Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

I'm really glad to see this here. I don't have a better word readily available than sexism for trying to talk about patterns like this but when I use the word sexism, I think people think I mean "Men are intentionally exclusionary assholes just to be assholes because they simply hate women." and that's never what I'm trying to say.

I find my gender is a barrier to getting traction and my experience is that it's due to patterns of this sort and not because most men intentionally want me to fail. But the cumulative effect of most men erring on the side of protecting themselves and not wanting to take risks to engage with me meaningfully really adds up over time and I think that tremendously holds women back generally.

I think gendered patterns of social engagement also contributed to the Theranos debacle. I've said that before and I feel like it tends to get misunderstood as well. (Though in the case of Theranos it runs a lot deeper in that she was actually sleeping with an investor.)

>men erring on the side of protecting themselves and not wanting to take risks to engage with me meaningfully

Do you believe that people should take potentially career-ending risks to benefit you?

No.

But I believe I shouldn't have to literally starve and be homeless for years for the crime of being born with girl bits between my legs, which is more or less part of my back story here.

edit: removing my comment as this probably isn't a fruitful avenue of conversation.

I did freelance work to accommodate my health situation. I was also the apparently highest ranked woman on HN and failing to turn that into professional connections and professional development and adequate income.

I believe my gender is a factor in that failing to become what I desired. Every single time I comment on that, without fail, someone acts like I am utterly full of shit and I get really awful and dismissive replies that completely fail to acknowledge that maybe I have a point and maybe my gender actually was a factor in my low income. (And still is.)

"I'm a freelancer. I polish resumes, I do a little website work and I do some writing."

Polishing resumes and website work don't sound like highly paid jobs, regardless of your ranking on HN. This is probably bigger issue then your gender in your income.

I'm not claiming and have never claimed that my gender is the sole factor. I also have a serious medical condition and that's a big problem.

But the issue is that I get told, both implicitly and explicitly, that my gender isn't really an issue at all. Even your comment basically hand waves off my gender as a factor.

I appear to be the highest ranked woman on HN. I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leader board.

I don't even need that much income. If I could just get enough resume work, I would be content to do resume work part-time at $50/page. That would work for me and I can't even arrange that.

I believe my gender is a factor in my failure to adequately meet my financial needs. It is not at all constructive for people to keep telling me the many, many other reasons I am poor as a means to implicitly say "Sure, sexism is a factor, but it's not the only factor, so quit pointing it out because it makes the guys uncomfortable."

That practice is exactly why so many women (people of color, etc) are so very angry. If people would simply acknowledge that my gender is actually something complicating my efforts to network and establish an adequate income and then spend time wondering what would work for me instead of dismissing it as "not the real reason" I'm poor, I would probably be okay financially.

I'm not asking to get rich overnight here.

I accept that gender could be a factor as well, but gender is not something that a comment on HN can change (or should for that matter). Your gender will not (probably) change and we can't really change the culture quickly either.

My point is that if you have low income, it would be better to focus on improving skills you are offering rather than try to solve "women are paid less" problem. For example, just presenting yourself as a website builder sounds more profitable than someone who edits resumes.

By the way is HN rank really that useful? For example I never knew there is a HN leader board or how to access it.

Thank you for the explanation, I wish you all the best.

I have focused on building my skills.

I don't present myself on HN as "a website builder" because I do little plug and play websites (blogspot, wordpress) and I'm not really a programmer. My knowledge of how to build a useful website is potentially of value to people in the small town I live in where local talent is sorely lacking. It's not anything people on HN are likely to want to hire me for.

I'm amazingly, desperately tired of discussing this. Thank you for acknowledging my point. I don't really want to dig into things like the value of HN rank further. It doesn't do a helluva lot of good.

I bring it up to make the point that "If I am doing it wrong, show me the woman that is supposedly doing it right so I can take pointers from her." and that seems to not be what anyone ever hears.

I appear to be the highest ranked woman here, ergo I appear to be the woman who has most closely "mastered" successfully talking to the guys here and I remain frustrated as all hell and dirt poor. So there doesn't appear to be a good answer here.