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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%."
Time for another insightful discussion on the gender gap in tech. There will be no flames, no attacks, and no blaming. Just quiet, reflective discussion.
SSC
...that if women aren't highly represented in these endeavors, it might be a sign that women just aren't interested in the same damn things that men are?!
Sheesh!
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
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.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
It is indeed sad. How else am I to meet that cute but nerdy female counterpart who can outcode me in C and be in my guild?
SSC
Okay, I guess I should get in here before it gets really bad. I'm a PhD student who studies entrepreneurship, so I've read a bit on the topic of gender discrimination and difference in entrepreneurship. In fact, I'm writing this instead of working on the lit review of my research proposal. There is plenty of evidence that women are discriminated when they look for loans or investments. A good read is Blake 2006 "Gendered Lending: Gender, Context and the Rules of Business Lending" in Venture Capital 8(2) pp. 183-201. Basisiaclly, there are pretty large, statistically signifigant, differences in loan approval rates between men and women, after controling for a host of factors like education, business plan, experience ect. Plenty of women applying for loans for high-tech businesses were told by the banker to instead start more traditionally women-oriented businesses like salons or clothes stores. On the venture capital side, access to venture capital is heavily dependent on social networks, if most venture capialists are men, then women will have a harder time getting into these networks. The old boys network still does exist, and it's hard to break in to.
But why does this matter? The fact is that entrepreneurship is the only way that the American economy is going to grow. This is the best feature of our economy. So sure, I agree that women might not be equally as interested in entering the technical fields as men (though I'd say this is due in large part to implicit and explicit discrimination rather than anything biological). But we need all the entrepreneurs we can get. If women, who as you recall make up half the population, can't get a fair shake at starting high-tech firms poised for fast growth and export-base sales. we're doing the economy a disservice.
Sleep is for the weak!
Silicon Valley is a meritocracy. People who get put in positions that they don't deserve, just because of their skin color or their gender might hold the title, but won't hold the respect or the credibility.
I know plenty of females that are competent in terms of technology. But the ones who are in leadership positions right now started out in tech 20+ years ago. They were the first wave. Now, we have more females in the general ranks, and they will filter their way up. But it takes time.
Force-feeding gender equality in a meritocracy won't work. They have to earn it just like everyone else. And when they do, no one will blink an eye or care, because everyone will think they deserve it.
Fat Camp.
Allow them to be interested in what they want, if they are interested in areas that are considered female and not tech or sports etc, let them. Then again getting parenting advice from slashdot is pretty bad :)
The big mistake is to think that these financial CEO COO XYZ jobs require talent. Some of the people in these positions are extremely talented, but you shouldn't compare them to things that really require talent, like academics or sports. By and large, it's just a bunch of white guys hiring their friends into ridiculously high paying jobs with no skills other than being good at socializing with other white guys. Sorry about the egregiousness, but somebody had to say it.
Aside from the veritable goldmine of easily disputed points you afforded me (and the complete lack of behavioral science references that your post begs for that matter), you do represent an popular and therefore essential viewpoint in this discussion.
You and I will have to agree to disagree and instead I'll address the people reading this thread: this person is who you and your children have to deal with. They're not always men and sometimes they're as innocuous as writers for sitcoms and television showing that women should play the subservient role in any relationship or else it will fall apart. Your wife might make more than you, deal with it.
If you have a daughter, she's going to interface with daughters of the above attitude and it's going to be very trying for your child not to strive to make the cheer leading squad. I'ts going to be hard if she wants to sit at a computer and code up her ideas with her peers expressing this gold standard of high school politics. It's going to be hard like it was hard for me to shirk off sports and instead embrace music and computers. My friends were few but they're still my friends and, hey, we're all lucratively employed. I don't know about the football team and frankly could care less. Sports are great and staying in shape is crucial to your health and well being but the second you step off that field the real parts that matter in your life begin. In the classroom. You're entertainment when you're on the field. It might get you laid in high school but it won't get you employed later in life.
Teach your children to poke holes through arguments that rely on name calling like "gayboys" and try to enforce alpha male hierarchy. These are values and ideals that are, in my humble opinion, vital to success and acceptance. It's your choice to instill them firmly in your children.
My work here is dung.
No man is an island. These stereotypes exist whether I like it or not. I have an 18 month old son we are about to have a daughter.
I'm not about to teach my son to play with girl oriented toys like dolls etc. or dress him in dresses. Regardless of what I believe, he would be the one to suffer if I did. He would be teased. He would be ostracised. He would be beaten up. I'm not going to change society as a whole just by making my own house rules that do not fit in. Me and mine would just be labelled weird.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
cute, nerdy, female?
Choose two.
Women do compete between themselves more than men do. Men are able to organize large and hierarchical structures (e.g. military, church etc) while women usually prefer horizontal relations exactly because they are less willing to subordinate.
Women are just not that keen on taking risks, they prefer long-term stability - that is probably why they are not numerous in risky businesses like being a VC. And I do agree, that's natural: males are nature's way to experiment while female's role is to pick the most successful one among them and reproduce his genes. Somehow it is akin to VC's role in business, though.
