrassing shopping trips with my mother (and sometimes 4 younger sisters), I would say the reactions other people had were the least significant effect. The most significant effect is that as an adult, I'm can walk into the maxi pad section and find the ones that meet the required criteria. If I ever have a daughter I need to take bra shopping, I can handle that. Developing confidence and competence to do those things is way more important than the reactions of other people. If a female founder conference helps women develop confidence or competence, or helps connect them to customers or investors or future employees, good for them. Those benefits will last a lot longer than whatever silly (over)reactions people have.
  - drcomputer 12y ago
    Yea. I have managed to develop confidence over the years. Despite the fact that I continue to obsess over hair, perfume, lots of makeup and fancy clothes, every time I go to code or work on something hard, I remember who I am. I'm the kid who spent hours pouring over numerical patterns and graphs after I learned about prime numbers. I'm the kid who grew up playing titles like "the logical zoombinis", " the incredible machine" and "treasure math storm". I had chemistry kits and microscopes, and I hacked my tamagotchis, neopets, and PC games with whatever I could figure out. These are the things that help me, when I stand in front of my wrote board, alone, trying to teach myself category theory while mashing together MVCs and relational databases in order to have a formalized way of reasoning no matter what systems I exist in. I at least have demonstrated to myself so far that set theory is useful for development. This stuff just makes me feel like I might one day achieve my goal of being 'crazy genius'. I hate when I let culture make me feel like I don't even fit into that group of people, just because I don't look like them.
lotharbot 12y ago
There are a lot of people who are affected by conferences like this, with some positive and some negative effects. I suspect the balance is strongly positive. The possible increased discrimination from those with pre-existing chauvinistic mental models can be weighed against decreased discrimination from those whose pre-existing chauvinistic models are challenged by seeing capable female founders, which I think would be the larger effect. And there are bigger and more direct benefits: networking with other founders, getting your startup / product out there in front of more potential customers and investors, media coverage, etc.
- gizmo686 12y ago
  The concern isn't (exclusively) increased discrimination from those with pre-existing chauvinistic mental models; you also have to be concerned about people who see this type of event and subconsciously infer that it means that females are inferior.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    You have to worry about those people anyways, because they are broken.
    - gizmo686 12y ago
      How so? They are incorrect, as subconscious inferences often are, but the conclusion is not a-priori unreasonable, and giving a group a handicap is often done because, all else being equal, they are not as good as the other group. Again, you can (as I do) disagree with this assessment and think that it should be obviously wrong with a little bit of thought and knowledge of the actual situation, but as a subconsious inference it seams reasonable. In fact, if you recall the "separate cannot be equal" ruling in relationship to racial discrimination, one of the arguments was that even if the separate accommodations were in fact equal (which they weren't) simply having black only schools creates a feeling of inferiority. EDIT: Minor correction. After looking up the opinion for separate cannot be equal (Brown v Board of education [1]), it turns out that, in the opinion of the court, accommodations were in fact equal (or being equalized), which is what forced an examination of the separate but equal doctrine itself. I'll just leave this quote here: "To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone." [1] [1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/347/483#writing-USSC_CR_0347_0483_ZO http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/347/483#writing...
santacluster 12y ago
"Let's not provoke them" is a survival strategy, not a winning strategy. I don't think mere survival is the goal here.
smokey_the_bear 12y ago
I used to doubt the need for conferences like this, when I was in college in a 6% female major. I had tons of male friends and was completely comfortable. But as I've gotten older and worked and become a mother, I've really started to appreciate the opportunities to meet technical women. It seems to me it's a socially different experience to be a woman in engineering than a man in engineering. So perhaps some men sit around and use these conferences as an excuse to be chauvinistic, but the conference isn't for them, it's for women. Though, ironically, last year I couldn't go because I didn't have a babysitter.
- nobodyshere 12y ago
  Just for a second imagine a men-only conference for developers. Shit-storm would be stronger than anything you've ever seen. While I agree that IT industry is generally dominated by white men (no racism implied, I simply haven't seen a single black programmer yet), such events might be useful for women, but still would be interesting for me as a man to attend. I'd like to know what's going on on the other side of this whole situation. How are we going to bring equality here if we are separating ourselves from each other? I recently visited a conference in Moscow (Highload++), and there wasn't a single woman presenting. That's just sad. In the company I work for right now, there are probably about 10 women writing code vs over a 1000 men.
  - lotharbot 12y ago
    I've seen no indication that men would be blocked from attending this conference.
    - parennoob 12y ago
      "If you are thinking about starting a startup or are in the midst of running one, we hope hearing stories from other women will inspire you to take the leap (or keep going!)." This wording would seem to imply that the conference attendance, or at least the expected audience is restricted to women. The invitation request (https://news.ycombinator.com/ffc https://news.ycombinator.com/ffc) doesn't explicitly state it one way or the other, but does have a field for "Gender".
colmvp 12y ago
Indeed. Should we also make Black men only conferences to encourage more male Black engineers and cofounders?
- oldmanjay 12y ago
  Why not? Does the existence of something not aimed at you somehow make your life less worth living?
  - philipjoubert 12y ago
    Actually this kind of thing gets fairly complex. Consider for instance a scenario where the government was sponsoring an event like this - would that be OK? Or consider a company that has a table reserved in their cafeteria specifically for black men. Would that be OK? It seems as a society we've decided that a certain basis of discrimination is fine while others are not. For example having a table exclusively for executives is fine, while one based on race or gender is not.
    - oldmanjay 12y ago
      You can spin up hypotheticals until sundown if that helps you feel good, but I would be a lot more interested in the conversation if you even pretended to address the point I raised. It wasn't that discrimination is fine, it was "the existence of things not aimed at you does not ruin your life"
- kaitai 12y ago
  That would be great! I'd be interested in hearing a panel discussion.
Jun8 12y ago
Check out the spot on top answer to this SE question about why there are separate tournaments for men and women in chess: http://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/6282/why-are-there-separate-tournaments-for-men-and-women http://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/6282/why-are-there-.... The gist is: At novice level women-only events are very useful, at expert level they tend to be constricting.

