[rottendoubt]

My thoughts:

1) As jlees mentioned below, you need to look at the "subset of women hackers who also have some entrepreneurial drive" when looking at something like YC. The 4% doesn't really surprise me at all.

2) My observation is that women tend to be on a timeline about 5 years "faster" than men because of their biological clock. As in, they'll start thinking seriously of marriage and kids late 20's, early 30's whereas men will deal with this issue more like early to mid 30's. So their window for doing a startup is smaller.

3) This is a bit of a generalization, but the dynamics are really different when you have all-guy co-founders versus mixed versus all-female co-founders. With mixed sometimes personal relationships develop which can make things messy. And when you have a couple of alpha-females together, sometimes that can also lead to problems (for example, see the all-female startup in the TechStars Reality show). [These are just my own observations. Please don't flame me for this!]

[anthropeeps]

1)I'm not necessarily negating you, rottendoubt, but I'd be curious to know what the women who have applied to YC and those who have been accepted think of marriage and kids. There may be no correlation at all. I personally think a large part of the discrepancy is our culture and can easily be changed, especially in the minds of the kids who are currently growing up.

2) As for dynamics...yeah, I'll agree with you on that. Women can be catty. That doesn't mean we are catty, but we can be. Where does that leave us though? It actually appears that we have to prove ourselves above and beyond. "I won't be catty, I won't go after my co-founder and hopefully he won't come after me, and I'm sorry I'm not a dude so I can't create an all male cohort." Doesn't mean it will stop me but it does make it more difficult.

3) Call me biased because I'm an educator, but I think a big obstacle is our science education in this country. Or lack thereof. Tech information is geared towards males, not females and it is a poor show at that. If more females became involved at a younger age, I think YC would have a hard time keeping the women out. :)

[rottendoubt]

I was just having dinner with a female friend that was an EECS major (electrical engineering computer science) from UC Berkeley and she brought up another point. She said whenever she took classes and needed a partner, she'd always have guys come up to try to help her and that usually they were among the smartest guys in the class.

As far as the marriage/kids issue goes ... I think I read that the average age of the people at YCombinator is 26; and as far as my own observation goes, that's right around the time that my female friends started seriously thinking about the marriage/kids issue. I think the discrepancy is really driven by the biological clock. Men can have kids well into their 50's, but it's pretty dangerous for women to have kids past 40.

[jlees]

Well, anecdotes are anecdotes. I know plenty of women the same age as me (I'm 29) who also don't want kids any time soon, though more and more of us are getting married. I really don't know of any of the women I went to college with at undergrad or postgrad level having kids as young as 26, and only one that I can think of that has kids at 30.

Maybe I'm too much of an outlier, but to me, achieving my dreams is more important than having a kid, which has never been something I particularly prioritised in life. I have at least 5 more years before I really have to worry anyway. Plus, we're having babies long after 40 now.

[rottendoubt]

Oh, I agree. I'm the same way (I'm 37). It's just that differences in biology force women to consider the issue earlier than men. I'm guessing that societal pressure also plays a part as well -- ie. parents may push a woman at 30 to get married/have kids much harder than a man at 30.

[anthropeeps]

I don't think it is so different for men and women in today's day and age. IVF and surrogacy have changed the game quite a bit. I'm 32 and don't plan on having kids for a few more years, but I also know I have options that didn't exist for my parents. Because of these options, I feel I've had the freedom to explore my education and career and I know so many women in their 30's who either don't want children or plan on waiting. This whole "women can have it all thing" is partially true in the sense that it comes in increments, but rarely all at once.