Coding etudes
You should care because the only way to make this work...
What do you mean "make it work"? Perhaps it already is? As far as I can see the ONLY data backed evidence in the article is that more men than women get VC dollars and that the women are equally, if not better, qualified. This is NOT evidence of sexism and could be easily due to the fact that women may find the high pressure and huge work load of starting up a company less appealing than men. This could even be viewed as a sign of superior intelligence!
All I'm saying is that perhaps, for the most part, stereotypes have been greatly relaxed (although there are still some throw-backs out there) and what we are seeing is the result of those relaxed stereotypes. We do know that there are differences between the genders so it should not be surprising that this results in differing levels of interest for different types of job. What we have to care about is ensuring equal opportunity for all and not worrying about differing take-up. While the article does conjecture about that there is no evidence to support those conjectures.
I do some "Angel" investing on occasion (I'm not at VC stage yet), meaning that I invest some of my money in promising startups. As much as it may seem that "the kids" have all the tech-saavy and good ideas, I look for startups that are lead by people with fairly extensive experience in both "tech" and business. That means that I'd be hard pressed to put my hard-earned money into a new company that's being run by a 25-year-old who is probably right out of college and has never run a business before. Now, I know that many of the great companies were started by kids with no business experience and I'm probably missing out on a good thing here. However, when I am presented with two competing proposals of otherwise equal potential where the difference is that one company is lead by a kid with no "real-world" experience and the other is lead by someone who's been in the field for 10-20 years, has run other businesses (even failed ones), I'll probably go for the experience - if all other factors are equal. In fact, I believe the youngest person I've ever funded was around 33 at the time.
So, how does this fit in with the gender issue? I've been in the IT field since 1984 and I can tell you that girls were almost entirely absent from my field. What this means in terms of total experience today is that those in the high-tech field with the most experience tend to be predominately men. It would also follow that those with enough experience in their field who are seriously ready to both run a business that requires funding at the VC-level (i.e. millions of dollars) and have enough of a portfolio and background to attract VC would tend to be predominately men. Think about the ages of people running *most* large, successful companies; they tend to be in their 50's or older. Look back at how many women were in the workforce, getting management and "technical" experience in the 70's and 80's. Keeping in mind that during that time women really didn't have the same opportunities as men in the workplace and they tended toward more "traditional" positions - thus further reducing their potential experience in roles that would lead to high-level executive positions.
Is this *fair* to women? Not really. They've always had to fight harder to be accepted into non-traditional roles in business. Is it *fair* to men for women to get moved into positions of authority simply because there aren't enough women in positions of authority? No. However, as someone who puts my money out there on the line, I'm looking for the best chance of a return that I can find. I don't care about the race, creed, color or gender of who's leading the company. I care about their chances of leading the company to success and my getting a return on my investment. Generally that will tend to lean toward those with experience, and in the technical fields that *tends* to be populated with males.
Now, I'm always on the lookout for the exceptions...
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
Homeless men greatly outnumber homeless women.
Or how about fixing the died-on-the-job-gap, too?
Men die more often on the job.
Focusing on those few men that have been wildly successful is silly when so many other men are used and thrown away.
It's not necessary to masculinize girls to get them to grow up with a sense of equality. Don't force Barbie dolls on kids, but don't deny them either.
I am a computer scientist/engineer, I'm a woman, and I had Barbies, Kens, Skippers, Barbie's van, airplane, car, plus a giant disembodied Barbie head hair styling thing... I also had legos, lincoln logs, rubick's cubes, Lone Ranger toys, and Gumby toys. More importantly, I had books - Pippi Longstocking, Ayn Rand, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, and Isaac Asimov. Most importantly, I was never told I couldn't do something because I'm a girl (or for any other reason). I was allowed to explore any (feasible) pursuit my heart desired - horseback riding, little league cheer leading, art, hiking, science, math, electronics, gymnastics, carpentry, riflery, linguistics, and computing.
I wasn't raised to be a girl.
I wasn't raised to be a boy.
I wasn't raised to be a androgynous political statement.
I was raised to be a person. As a result, I can put on heels and a miniskirt and go out for a romantic night on the town, and get up the next day, toss on a backpack and go explore the wilderness for a week without a shower, makeup, or cell phone.
I agree: Equality starts at home. It's the whole package - what you give your kids, what you tell your kids, what you teach your kids, and, most importantly, what you show your kids. You are the most important role model in their lives.
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.
--
make install -not war
Whenever the subject of woman not being represented in a chose profession or field comes up, I can't help but notice something interesting.
The professions are programmer, CEO, the financial field, doctor, or some other high paying white-collar job. I'm pretty sure that women are underrepresented in coal mines, off shore oil rigs, Alaskan crab boats, and the like. All of those jobs are also high paying, but they're just not...ya know...glamorous or easy to do while still have long fingernails.
What a crock.
If you're not part of the old boy network, your gender doesn't really matter.
I mean nepotism is still nepotism.
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.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.