[pas]

There are thresholds and regimes for many things in life. And Stripe probably thinks that there are so few female founders, that to get to a healthy state of things they need to "affirmatively actionize" them.

I don't know if they are right or not, but it can be argued that to correct hundreds of years of negative discrimination you need some positive discrimination.

[fiiv]

Can discrimination be positive? It seems by design the very concept is negative.

[pas]

Due to path dependency of history it's silly to look at proposed policies in an idealized world (or in a vacuum as physicists would say).

So the question becomes who much unfairness is now due to the past practices (the past negative discrimination of women), and can that be corrected through giving some kind of advantage to women?

Maybe the answer is that none at all, because people will just think that every women founder is just there because of the gratis advantage.

Or maybe it'll really help push a lot of women toward entrepreneurship and the market won't look at how they started.

I bet Stripe did a lot of discussion about this and they are at least somewhat better informed than us. (And since Atlas is available internationally it could help a lot of women to break out of their respective seemingly hopeless situation - 500 USD is worth a lot in quite a few places in the world.)

[close04]

Discrimination, just as the Latin word it derives from, is a process through which you distinguish between multiple groups or people. Just like to discern.

The way you choose to to the distinction might be unfair: you either put someone at a disadvantage, or give them an unfair advantage.

Most usage was focused on unfair disadvantage but it can be either really.

[fiiv]

But by giving someone an advantage you then immediately give a disadvantage to the ones not within the group you have chosen to advance. Even if perhaps your original intention was merely to do the opposite and help people.

[close04]

Not necessarily. Not all games are 0 sum games so it is possible to give one an unfair advantage without subtracting from another.

For example giving someone a free movie ticket doesn't mean that everybody else is penalized. They get to pay exactly what they were told and expected, and nothing changes their situation. But one person is subsidized, gets an advantage without it subtracting from the others. They all get to see the movie but one does so for free.

In a university admission exam giving one person an unfair advantage might mean that they get admitted instead of someone else. So someone has to lose for this person to win.

[amelius]

How about a discount at the zoo for children?

[pc86]

Discounts for children aren't because children don't have money. They're for two reasons in particular:

1) Children, particularly much younger ones, will remember less of the experience specifically. They're certainly likely to have an overall positive memory of the experience though.

2) If you're a family of 5 that's a lot of tickets. Making the children's tickets cheaper and the toddler's ticket free makes it much easier to go to the zoo on a budget. Children aren't going to the zoo by themselves but the zoo is likely not losing any revenue by discounting child tickets because they're able to get so many more families to come in the first place.

[evilturnip]

No just remove barriers to entry so everyone has an equal opportunity. Positive discrimination not needed.

[pas]

Let's say there are a barriers that formed over the last centuries, how do you plan to remove those quickly and effectively?

[yifanl]

No one said quickly. If the only effective way is slow and incremental, then so be it.

[pas]

Stripe seems to disagree though.

[toomuchtodo]

“This discrimination is okay because it’s for a good cause” is not sound policy (IMHO).

It’s easy to support such efforts until you’re the class discriminated against.

[CyberDildonics]

Whatever someone's feelings on the matter, it is illegal to discriminate based on gender in the US.