> This is no such case for female founders. Here we have a much simples issue: stigmatization.
I disagree. I might be in the minority but in the places I've worked in tech no one cares - at least as far as I can tell - what your gender is, it's how well you do the job.
What I do see a lot of is women who are capable but not interested in STEM. Not because of some kind of social stigma, they just don't care about it. My mother studied mathematics and eventually switched to sociology because she was more interested in how people interact - math was easy for her, which was the primary reason she went to school for it. My wife is very intelligent and analytical but could not care less about computing.
There are legitimate physical differences between men and women (men on average have more upper body strength, for example) that are not caused by social stigmas. Isn't it reasonable to think there might be some mental differences as well? Perhaps the average man is less risk-averse than the average woman and therefore is more likely to enter a risky business venture. It's not some kind of discrimination or societal pressure or a learned behavior, it's just human nature.
That said - I live in a bit of a bubble. Of course there are places out there where women are discriminated against for this kind of thing, and I totally understand why conferences like this exist (I have no problem with them). But it's worth considering that sometimes it's not just a discrimination issue and must be corrected
> Perhaps the average man is less risk-averse than the average woman and therefore is more likely to enter a risky business venture.
I think the general assumption for women promoting these types of events is that while this statement may be true, it's not because of an inherent difference in women and men. The difference is due to social and cultural conditioning, not because of any biological difference.
> I think the general assumption for women promoting these types of events is that while this statement may be true, it's not because of an inherent difference in women and men
I am not sure I agree with this either, but like in my parent post I don't have any real evidence - this is an exercise in handwaving :)
Kaitai's comments elsewhere on this page are how I think about it - what she says makes a lot of sense to me and is a great case for why these types of events should exist. Suppose I am in some sort of bucket that is underrepresented/discriminated against/etc. My thought process would be
* The problem I am facing is too big to be fixed in a reasonable amount of time/effort (e.g. years, maybe decades of social change)
* There are no experts who have solved the problem so I cannot get advice from them
* However, there are others like me who face the same problem and with whom I share common ground - maybe I can learn strategies from them and they can learn from me as well
Would you be willing to do me a favor and take the implicit association test on gender at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit and post back the results?
I really think that it's the best answer I can give to someone like you who would want a bit of deeper understanding into what this is all about ...
That's a very interesting link! For me, I ended up in the "strong association between men and science". My best guess as to why that is is that there are very few women that I've personally worked with in a technical capacity.
I disagree. I might be in the minority but in the places I've worked in tech no one cares - at least as far as I can tell - what your gender is, it's how well you do the job.
What I do see a lot of is women who are capable but not interested in STEM. Not because of some kind of social stigma, they just don't care about it. My mother studied mathematics and eventually switched to sociology because she was more interested in how people interact - math was easy for her, which was the primary reason she went to school for it. My wife is very intelligent and analytical but could not care less about computing.
There are legitimate physical differences between men and women (men on average have more upper body strength, for example) that are not caused by social stigmas. Isn't it reasonable to think there might be some mental differences as well? Perhaps the average man is less risk-averse than the average woman and therefore is more likely to enter a risky business venture. It's not some kind of discrimination or societal pressure or a learned behavior, it's just human nature.
That said - I live in a bit of a bubble. Of course there are places out there where women are discriminated against for this kind of thing, and I totally understand why conferences like this exist (I have no problem with them). But it's worth considering that sometimes it's not just a discrimination issue and must be corrected