Little Flickers Of Racism

Those little flickers of racism matter. To say they don't matter to a group dynamics guy like me is to suggest software bugs are just fine, and bad design is okay. No, it's not.

Race, Gender, Tech

I plot to go into the red circle in this diagram from the tech angle. And for someone of such ambitions the flickers of racism matter even more. They are bread and butter. That is extra true of flickers of sexism, the obvious kind and the internalized kind, both, especially the internalized kind. Women with advanced degrees of internalized sexism also tend to be the more racist kind.

My Web Diagram

When I meet early stage entrepreneurs in town, one way I gauge how far they might go is by trying to figure out how much of a post-ISMs individual they are.

Rudiments Of A Corporate Culture
Third World Guy
Web 5.0: Face Time

The world of physics felt pretty much complete and all set and done when Einstein showed up. But then he noticed light rays bent near the Sun, and based on that one flicker he turned the world of physics upside down. Innovation happens at the edges. The abandoned petri dish is where the magic is at. Little flickers of racism are fascinating like that.

The Magic Letter A

The Letter A: Positioning Matters
Is It About Women?
Image via CrunchBaseCaroline McCarthy On Gender
Tweet Pitches To First World Women
Alexa Hirschfeld: CNN 2010 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs

Friday 2 PM On: PaperlessPost.com

Alexa's PaperlessPost

151 West 25th Street
Between 6th and 7th
9th Floor

Tweet Pitches To First World Women

Image via CrunchBaseI just sent out tweet pitches to every Twitter handle I could get hold of on this page: A Field Guide To The Female Founders, Influencers And Deal Makers Of The New York Tech And Media Scene.

These First World women need to be caring about my Third World women, and my FinTech startup would be a great way to do that.

Tweet 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21.

Women Are Better

Girls In Tech: Is it really the end of men?: Everyday I sit in my office with “the boys,” a group of incredibly talented, hardworking male engineers .... I was shocked when one of them turned to me and said, “apparently I am outdated, inefficient and soon to be obsolete.” .... while men do in fact make up most of the presidents, prime ministers, CEOs of major corporations, and so forth, men also make up most of the prisoners, homeless people and casualties of war as well..... today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men, which means it’s likely that throughout the history of the world 80% of women but only 40% of men reproduced ..... Those that were successful in differentiating themselves were aggressive risk takers ..... society associates women with being lovable; more empathetic, better consensus-seekers and lateral thinkers,bringing a superior moral sensibility to the cutthroat business world. Men are called risk takers, competitive, aggressive, shallow. ...... Given the choice between someone who tells me what to do and someone who asks my opinion, I would choose the latter. ..... modern, post-industrial society no longer favors the risk takers. ..... For both mental retardation and genius, as you go from mild to medium to extreme, the number of males versus females grows larger. ..... Want to think men are better than women? Then look at the top, the heroes, the inventors, the philanthropists, and so on. Want to think women are better than men? Then look at the bottom, the criminals, the junkies, the losers. ...... only 3 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women, but women also only make up 7% of the people who are killed on the job ...... women now hold 51.4 percent of managerial and professional jobs—up from 26.1 percent in 1980. .... I still want to see more women in technology, as Fortune 500 CEOs and holding political office.

Women have so far to go globally to achieve equality, let alone dominance, that this talk is amusing to me. I hope the thesis is right. Female leadership is not a bad idea. It will be good for men too.

Equality is a political concept, it is not biology, not genetics. A post-industrial, knowledge based society will be equal. I hope so. Women have always had brains. Now they have the opportunity to use it. That's all.

This small news of small, slow progress could end up being fodder to defensive men. Got to watch out.

