For once??? Most of the articles written ARE about males. Unless it specifies, as this one does, the default is males.
"Why should we be catering to women?" Why are we currently so heavily catering to men?
"Why should we be catering to women?" Why are we currently so heavily catering to men?
Could you copy a few links here on articles about YC founders that particularly focus on their being male, what it is about the masculinity that is relevant, etc., rather than just mentioning them as people? I'm not sure I've ever read such an article.
I'm fascinated to see what they discuss? The choice between fatherhood and career, the preconceptions to behave in a particular fashion, the unfair dresscodes and lack of paternity rights?
Because an article is about people, and those people happen to have a joint characteristic, that doesn't mean that the article is about that characteristic of those people. To recapitulate, if I right an article about people who inspired me growing up and it mentions Ronald Reagan and Michael Gorbachev that doesn't mean the article is about "light skinned males" any more than if it were about Margaret Thatcher and Germaine Greer it would be about "light skinned females".
FWIW the OP doesn't really touch on being about being a female founder except in one para:
>"We got an interesting variety of responses when we asked the women whether being a female was advantageous or disadvantageous in their roles as founders."
And in that the response appears to have been "it didn't make any difference".
Well if being a male and female founder is practically the same it does rather demand that we ask the question, so why are YC focussing on the sex of these particular founders then, what's it got to do with anything.
There is this bit of unexplained sexism:
>"And as YC has grown, so has the number of female partners. Now there are four of us and we are not tokens, or a female minority in a male-dominated firm. At the risk of offending my male colleagues, who will nevertheless understand what I mean, some would claim it's closer to the truth to say that that we run the place."
In what way is it fine to pick out that "we run the place" and specifically note that's related to being a particular sex? How is that cool. Maybe those people do run the place, but is that really because they're a particular sex rather than because that's the role they were hired for, or fell into, within the firm?
Why is YC so keen to maintain an actively demarcated line between males and females rather than just say Alex here is office manager, rather than noting first which sex Alex is. Baffles me how this is presented as progressively non-sexist.
For this reason, yes, it is important to mention that Alex is a woman, so as to make potential female women less scared of approaching YC. In a perfect world it wouldn't be necessary, but because the climate in the industry is one of harassment against every woman, it is necessary to point out successful examples of females in tech and in YC.
> Well if being a male and female founder is practically the same it does rather demand that we ask the question, so why are YC focussing on the sex of these particular founders then, what's it got to do with anything.
I think the idea was that said females didn't find founding a company any more difficult, given they had already chosen the founder path. This is because once you go down that path, the most significant factor is drive. So Jessica "not really touching on being a female founder" may have been intended to convey a welcoming sense of gender-equality by not actually focusing about gender (like you say it shouldn't be). But on the other hand, we can't ignore the up-stream barrier-to-entry that must exist for the demographics to look so skewed.
> we run the place
Yeah, I agree. That particular line (in an otherwise fine article) may have been written with good intention. But it also felt pretty jarring. Reading "we (us women) run the place" gives me vibes that sexism is something to be inverted rather than neutralized. I think the article might have been better received had Jessica said "The 4 of us, who happen to be women, play key roles" or "It's nice to see a female majority at the top for a change".