sremani 12y ago

I am not against conferences like these - women to women connection is different from women to mixed crowd. Actually, I would not mind men only conferences either if they improve the social environment for all the attendees.

w1ntermute 12y ago
> women to women connection is different from women to mixed crowd Why is it socially acceptable to say this, but it's not socially acceptable to say "men to men connection is different from men to mixed crowd"?
- deleted 12y ago
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- jobu 12y ago
  It's only taboo in a business sense. No women I know have ever had an issue with my friends and I going on a "guys weekend" trip. Men to men is a very different connection and we do things that just don't happen around wives and girlfriends - drinking, fishing, shooting things, etc. In the business world it's taboo because it would be seen as colluding against women and minorities. Historically (and even currently), business and politics have been dominated by white males, and that tends to give an advantage of familiarity and incumbency. Women-only, or minority-only conferences like these are a chance to balance the scales a little.
- rockmeamedee 12y ago
  It's not unacceptable to say it. To say "We should have men only events because of that"(or for any reason to benefit men) is mean. The reason it's mean is that we've had thousands of years of men-only events in places that should have been mixed, and now men have an incredible upper hand in tech. When men are the minority gender here, we can talk about setting those up.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Because men are collectively better off than women in this sector. Your handle refers to a character in the sci-fi novel Neuromancer, an artificial intelligence that is prevented from linking up with another one to pursue their mutual destiny by an arbitrary human prejudice against artificial intelligence enforced by administrative fiat. In fact, the urge to circumvent this established power structure is the motivating force that drives the plot. Perhaps you can find a way to generalize from one disenfranchised class that you identify or empathize with in some fashion, artificial intelligences, to another that you apparently don't, women.

ps4fanboy 12y ago

If women only conferences are good at helping women network and communicate safely, I really think we could apply the same argument to men, do we just disregard men who are to afraid or feel uncomfortable around women because we already have too many successful men who dont suffer from this problem?