The Atlantic: Hannah Rosin: The End of Men: Earlier this year, women became the majority of the workforce for the first time in U.S. history. Most managers are now women too. And for every two men who get a college degree this year, three women will do the same. For years, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality. But what if equality isn’t the end point? What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women? ..... Men in ancient Greece tied off their left testicle in an effort to produce male heirs ...... “Did male dominance exist? Of course it existed. But it seems to be gone now. And the era of the firstborn son is totally gone.” ..... for the first time in human history, that is changing—and with shocking speed...... As thinking and communicating have come to eclipse physical strength and stamina as the keys to economic success ..... Postgenocide Rwanda elected to heal itself by becoming the first country with a majority of women in parliament. ..... what if the economics of the new era are better suited to women? ..... the wreckage of the Great Recession, in which three-quarters of the 8 million jobs lost were lost by men. The worst-hit industries were overwhelmingly male and deeply identified with macho: construction, manufacturing, high finance ..... . Of the 15 job categories projected to grow the most in the next decade in the U.S., all but two are occupied primarily by women ..... social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focus ..... Last year, Iceland elected Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir, the world’s first openly lesbian head of state, who campaigned explicitly against the male elite she claimed had destroyed the nation’s banking system, and who vowed to end the “age of testosterone.” ...... in the long view, the modern economy is becoming a place where women hold the cards. ..... at the bachelors’ ball, the men, self-conscious about their diminished status, stand stiffly, their hands by their sides, as the women twirl away. ...... What are the four kinds of paternal authority? Moral, emotional, social, and physical. “But you ain’t none of those in that house. All you are is a paycheck, and now you ain’t even that. And if you try to exercise your authority, she’ll call 911. How does that make you feel? You’re supposed to be the authority, and she says, ‘Get out of the house, bitch.’ She’s calling you ‘bitch’!” ...... He writes on the board: $85,000. “This is her salary.” Then: $12,000. “This is your salary. Who’s the damn man? Who’s the man now?” A murmur rises. “That’s right. She’s the man.” ...... men seem “fixed in cultural aspic.” ..... About a third of America’s physicians are now women, as are 45 percent of associates in law firms—and both those percentages are rising fast. A white-collar economy values raw intellectual horsepower, which men and women have in equal amounts. ..... Prominent female CEOs, past and present, are so rare that they count as minor celebrities ..... the term mommy track is slowly morphing into the gender-neutral flex time ....... In lab studies that simulate negotiations, men and women are just about equally assertive and competitive ..... the relationship between testosterone and excessive risk, and wondering if groups of men, in some basic hormonal way, spur each other to make reckless decisions. ...... men and markets on the side of the irrational and overemotional, and women on the side of the cool and levelheaded. ....... sensitive leadership and social intelligence, including better reading of facial expressions and body language ....... Firms that had women in top positions performed better, and this was especially true if the firm pursued what the researchers called an “innovation intensive strategy,” in which, they argued, “creativity and collaboration may be especially important”—an apt description of the future economy. ....... Firms that had women in top positions performed better, and this was especially true if the firm pursued what the researchers called an “innovation intensive strategy,” in which, they argued, “creativity and collaboration may be especially important”—an apt description of the future economy ..... America’s colleges and professional schools, where a quiet revolution is under way ..... men are now more likely than women to hold only a high-school diploma ..... they are just failing to adapt.” ....... the “open secret” that private schools “are discriminating in admissions in order to maintain what they regard as an appropriate gender balance.” ...... “Maybe these boys are genetically like canaries in a coal mine, absorbing so many toxins and bad things in the environment that their DNA is shifting. Maybe they’re like those frogs—they’re more vulnerable or something, so they’ve gotten deformed.” ...... schools, like the economy, now value the self-control, focus, and verbal aptitude that seem to come more easily to young girls. ...... s how much power women have” when they’re not bound by marriage. .... “The family changes over the past four decades have been bad for men and bad for kids, but it’s not clear they are bad for women” ...... marriage has disappeared because women are setting the terms—and setting them too high for the men around them to reach ...... Japan is in a national panic over the rise of the “herbivores,” the cohort of young men who are rejecting the hard-drinking salaryman life of their fathers and are instead gardening, organizing dessert parties, acting cartoonishly feminine, and declining to have sex. The generational young-women counterparts are known in Japan as the “carnivores,” or sometimes the “hunters.” ...... This often-unemployed, romantically challenged loser can show up as a perpetual adolescent ..... Rates of violence committed by middle-aged women have skyrocketed since the 1980s

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Alexa Hirschfeld: CNN 2010 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs

CNN Money: the most innovative, ground-breaking, game-changing female entrepreneurs in the U.S.--business builders who might be Fortune Most Powerful Women someday. .... media pioneers and bioengineers and a variety of innovators in between.

