Not quite what I was expecting with a post that begins with "An Open Letter to...". I've been trained to expect any such letters would be someone's way to make their grievances about some entity public.<p>Now I need to go reflect on why I feel disappointed it was so positive. Haha, only serious.
I watched most of the FFC. Like Marc Andreesen has said, software is <i>eating</i> the world. YC is getting such critical mass now that entrepreneurs and idealists/pragmatists with world-affecting ideas are now applying for YC. Not necessarily because they'd heard of YC - but because someone they know who cares about them had heard about YC.<p>YC, in my opinion, is getting to a point where it can help incubate world-changing ideas that don't necessarily sell technology to consumers directly but use technology to enable more efficiency or connection or empathy (or all of the above).<p>Of all the presentations, Grace's was the best. I loved Grace Garey of Watsi's stories.<p>About how every Tuesday night, about eight or ten of the world-wide team of Watsi, in every timezone (day, afternoon, morning) would always get together for a Google Hangout to talk about Watsi.<p>About how she was at a busy bar in NYC with her friends and they were in the waning hours of an online contest to win $10k for Watsi. They were falling behind, and Grace had the gutsy idea to ask the bouncer to make everyone who came into the bar have to vote for Watsi on the contest site on their smartphone. They ended up winning by the scarcest of margins (1%) and the bouncer gonged a bell and the entire bar celebrated. Like Brian and Joe of Airbnb creating their own cereal, it was a gutsy move to make it to the next critical step (raising enough funds for some of the Watsi team to go full-time and all-in). And a little different.<p>Congratulations to the YC team on making a ripple in the pond!
The female founders conference is probably one of the best days of the year. I saw so many friends, women I know on the Internet, and I cried tears of joy three times during the speeches. It's hard to be what you can't see. Jessica and Kat have done an AMAZING job of putting female founders in front of us so we can look and say, hey you know, Kathryn Minshew did YC, I CAN DO IT TO.<p>Even though our startup didn't make it into the last YC batch, we're applying again. We love the community, we love the yc philosophy and approach to building products and we want to inspire other women just like us to apply.<p>Thank you for writing this letter and sharing what we all think, yesterday was incredible.
I nearly didn't read because so often Open Letters are public complaints, usually passive aggressive in nature and almost always divisive.<p>So Jennifer. Thank you. Thank you for restoring my faith in open letters. Or rather making me think hard before I pass judgement on something I've not even read.<p>Saunters off, with tail firmly between legs.
She mentions her field of STEM (mechanical engineering) has a particularly low percentage of women among its members, and cites another site. On that site, there is this interesting list:<p><pre><code> 39% of chemists and material scientists are women;
27.9% of environmental scientists and geoscientists are women;
15.6% of chemical engineers are women;
12.1% of civil engineers are women;
8.3% of electrical and electronics engineers are women;
17.2% of industrial engineers are women; and
7.2% of mechanical engineers are women.
</code></pre>
Does anyone have an explanation as to why chemists and material scientists have such a relatively high percentage of women?<p>The two highest are science, as opposed to engineering, so it could be that science in general is more women friendly than engineering, but even if we just look at the engineering disciplines on that list, there still is a big difference among them. Why would chemical engineering be much more women friendly than mechanical engineering?
Could the guys on this thread please stop it with the "pipeline" discussion?! Few women actually cite that to be an issue. It's distracting. Listen more, talk less.
When computing went "social", I expected that women would play a much larger role. That didn't happen. The "social" companies are dominated by men.
Sorry ladies. It sounds like whining to me. Try Hispanic female in engineering during the 80s. I'm on my 2nd start-up in a competitive tech world. Each and every women at the FFC have had their struggles to get where they are today. So pull on your big girl pants and jump in - the water is fine - being a woman hasn't kept Tracy or Grace or Adora or Ruchi from being successful at what they do. That is the lesson that should be taken away from the day in San Fran. I went, I listen, I am inspired. Now I'm off my soap box and off to conquer my small part of the world. @vijilent
"I’ve lived my life in a 'man’s world', receiving a degree in mechanical engineering—which contains the lowest percentage of women compared to any other engineering field at just 7.2%—from an already male-dominated university."<p>Going on a tangent, I suspect areas like mechanical engineering and computer science are still "boy's clubs" due to one thing: social prestige. I feel that women are more attracted to high prestige areas like law, medicine, politics, or finance. Engineering in general is low prestige. It's akin to being a plumber or electrician plus extra educational requirements (high skill, high pay, low social status). Despite the maker movement, our culture at large still doesn't value science & engineering as much as other fields.<p>Popular mainstream shows like Big Bang Theory don't help. On a whole shows like this just serve to further old stereotypes of everyone in our fields as being socially inept, ugly, weirdos. Is it a surprise that most females don't want to join our ranks after seeing that?<p>Are there any quantitative measures on social status by occupation to validate (or invalidate) my guess?
Before you write a comment about why women are or aren't enrolled in STEM fields, please read the Wikipedia article on it. Every time someone says a generalization like "they just choose safer employment" or "high status something, something" without first reviewing a summary of the body of research into the matter, it's kinda pointless. It's like someone saying "here's why I think computers crash" but they've never read a book on HTML.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_STEM_fields" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_STEM_fields</a>
What a sickening sycophantic declaration just to plug a very dangerous return to calendar-based contraception methods: <a href="http://www.readytogroove.com/the-cycle/appendix-a-the-sympto-thermal-method-for-pregnancy-prevention/" rel="nofollow">http://www.readytogroove.com/the-cycle/appendix-a-the-sympto...</a>
I watched the FFC live and what struck me was that it was the same as any other founder conference except that it was a girl on stage instead of a dude. If we want to stop making gender a big deal then we need to stop making gender a big deal. There is no Male Founder Conference right?
So much talk for so very little. Can we not just celebrate women in tech? We all share this world for a limited time, so who gives a fuck who wears a shinier hat. Its all a game, a game that moves our world towards a better place, a world where we can put down our hats and spend time with each other and allow our benevolent machines to take care of us.
Carol Dweck has shown us that it is the belief that intelligence is fixed is a major problem.<p>If children are told that failure is just part of learning and not indicative of potential, they keep trying until they master the material.<p>Of course, if someone is uninterested in acquiring a particular skill, that's irrelevant. They may have exactly the same potential for learning, but just don't care.<p>We should not be trying to make people pursue careers because we don't like the statistics. People should be free to follow their own desires. They know better than "society", whatever that is.