Too Few Women In Tech? Stop Blaming The Men.

I'm always slightly puzzled as to why this is an issue. Surely the goal is to have lots of innovative and successful startups, and the gender of who is founding them is irrelevant.<p>There aren't, as far as I can tell, any real barriers to women starting a tech company; being able to code, having a lot of mental resilience and having some starting capital is not something that's only possible if you're male.

I don't know the answer, but I have to agree that it has nothing to do with silicon valley, venture capitalists, or really the tech industry at all.<p>My introductory freshmen computer science course had about 100 people of which maybe 10 were female (this is at a school that has more women overall than men). You simply can't recover from a gender disparity like that. Also, remember, this is a course that you decide on taking essentially before even getting to college. The kids enrolling in this course hadn't even been exposed to all the things that people usually blame the gender disparity on.

The editorialized title here ("Dear Women in Tech: Put Up or Shut Up") fails to convey the sentiment in the article (titled "Too Few Women In Tech? Stop Blaming The Men. Or At Least Stop Blaming Me.")<p>The article isn't really aimed at <i>women in tech</i> so much as <i>people who complain about women in tech</i>, and especially women who are not in tech but complain that there aren't enough women doing what they themselves aren't doing either.

70% of the technical degree holders living under the Iranian patriarchal theology... are women.<p>That's problematic to me. That suggests to /me/ that the gender disparity in Silicon Valley has very little to do with genetics. In fact, the role of genetics in intelligence is too heavily disputed to be considered anyhow - the tech field being a supposed /meritocracy/, and genetics having little to do with personal /merit/, it instead suggests to me that the problem is how our culture is defining "ideal merit" to our women.<p>The reason why tech conferences can't find enough women speakers is because there aren't enough girls encouraged /socially/ to enter the tech field. And by "girls," I don't mean to use disparaging language, but indicate that the problem is rooted all the way in how they're taught and influenced, be it in schools or amongst friends and family.<p>When mathematics, science and computer programming are considered culturally gender-neutral, that's when female representation in the tech industry will be less of an issue. Until then, we remain unable to tap a good half of our population's intellectual resources.<p>That's a bit of a problem.

I think rather than looking at the overall numbers, what you really need to identify is if there are any women out there that do want to get into the industry but are being held back by something.<p>If in fact every woman that wants to run a startup or be employed as a programmer ect doesn't have different barriers to males then I don't think there is really an issue here.<p>I think many female dominated fields just genuinely don't interest the majority of males so that fact that they are female dominated isn't a big deal. The important thing is that both sexes get the opportunity to participate, whether they choose to take up the option is another matter.

The more excuses any given demographic has available to it, the worse it will fare.

This is just Michael Arrington defending TechCrunch against one person's assumption that they're not aware of the issue. There's nothing really relevant to the issue itself here, aside from the obvious point that the reason why there are "too few" women in tech is because there aren't enough women who want to be in tech.

I think the Valley greatly overestimates how much inside baseball like conference speaking slots impacts startup formation or decade-prior turning points like taking AP English instead of AP CS because English is the easy A and your GPA gets you into a better college.

&#62; <i>there are women... who complain about how there are too few women in tech, and then there are women who just go out and start companies</i><p>Never heard it put quite that way before, but very well said.

How about the idea of role models? There simply isn't many female role models that motivate young women to go into tech.<p>Being involved with young athletes in high school - I know 18 year old boys who aspire to be the next Michael Jordan or next Michael Phelps. I know 18 year old girls who aspire to be the next Cathy Freeman.<p>Outside of sports there are also many industries where potential female AND male role models are rife.<p>Film, dance, journalism just to name a few. Even the 'normal' fields which have been thrown around - doctors, lawyers, business, teaching etc. Many young people are may aspire to be like that 'aunty who is a lawyer' or that 'family friend who is a doctor' etc.<p>But tech? .... Because the industry is so skewed towards males and because of that there is no... female version of steve jobs, or bill gates, mark zuckerberg to aspire to.<p>Just a thought.. what do you guys reckon?

I understand that sexism might cause companies to not employ women in management/technical positions. But how can this affect whether they create their own successful startups?