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- ps4fanboy 12y ago
  While I understand what you are saying, it isnt a fair assertion as some men are very much on fire not every male has the same perceived privileges afforded to the "straight white male" stereo type.
  - michaelchisari 12y ago
    Maybe, but not because they're men. I'd love to see more people from blue collar backgrounds in tech, since I think we have much more in common with carpentry than we'd like to admit. Men fit within that venn diagram of exclusion. But not because they're men.
    - rayiner 12y ago
      We have a winner.
      - ps4fanboy 12y ago
        I think people are getting confused about whats being spoken about here, this isnt a discussion about women being in tech this is about women being founders in tech. Being a founder is a very small % of the total people working in tech, what I am saying is there are plenty of people from both genders that could benefit from same sex networking functions, I am not arguing against the female targeted events.
  - deleted 12y ago

viiralvx 12y ago

When are we going to have the Black or Latino/Hispanic Founders Conference, YC?

freedom123 12y ago

"Lets fight for equality by segregating"

d0m 12y ago

I understand where a lot of people commenting here come from, but I think Female only tech events are actually amazing. I believe the main reason why there's less women in tech is because there's less women in tech(!) It's really hard to jump in a new field where you're the extreme minority. Just as a crude example, imagine getting into nursing school as a guy. That would take a lot of guts. I know because I have a friend who did it and you can easily imagine the kind of comments he's getting all the time from families, strangers, administrators, etc. However, if there were more guys in nursing, it wouldn't be as hard. You can also think about being gay in San-Francisco right now vs 50 years ago. Yes, a lot of things changed, but part of the reason why it's getting much better is because there simply are more gays, you know you're not alone. I'm not sure if this was a good example. But women in tech are a bit similar. It's hard to jump in when you're the minority. It's much easier to take the easy route and get a profession where there's already a good ratio of men/women. Why am I saying all this? Because I think women-only events help girls looking to move into tech understand that there actually are women in tech. If we'd only have mixed-in events, the few women in the crowd would easily be missed by the overwhelming majority of guys. Someone also posted something about Black, Latino/Hispanic Founders. That's extremely related. A black friend of mine told me that one of the hardest thing about being black in the tech community is that he's almost always the only one. It takes a lot of guts to be the only different one in the room. Some people like that, but for lots of people it's hard. Personally, as an introvert, I'd hate to have everyone in the room looking at me the second I enter the room, all the time.

DAddYE 12y ago
> Some people like that, but for lots of people it's hard. Personally, as an introvert, I'd hate to have everyone in the room looking at me the second I enter the room, all the time. If in 2014 you are still feeling different for a __color__, I think the problem is more on you than others. I'm not saying that racism or things like that don't exist. That is another thing. I'm saying that really I'm pretty annoyed when I read these things. So what I'm Italian and I'm always the only Italian in the room, and so what? Also, we want the same sex thing? What if we do Only Man Conferences? ? How much bad press will that get? We want to be all equal? So what if a site of the weight of oKcupid will be like okWhiteCupid as this: www.blackpeoplemeet.com Would be fun to read on hacker news: "Ok Cupid" now becomes only for whites. But if we want to be really equal no one should be upset right? -- Long thing... I'm sayin' that while I'm for the parity of things and equality in general I just see most of them just taking advantage of being a minority to complain when things gets wrong. As far I can tell you, mostly in my day to day life I don't see this white male dominance. I never judged someone just from the color or for being a girl, gay or whatever could be. I'm pretty sure that is the same for most of us. I'm not saying that there aren't problems about that. TL;DR; humans seems to like to create problems (on both sides). NOTE: I know is not really female only NOTE 2: After the down-vote please explain.

