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.)

What is described in the article isn't sexism - it's fear. Fear of being labeled as a sexist.

It’s probably both.

The men are assuming based on the female founder’s gender _alone_ that she might accuse him of sexism.

Regardless of how rational this fear is, they are stereotyping new female founders they’re meeting for the first time based on what an X% of other female founder’s have done in the past.

For the men, it’s probably a risk/reward calculation. Keep your head down and be polite and have ~0% chance of being accused of sexism. Or, speak up and maybe ruffle some feathers and have a ~X% chance of being accused of sexism.

You can see the problem on both sides of the equation, but withholding advice based on gender alone does meet the definition of sexism, regardless of the intentions of self-protection rather than hate.

Okay. Let me draw an analogy. Say you're in occupied Hungary circa 1956. Whenever you hear anybody walk by speaking Russian, you clam up for fear that they might be Soviet secret police.

Would you describe this person as "racist" against Russians? I don't think a reasonable person would apply that label. I think they'd say they're responding rationally to the specific circumstances of their immediate situation. That sort of behavior shows no inherent animosity to Russian people in general.

(And before anyone cries foul, I'm not in anyway saying sexism accusations in 2021 corporate America is anywhere near the same as the KGB. I think that should be patently obvious. The reason I picked this specific example was to stretch the underlying logic to a situation that's clear enough to be cut and dry situation.)

> Would you describe this person as "racist" against Russians?

Yeah, they're making decisions and treating someone differently based on the person's (anticipated) race. Something being rational doesn't make it not racism.

> That sort of behavior shows no inherent animosity to Russian people in general.

Racism has nothing to do with animosity. Consider that men have the opposite of animosity towards women and yet sexism is something between humans.