This is a really complex question, and I doubt that anyone will ever have the answer to this. As, there are so many variables at play over here that most of the times we can't see them let alone comprehend them. Most people over here have a pretty unary point of view i.e. they don't even realize the subtle signals they get everyday about socially acceptable behavior. Even though, I don't want to be unique in this regard, but unfortunately I am and there are a few things that I would like to share.<p>First of all, the 5 year old me knew that I couldn't act "feminine" (what was feminine for the 5 year old me is laughable at best). Why? I just knew at that age that I couldn't do that. The adults around me simply wouldn't approve. In fact, they would be disgusted if I did. I knew that I couldn't play with my cousins' dolls because it was wrong for me to do that. I knew that I couldn't talk about the fact that I liked making stuff in the kitchen to other kids because it was wrong for me to do that. In fact, I stopped doing it after a while and I constantly had to suppress behavior to fit into that mold.<p>Take a look at any kid at an early age and see what happens if that child picks up a "masculine" or "feminine" toy. Most adults simply don't engage, or they engage too aggressively. For a child these subtle things matter a lot and they start dictating the pattern which still exists till later life.<p>You won't believe how suffocating it is to be an outlier in this regard, a freak for all intents and purposes. I have to constantly pretend to be someone else and it is amazing how subtle those cues which operate are. I can't talk the way I want to. I can't gesture in the same way. I can't walk "that way". I can't eat "that way". I can't move "that way". I can't relate to others "that way". I can't pick up topics "that way". This list goes on and on and on.<p>The truth is that who we are is hammered into shape by our experiences to a large extent. Unless, we consciously embark on exploring ourselves and examining our motives for everything.<p>So, yes it's true that on <i>average</i> male and female brains are different (it's a bell curve), but to what extent do those "differences" shape future behavior? To what extent is a person's behavior determined by what's between their legs? Or in their blood?<p>These are questions that we simply don't have an answer too. It's not like we will never have it, but it's just that right now we don't.<p>So, in the mean time maybe we shouldn't write articles going either way and, perhaps, focus on creating things instead. An even bigger perhaps is that we might want to try respecting people for who they are. <i>Not</i> who we want them to be. Just saying.

If you want to know how predisposition can affect the outcome, please read this article and you will understand what we are discussing here:<p>"Princeton Economist Finds that Auditioning Behind Screens Helps Women Win Orchestra Positions"<p><a href="http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/97/q2/0425orch.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/97/q2/0425orch.html</a><p>Quoted directly from the article: "The switch to blind auditions can explain between 30 percent and 55 percent of the increase in the proportion female among new hires and between 25 percent and 46 percent of the increase in the percentage female in the orchestras from 1970 to 1996," the economists write. The study notes that the surge of women in symphony orchestras has occurred despite the fact that the number of positions is highly fixed and turnover is slow.

Not really contributing to the arguments...<p>But rumor has it, Etsy have female (Python) programmers and they make boring online shopping experience fun with their creative UI.<p>See: <a href="http://www.etsy.com/color.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.etsy.com/color.php</a> or <a href="http://www.etsy.com/time_machine.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.etsy.com/time_machine.php</a> or <a href="http://www.etsy.com/geolocator.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.etsy.com/geolocator.php</a><p>Imho, female input is valuable when it comes to software design especially UX.

In absolute terms, women constitute the largest segment of the market. That alone should be sufficient reason to have more women participating in or founding start-ups. It stands to reason that their intuitive insights, understanding and vision, due to their affinity with women at large, will lead to products and services which serve that market segment --and perhaps humanity in general-- better.

I'm totally with Arrington on this one.<p>The next time I see somebody complain about too few women in software I want to see them complain about too few men working in hair salons, too few men working in child day care centers, too few women working the trash pickup trucks, too few men in corporate HR, too few women in Tactial Special Ops teams. But I'll never see that because I think secretly deep down they know, gee, people are different, genders are different, and there's something about gender that just has this shaping force on our interests and talents. And that <i>there's nothing wrong with that.</i> Really, it will be okay. Just relax. Carry on.<p>Instead let us all please focus on <i>real</i> problems and challenges like hunger, disease, WMD proliferation, climate change, pollution, education cost &#38; disparity, etc.

The nice thing about computers is that they don't discriminate.<p>A male and a female have equal opportunity to sit down at a computer, and get themselves to learning about it, write "Hello World", read books, study, learn new techniques, grow their programming knowledge, etc. But you know what? I bet the ratio between genders of the folks that actually sit down and do that, at home, wherever, is skewed toward male by a large percentage. Exact amount? Dunno. But I'm sure it skews male. All else is going to follow from that.<p>]&#62; man vi<p>HAL: I'm sorry, Susan. I'm afraid I can't allow you to do that. You see, your gender is wrong and I'm going to have to oppress you. It's for the sake of the mission and I hope one day you understand.

Especially interesting in light of: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1634955" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1634955</a>

Real reason is ridiculously simple as most of the men don't care about if the color of their great hat matches with their nice boots, most of the women are not geek.

I certainly wouldn't blame Michael Arrington in particular, but this entire argument is <i>precisely</i> parallel in form to the one held up by casual racists in the US where they say, well, <i>I</i> haven't done anything to keep black people down, and I have nothing against black people (see also: "I have lots of black friends"), so don't look at <i>me</i>. The problem there is that white people (in the US) operate from a position of implicit privilege---not that we asked for it, but we are unable to reject it, either, not that it would serve any good to try.<p>The situation wrt women in technology is not quite the same, but it's not entirely different, either. As Arrington points out, techcrunch and YC and a lot of other groups go out of their way to try to recruit women, which is fantastic. But to then turn around and say, well, if you personally aren't out there founding a business, you have no right to complain... that's a pernicious idea and it certainly is not furthering any useful cause.