jcr 12y ago

Anyone can apply to attend the Female Founders Conference so it's not "female only" as some have mistakenly claimed. If you are notable in the given specialization and you want to speak at the conference, I'm sure you could contact them and ask if they need more speakers. Like most YC-related events and functions (e.g. funding batches, startup school, hack weekend, etc.), the main problem they face is most likely limited space/resources. If you know anything about YC, then you know they will optimize for quality and growth/scale. If you're unable to attend, YC does provide videos of the talks [1] so you can still learn from them. Though I'd definitely learn a lot at this conference, I'm not going to apply for an invitation because I'd rather see the limited invitations go to people who can make the most of them. I'm not founder material, so I should wait until the videos get released. If I was mistakenly given an invitation, I'd politely and humorously report it as a bug in their optimization algorithms. ;-) HN users tptacek and cpercival are known representatives of a specific minority in tech, namely, people with a reasonable grasp of crypto. If there was a specialized conference of this crypto-cogent minority, the people who would gain the most from the conference are either already crypto-cogent, or are considering becoming crypto-cogent. The rest of us crypto-ignorant people (myself included as an admitted crypto-failure) are much better off always trying to learn from the experiences they generously share. If the title of this story was, "Crypto Conference 2015 Applications Are Open," I'd like to believe people on HN would not be arguing whether specialized cryptography conferences should exist. All conferences are specialized in some sense. Learning from the unique perspectives and experiences of said specialization is one of the main reasons for going to any conference. The other reason is networking with your peers. The specialization can be a field, topic, group, or some other commonality. In this case, the specialization is Female Founders and the chance to learn from them is a fantastic but rare opportunity. The same is true for any specialized group of notable people speaking on topics where they have the benefit of experience and perspective. My challenge to you, the regular HN user, is can you tell me something interesting about the accomplishments of any of the speakers? I'll start. Jessica Livingston wrote a book called "Founders At Work" and it's one of my absolute favorites. I've nearly broken the binding on my copy with all the sticky-note page markers. Though my server will probably melt from the load, proof of my assertion is available [2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ-uHSnFig5PSIanlQ_x6FApB4cX84aKX https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ-uHSnFig5PSIanlQ_x6... [2] http://designtools.org/pix/DSCN0022.JPG http://designtools.org/pix/DSCN0022.JPG

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benhamner 12y ago

This is phenomenal & a huge thanks to YC for promoting this. The massive gender disparity in tech is painfully clear to anyone walking the halls of a SF startup, attending a team meeting at a large corporation, or observing . It is a multifaceted and highly complex challenge, but hopefully strong leadership on this issue from central players like YC will help things move in a positive trajectory. To those saying "what about an Latino/African American/etc. founders conference?": you can't be everything to everyone, and you have to start somewhere. Looking at this as a binary world view where "you can only have nonexclusive events" or "you need to have an exclusive event for every potentially underrepresented group" is counterproductive and gets us nowhere. Supporting one underrepresented group will hopefully have positive downstream effects across the board. If things like this are successful in moving one underrepresented group on a better trajectory, then that model can be more easily replicated. To those saying "why not a YC conference just for male founders?" or "this isn't necessary" or the like: you're being petty and this isn't for you. The tech industry has plenty of open opportunities for people to connect across the board, and stronger connections tend to be forged within smaller sub-communities. If this and events like this encourage more females to become founders, then that's a great outcome.

zaroth 12y ago

It will be interesting to see how they tailor the content to be most useful/motivating/supportive/educational for their target audience. There is plenty to founding a company which is entirely gender neutral, and yet, there's a morass of unique challenges (and benefits) that female founders in particular may face. Catering to a specific field of expertise is orthogonal to catering to a specific pool of genetics. I think the actual reason why it would make no sense at all to have a 'Male Founders Conference' versus the obvious appeal of a 'Female Founders Conference' is because male founders simply don't have to deal with their gender as part of their identity as a Founder. I don't ever stop and think, "Is X happening because of my gender?" I very rarely have to stop and think, "Do I need to approach this problem differently because I'm a man?" Whereas a female founder is almost certainly going to have their gender become a notable / discussion-worthy factor tied into their popular identity as a Founder (whether they want it to or not). They are going to be faced with situations, perhaps regularly, when they will question how much their gender played a role in a particular outcome. They will actually encounter discrimination with some regularity, and need the tools to deal with it, and the experience and support system to decide how they should best respond. The way I see it, when there's nothing left to talk about at a Female Founders conference, then we can happily stop having them.