After reading the NY Times article on Why are so few women in Silicon Valley? and all the reaction posts talking about the importance of women support groups and women-only venture firms, I have to express my opposing point of view, with only hope to provoke some thought among women and inspire them to take a risk.
The problem with women organizations. With all the good intentions of supporting women, these groups make more harm than good by accentuating the issue and essentially separating women from men. I truly believe that the only way to change the current imbalance between male and female forces in the tech and entrepreneurial communities is by encouraging women to become more active within those communities, and not by creating their own, women focused groups. Our energy should be spent not on “supporting” and “empowering” each other, but on the active integration within the male-dominated groups.
The role models issue. We keep complaining about lack of female role models – what’s wrong with male role models? Most of my business skills I learned from men and I am honored to have them as my mentors. As long as a person can inspire you and give a solid advice, it shouldn’t matter if it’s a male or female. Why do we need to see other women making it happen in order to convince ourselves we can do it too? Look at successful men around you and ask yourself why can’t you do the same?
Who to blame? I truly believe we have no one to blame but ourselves. Sure, there are stereotypes and I’m the first to confess about pitching countless VCs and not being given a real chance by most of them. You know what was the only thing I wished after every VC meeting I had? I wished they’ve seen more female entrepreneurs before me. That would make my job so much easier. Perhaps if they were used to seeing women founders they would be less outraged by the fact that I was wearing a dress and not a suit.
What can you do?
Perhaps if more women applied to speak on the panels at tech conferences, there would be more great female speakers.
Perhaps if more women joined groups like NY Tech meetup, the startup community would be more balanced.
Perhaps if more women thought they can build a successful company without having a male co-founder there would be more female founders.
Perhaps we are just too afraid to step out of our own comfort zone, while it’s so convenient to blame the glass ceiling.
Perhaps we are too afraid to admit that the only people we can blame for the male-dominated startup community are ourselves and our girlfriends. We are the ones who are guilty for not aiming high enough, not believing in ourselves and for allowing men to convince us in our own stereotype.
There is no better time than now to prove this stereotype wrong.
Leave a comment or reply @yuliz.
I am totally with you. Women need to stop focusing on the problem and find solutions to overcome the boundaries. Most women are too caught up in putting all their energy into finding the perfect man & family first instead of transferring that same energy into propelling their careers. Being a young entrepreneur I find that majority of the women I know are not as serious as I am about achieving my goals I set so I find myself more drawn to working with men. But I find that some men do not know how to differiate business from pleasure so I find myself doing a lot of things on my own.
I completely agree with this sentiment, I have been discussing this issue with my male co-founder over the last few days, as there have been a number of female orientated networking groups that I have taken notice of. Although I think that it is great for women to support other women, I think that it is more important like you said to support integration with other entrepreneurs whether they be male or female.
I think you have hit on what Astia attempts and intends to achieve. We are not a women's network. Instead we are one of the few places where equal numbers of men and women gather together to grow their businesses – and it gives us a unique feel as a community. We are not attempting to make our own network, instead we are a component of the broader ecosystem that exists for entrepreneurs. My point in the article was that still today men and women network in separate business networks. This must change in our society – and it is for all of us to make it happen.
chamese – Thanks for your feedback. I can definitely relate to that. My general conclusion is that entrepreneurship is a pretty lonely business. Not necessarily in a negative way, it's just somehow the most important tasks and decisions we eventually make on our own.
thanks! let's hope more women adopt this approach
Thanks for your feedback, Sharon. We all ultimately have the same goal, but from my understanding Astia's approach is still driven by creating your own women focused events, although they are supported by a broader network of men and women. I really think the most important thing we can do is become more active within existing events and communities. How about utilizing Astia's network to encourage women to nominate for the Crunchies Awards, so they won't be missing at the ceremony, as Vivek Wadhwa noted in his article. How about making sure more women lead startups apply for TechCrunch50? These are the the real opportunities to make an impact.
Actually we do not do any women-only events. Even in the program for
our clients the founding teams participate (and that is most commonly
both men and women). And we work hard with our PR teams in all market
to get our companies in to all media (press, conferences, etc) to get
them engaged and recognized as the industry leaders they are. You
should come and get to know us.
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Amen!
It's not just women, it's interesting how all minorities segregate themselves to talk about diversity.
I would use the man to elevate the women's rank in any chosen aspect of life, instead of blaming ourselves for not fighting and rising up.
The corporate word will die out when more people will become aware of how they are being abused by them and will become aware of the fact that they can flip their life course to be more of what they dream of. This is already happening on a small scale all over the world. I see it here in the Bay Area and saw it in other “pockets” of sanity, where women are an integral part of the decision makers.
Great to read your blog Yuli and thank you for sharing!
I would use the man to elevate the women's rank in any chosen aspect of life, instead of blaming ourselves for not fighting and rising up.
The corporate word will die out when more people will become aware of how they are being abused by them and will become aware of the fact that they can flip their life course to be more of what they dream of. This is already happening on a small scale all over the world. I see it here in the Bay Area and saw it in other “pockets” of sanity, where women are an integral part of the decision makers.
Great to read your blog Yuli and thank you for sharing!