Sunday, February 21, 2010

Call Out The Sexism

Dancers and Flutists, with an Egyptian hierogl...Image via Wikipedia
You Can't Launch the Next Generation of Startups Without Women - ReadWriteStart The current startup system essentially excludes the untapped pool of innovators who aren't developers - for example, women who want to launch Internet startups...... Women tend to take the entrepreneurial plunge later than men typically do, once they've had some professional and life experience.......... a study done in the U.K. in 2006 showed that women over 40 were more likely to start a new business than any other age group. ...... the Internet and the startup culture have been dominated and shaped by the vision and appetites of young men and old boys from the start. ..... a sharp rise in women-in-tech groups and activities lately, undoubtedly a response to this inequity. ...... revisit the startup system and create structures that foster innovation coming from a more diverse group of people (age, origin, gender)....... eak). Women tend to present their projects in terms of their value to users and society ...... women could benefit from mentoring that would teach them to conceptualize and present their concepts in technology terms and money terms. ....... today, non-technical entrepreneurs are just as likely to come up with viable startup concepts as programmers are ...... Investors need to start looking at paper projects again, and not dismissing non-technical founders. There need to be mechanisms that facilitate team building, like matchmaking resources for projects and developers.
If it is sexism, call it sexism. Don't overlook it, don't call it something else. Definitely don't call it meritocracy. If you are at a tech event, or a meeting, and some guy makes a sexist comment, then call him out. If you are a quiet bystander, you are an active participant. Tech entrepreneurship is a cutting edge thing, and there can not be room for sexism on the cutting edge. Sexism is not a problem for women to deal with. It is as much a problem for men. Our startups don't realize their full potential if we keep putting up with sexism.

If you don't have the time, inclination, penchant or patience for a long, drawn out argument, just call the guy a pig and move on. 

Shirky: A Rant About Women: not enough women have what it takes to behave like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks ...... We’re in the middle of a generations-long project to encourage men to be better listeners and more sensitive partners, to take more account of others’ feelings and to let out our own feelings more. Similarly, I see colleges spending time and effort teaching women strategies for self-defense, including direct physical aggression. I sometimes wonder what would happen, though, if my college spent as much effort teaching women self-advancement as self-defense. .... we live in a world where women are discriminated against ...... Institutions assessing the fitness of candidates, in other words, often select self-promoters because self-promotion is tied to other characteristics needed for success. ....... To put yourself forward as someone good enough to do interesting things is, by definition, to expose yourself to all kinds of negative judgments ........ the fact that other people get to decide what they think of your behavior leaves only two strategies for not suffering from those judgments: not doing anything, or not caring about the reaction. ......... Not caring works surprisingly well. ........ it would be good if more women see interesting opportunities that they might not be qualified for, opportunities which they might in fact fuck up if they try to take them on, and then try to take them on. It would be good if more women got in the habit of raising their hands and saying “I can do that. Sign me up. My work is awesome,” no matter how many people that behavior upsets.

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