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1005 points femfosec | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.342s | source
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DoreenMichele ◴[] No.26613077[source]
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.)

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dageshi ◴[] No.26613164[source]
Genuine question, if you were a man in that situation, what would you do?
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quicklime ◴[] No.26616092[source]
For that particular situation, I'd stay silent. I agree there's a risk, and that this is a problem.

Longer term though, I'd make sure we hire female investors into my VC fund. I'd take them along the journey of investing with this startup, and if I felt a female CEO needed to be replaced with a man, I'd discuss this with my investment partners. Any harsh feedback, if given, would be coming from all of us, and a mixed panel would be harder to accuse of sexism.

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protomyth ◴[] No.26617902[source]
Any harsh feedback, if given, would be coming from all of us, and a mixed panel would be harder to accuse of sexism.

Nope, a hostile founder/CEO will pick the men out of the panel and sick the mob on them. The women on the panel are either oppressed or anti-feminism. The mob doesn't care and won't hear the whole story.

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1. quicklime ◴[] No.26631922[source]
Yep, that's why I used the word "harder" instead of "impossible". At that point, the situation would be within my threshold of acceptable risk.