So yesterday I read a post regarding the lack of female entrepreneurs in the NYC tech scene. I agree that the startup world is likely male dominated, but then, that’s with a lot of places; I spend a lot of my working day as the only female in the meeting, so it’s not like I’m clutching my pearls over the lack of female representation in industry. Sometimes, that’s just the way it is, and it hasn’t always been a negative.
For the most part, I agree with the post. The final point of the article was a good one:
If you’re a woman and unhappy that the tech scene looks the way it does, go start your own company. Put up or shut up.
And you know, I think that’s a great piece of advice. Absolutely agree. Be the change you want to see in the world, etc etc.
However
Comma
Notable pause.
Before you get to that great point, that wonderful “Make the world the place you want to be” point, you have to wade through this:
I think one reason for this is that women are socialized to be more cautious about risk taking. And setting up the average startup is usually a lot more risk intensive than starting a blog and putting up some Google ad sense links. It’s being responsible for a weekly payroll, dealing with crap like benefits administration and renegotiating your leases, managing investor expectations while doing additional fundraising, and so on.
I read this and bristled. My exact reaction – which of course I had to take to twitter because God forbid I have a thought that I don’t share – was this:
“Gee, starting a company is “more risk intensive than starting a blog and putting up some Google ad sense link” I’m glad someone pointed that out to me, I never would have known otherwise. Silly girls!”
It was then pointed out to me that the blog post was written by a woman, suggesting, I guess, that the implication that women don’t start companies because they think it would just be too darn hard isn’t offensive if another woman says it, which… well, I’m going to choose to find the condescending statement condescending anyway, gender solidarity be damned.
I think there is merit to the idea that women – generally– get caught in a non-confrontational-need-to-be-polite zone that impacts their (our) ability negotiate salaries, pursue a promotion, or, I don’t know, sure: start a company. To be sure, my dad had to tell me explicitly to negotiate my first salary, and I felt like an ass doing it, and I was uncomfortable (but I still still did it. And am glad I did.) But I don’t believe for a second that is the only thing that impacts the lack of female tech entrepreneurs, and saying so in conjunction with the idea that women just need to get over their silly little qualms about “risk” and “effort” and “put up or shut up.”
I was lucky enough to work for a very small start up in my early twenties, where we lived and died by every invoice that came in. My brother lived on my couch when he started his first company, and when I was a few months old my dad left the IBM corporate world to start his own business, and remains an entrepreneur to this day. I say this because when I say that recently I debated leaving my corporate job to be the third person in a new start up, the things that crossed my mind weren’t necessarily the risk of the unknown, or uncertainty that I could do it, or non-familiarity with the start up world, but rather the business plan of the company, my desire to do that type of work, the CBA of leaving a job that I’m still learning in and, of course, the unavoidable realities of the fact that my current job offers amazing maternity leave benefits, my husband has equally demanding career and stresses, my stepdaughter needs to go to camp this summer…and all the family oritented considerations that I owe it to myself to contemplate. To read an article suggesting that women aren’t joining start ups because they are worried it’ll be harder than throwing a few ads on a blog strikes me as horrifically dismissive of, you know, reality.
Perhaps this is unique to women. Certainly my husband could start a company and not sweat loosing maternity leave. And at some point, I won’t care about maternity leave anymore, and maybe I’ll feel like I’ve learned everything I can from where I am, and the risk will be worth taking. But I’m kind of sad to learn that my hesitation is viewed as a systemic “women are meek” issue. My wanting a paid maternity has nothing to do with my ability to be as arrogant an asshole as the next guy (as suggested here); it has everything to do with the reality of being a woman with a career and a family and a desire to have more children, all at the same damn time.
I don’t expect that any male thinking to start a company has any less angst or considerations. The only difference is that I don’t see anyone suggesting that the qualms men may have about the risks involved are due to inherent personality weakness.
InnerTeub 
Ok, so here’s what I don’t get about this argument…
You’re positing a couple different things here that don’t seem to add up.
1) Women are underrepresented in the technology industry. This is a bad, unnatural thing that needs to be fixed.
2) Women have great reasons for not joining startups that have nothing to do with culture and everything to do with childbearing and the nature of human reproduction.
Soo…it seems that if supposition #2 is correct, then assumption #1 is wrong, and there really is no “problem” and the imbalance is an unfortunate by naturally occurring non-evil phenomenon OR there’s some other factor contributing to the lack of women in tech startups. Señor Shirky’s “shrinking violet” argument regarding the tendency of the female psyche seems as good an argument as any on this front. Do you have a better one?
I think I’m just trying to suggest that the reason there is an imbalance w/r/t to the lack of women in the tech industry is greater than the “shrinking violet” theory, and I think it’s dismissive of the general multifaceted nature of life to suggest otherwise.
Sure. But what objects are movable?
-Women’s anatomy? Nope.
-Women’s desire to have kids? Maybe, but really really really hard and probably not worth doing.
-Women’s self-confidence + attitude toward risk taking and self-promotion? Still hard, but something worth doing that could potentially have a big positive impact on broader society.
Maybe it’s not attitude towards risk taking and self promotion but rather general attitude towards the tech industry overall? I was the ONLY female in my stat computing courses for about 90% of the time (including the times I was the teacher), and it wasn’t that long ago. Just a (not terrible original but still valid) thought.
Look, I do agree that women need to be better at self promotion. I don’t feel this issue as strongly given that the people that grew me up didn’t allow for much shrinking violet behavior, but I can concede that I’m not the norm, and that society and general will benefit from reduction with this behavior. But if you look at what I’m actually taking an issue with – the suggestion that women don’t start companies because it’s hard – I just don’t think that encompasses the whole problem. And I think the choices women -that I – am/are making are getting bucketed under the shrinking violet theory, when in fact there’s a lot more to do with it than that, and they’re not so dissimilar from the choices men are making, and not much change can be affected if you ignore that.
Agreed that the “cuz it’s hard” argument is bullshit, especially if “hard” means “requires a lot of work and persistence.” But if hard means “scary and socially isolating,” then i think there’s some merit. Obviously, as women’s consistent overachievement in higher ed hath shown, females are not exactly incapable of hard work. If you ask me, it all goes back to the willingness to engage in risk-taking behavior and social isolation/rejection, which is actually “harder” for most people to stomach.
When I initially commented I clicked the “Notify me when new comments are added” checkbox and
now each time a comment is added I get four e-mails with the same comment.
Is there any way you can remove me from that service?
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