[freefrancisco]

' Helene Ahl found that in business discourse 70 percent of words used to describe entrepreneurs were male-gendered — these included “self-reliant”, “assertive”, “forceful”, “risk-taking”, “self-sufficient”, “leader”, “competitive”, and “ambitious”.'

I don't see anything male about any of these words, I know many women who can be accurately described by these words, as well as many men who cannot. Why is the author conflating being male with these descriptions? I find the assertion that those words are indeed "male-gendered" very disturbing.

[icegreentea]

I don't think that that was Ahl's intentions when she labelled those terms as 'male-gendered'. I do not believe that she meant they were male-gendered like say.. 'he' or 'him'.

Likely, male-genderedness is suppose to mean something along the lines of "without additional information, most people would assume these words refer to a male rather than a female". The point isn't that you can't use these words to describe females, or that all males can be described by this, but that people just associate these words with males. For example, "chopsticks" -> asian, "NBA basketball player" -> African American.

This could actually be studied (though I can't find any studies... my social sciences research-fu is apparently really weak), and could actually be proven (as much as such things could be proven).

That said, without the proof that they actually are male-gendered, it's kinda flimpsy.

[Crito]

> "without additional information, most people would assume these words refer to a male rather than a female"

Surely that is the problem. The problem isn't that those traits are seen as desirable or common for entrepreneurs. The problem is the people think those traits can only be found in men.

Particularly the idea that "self-reliance" is a male trait is a classic example of something that feminists have been successfully refuting for decades. It should be very clear that the notion that women cannot be self-reliant is very old fashioned; if that attitude is still present in the bay area, then it needs to be stomped out.

[icegreentea]

Maybe. So there are two branch points for this, and one little thing first.

Firstly, I don't think anyone ever thinks that those traits can only be found in men. It's just that they believe that its more likely men to have those traits. Like the chopstick example I gave, no one is ever going to say only asians use chopsticks, and if you told them that the person in question was actually white, they likely wouldn't bat an eye. But their first guess would be asian. So it's not really a problem, because that situation doesn't really exist.

But say we adjust and say the problem is that people think its more common for men to have those traits. Then:

A) Someone comes up with a very good way of measuring those traits. Say it actually turns out to be pretty objective and repeatable and consistent. And then they go out into the field and test a representative sample of North Americans. And then they find that amongst North American men and women, men do score higher in those traits by meaningful measurements of "higher" (say both a higher mean, and an asymmetric distribution shifted towards the higher end).

Now, I'm not saying that that's true, nor do I want that to be true. But if it -is- true, then it turns out people are right! Their intuition matches reality. Now what? Maybe the problem is that its actually true, and we have to dwelve into nature vs nurture and all that "good" stuff. And this is honestly something we have to consider. Given the self-reinforcing nature of society/cultural pressures, and the non-trivial possibility that there are actual biological differences that will bias the traits of the genders, it's actually possible that some sort of difference could be found.

B) Same thing as above regarding reliable tests, but the tests come out negative. No meaningful differences between genders. Well then yes, we have a problem.

[Crito]

I don't think that skill with chopsticks is a good comparison. Chopsticks are an invention with an invention date and location that give them a very tangible cultural association to this day.

The traits listed in the article are not skills with a certain tool, they are more accurately described as personality traits. Men didn't invent and popularize them. There is no inventor of self-reliance, that is something that anybody can exhibit. (And even if we look at so called "traditional" gender roles in society, how many single men raising children are there? How many single women? Anyone saying that women cannot be self-reliant is delusional).

If we want to stick with a 'skill with invention' analogy, why not plow? If I told you that somebody was skilled with a plow, would you first guess that they were Egyptian?

[ars_technician]

No, that's Ahl's intentions. Check the previous quote: "celebrating masculine concepts of control, competition, rationality, dominance, etc."

Apparently she believes being rational is a masculine concept.

[mtrimpe]

It's about taking traits that occur more frequently in men (whether they're due to nature or nurture is irrelevant) and then using them as the scales on which to evaluate entrepreneurs. There's no reason why entrepreneurs shouldn't be described as caring, holistic, fair, benevolent, cooperative.

A good example of these kinds of hidden biases is that I've found that women tend to prefer presenting their business in a calm narrative that allows them to connect emotionally with the audience.

Most startup pitches however are designed for a rapid-fire, fast one-minute, high-energy, show-time kind of 'pitch,' which to a large degree is a display of masculinity and thus a playing field where women are at a disadvantage because they either need to bend the rules to fit their natural presentation style or imitate an unnatural presentation style; both of which are disadvantageous to them.

I still remember being at this accelerator pitch where we saw tons of decidedly mediocre companies pitch and then there was this one women who had such a powerful presence and decided to bend the rules. She extended her time from one to two minutes on the spot and convinced the event organizers to go along with that in such a beautiful display of female dominance and went on to deliver a great story that emotionally connected with almost everyone in the audience.

In the end she didn't go on to the next round of course because well ... she broke the rules ...

[krstck]

This is the kind of rubbish that actually perpetuates sexism in the name of fighting it. "Leader" is a male-gendered word, are you kidding me?

[newnewnew]

Regardless of your sex, you're going to have a tough time as a startup founder if you can't embody those qualities. As of yet, there is no affirmative action in startups, so it's put up or get an easier job.

[jacalata]

That's the point, no? "male or female, you will only succeed if you can act in these typically male ways, regardless of how good your idea and execution are." Therefore, the tech scene is clearly not judging you solely on your idea and execution as they believe they are.

[newnewnew]

Those qualities are what's needed to build something out of nothing. It has never been easy. If you don't think females can do it, well that sounds sexist to me.

Nobody has a magic wand they can wave to give startup success to timid, easily defeated people. If it is your nature to make excuses, I suggest you go get a government job. No amount of feminist cultural revolution is going to convince VCs to throw away their money in order to be politically correct.

[jacalata]

No, most of those qualities are what it takes to make other people believe you can build something. It's an important distinction between 'people who can build amazing products' and 'people who can convince PG/YC that they should be given money because they can build amazing products', and the areas where the two do not overlap are the ones which demonstrate that SV is not a strict meritocracy based on tech skills and execution. You may be attempting to argue that it is a strict meritocracy based on 'the skill of convincing people that you are worth giving money to', and I might agree, but that is not what people generally seem to think they are arguing when they say SV is a meritocracy (although I think there is increasing recognition for this, based on slight differences in the themes of articles across HN).

[walshemj]

How is assertive "male" gendered?

[woah]

There's a very deep rabbit-hole of feminist studies...