Silicon Valley VCs and the Gender Gap

fysdt writes with this excerpt from TechCrunch: "An analysis of Dunn and Bradstreet data shows that of the 237,843 firms founded in 2004, only 19% had women as primary owners. And only 3% of tech firms and 1% of high-tech firms (as in Silicon Valley) were founded by women. Look at the executive teams of any of the Valley's tech firms — minus a couple of exceptions like Padmasree Warrior of Cisco — you won't find any women CTOs. Look at the management teams of companies like Apple — not even one woman. It's the same with the VC firms — male dominated. You'll find some CFOs and HR heads, but women VCs are a rare commodity in venture capital. And with the recent venture bloodbath, the proportion of women in the VC numbers is declining further. It's no coincidence that only one of the 84 VCs on the 2009 TheFunded list of top VCs was a woman. ... Additionally, it is harder for women to obtain funding than for men. ... historically, women-led companies have received less than 9% of venture capital investments; in 2007, the proportion of funded female CEOs dropped to 3%."

Comments

As expected

[Just Some Guy]

If you believe that sociopaths are more likely to become effective CEOs, as has been claimed, then given that antisocial personality disorder is about 3 times more common among men than women, this is pretty much exactly what you'd expect.

Men are Riskier

[Doc Ruby]

Venture capitalists are risktakers. Tech top execs are risktakers. Overall execs are risktakers. Taking risks tends to send people to the extremes of their groups, bigger winners or bigger losers. Men tend to be at the top of professions, but also at the bottom, and in the lowest jobs, and without income at all. Men are much more likely to be injured by their jobs, to have risky jobs, and live shorter lives.

Women tend to take fewer and less extreme risks, and tend to be in the middle of achievement, but more reliably achieve minimum standards of living.

Biologically men are more expendable. Aggression gets more rewards, but it also takes more damage. The limiting factor on human population growth is the number of women, while even one man can produce an entire generation among all the women.

There are social conventions held over from less developed societies that work to hold women back. And the bias towards training men to take risks and be expendable is an unfair gender bias now that the biological value isn't what determines social value.

So long as risktaking is so different between men and women, rewardtaking is going to be similarly different. We could get closer to our inherent value regardless of gender's arbitrary constraints if we stopped ignoring the gender behavior that we are free to change, but don't, that affects success. And if we stopped ignoring the costs to either gender that come with either the achievement or the risktaking that underlies it.

Re:Why should I care?

[radtea]

If you think that these ridiculously high paying jobs require no skills and nothing other than a buddy from the tennis club downtown, then why aren't you doing that?

Speaking for myself: because I have no desire to. The hours suck, the non-skills are schmoozing and making small-talk with small-minded ignoramuses, and while the financial rewards are considerable the lifestyle is hollow and dull.

I ran my own company for quite a few years, and saw very clearly from my clients and partner companies that on average the higher up the food chain you went the less it mattered what you know and the more it mattered who you know. If "knowing the right people" and "fitting in with an unbelievably dull and ignorant social set" can be considered skills then I'll grant you these jobs require skill: the skills of a self-interested political manipulator, perhaps.

But the fact remains that in my current position I could do everything the company president does (I know this because I was the president of my own company and have worked in senior management at companies larger than my current employer) while he could not do a single aspect of my job.

Ergo, the GP's point is correct: CXO jobs require little to no actual skill, as the term is generally used. Or rather, to do them well does require skill and talent, but the majority of the occupants of these positions today are unskilled and talentless, which explains the dismal state of America's once-great corporations.