I met Alexa for the first time during Social Media Week. (Social Media Week: The Best NY Tech MeetUp Ever) That was back in February. She sat on a Neha Chauhan (Women In Tech-Media Event At JP Morgan: Internet Week) panel that I declared the best panel of the week of all that I went to. I also met Alexa briefly during a NY Tech MeetUp after party a few months ago when she was floating around the room looking for a VentureBeat writer. She talked about a blog post of mine: Farmville Farmer's Market: My Idea. It is now so very good to see Alexa on CNN listed among the "2010 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs."

It is good to be mentioned on CNN, but I disapprove of the condescending tone in parts of the article.

The 2010 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs are not necessarily building the next Starbucks (SBUX) or Netflix (NFLX) or Apple (AAPL).

When was the last time Patricia Sellers created a company? (FoodSpotting Is The Next FourSquare)

Alexa is one of the younger names on the list.

• Alexa Hirschfeld, Founder, Paperless Post, New York, NY

How My Grandfather Became Mayor The First Time
ANTA Convention: Emotional Bath

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Alexa Hirschfeld - LinkedIn
Alexa Hirschfeld | Facebook
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An Apologetic Mike Arrington

Image via Wikipedia

TechCrunch: Mike Arrington: Blogging And Mass Psychomanipulation: how perfect blogging is, with its constant feedback loop, as a training ground for mass psychology and manipulation ..... any blogger worth her salt could start, say, an extremely successful militant religious cult ...... Any blogger will tell you how frustrating the early days are. Getting someone, anyone, to link to you. Your first comment! etc. ..... If there is something nasty that can be said, someone will say it. Over and over ..... Bloggers have a direct line to the collective mind. .... I imagine priests and rabbis and career politicians have much the same experience. Speaking publicly so frequently they learn exactly how to manipulate the audience, or the camera, to get the reaction they want. It doesn’t work on every individual, but the masses as a group are easy to manipulate. and your audience tends to self reinforce over time, meaning the people who buy what you’re selling tend to come back for more, and others wander away.

Mike Arrington wrote this defensive blog post because he is not all too happy with the reaction his earlier post on women in tech seems to have gotten. I was one of those who did not take kindly to what Arrington had written. (Mike Arrington Is A Sexist Pig: Say PeeeeG!)

Kudos to Mike for at least bringing up the topic. Most men treat gender as a taboo topic. You just don't talk about gender. Most men have at ready knee jerk reactions. He obviously has had the courage to stick his neck out.

But that still does not take away from the fact that he sounded like he was defending the status quo in tech. The status quo marginalizes women. It is indefensible. And Mike Arrington does not have a clue.

To say there is a problem would be a good starting point. And Arrington is not there. This is not about blaming men. This is about identifying a malaise and then thinking up solutions as to how we can make things better. The world of tech has to be turned into true meritocracies.
Someone like Mike Arrington who has a big megaphone has the option to play a constructive role.

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Tech, Women, Diversity

Image via Wikipedia

Often when Fred Wilson puts out a blog post where he links to about four different blog posts, I know it is one of those posts that is asking for a reply blog post, sometimes to echo the sentiment, sometimes to express a disagreement, often just to give further momentum to a great topic. Today is the turn of women in technology.

This whole debate reminds me of the creationism debate. My take has been religion and science deal with two different levels of reality. Religion is a belief system. Those beliefs do not have to follow the laws of physics, and many of them don't. Jesus walking on water makes sense in religion, does not make sense in science. I am not going to think you are a prude for believing that.

Religion has to be looked at in the religious realm. Science inhabits the scientific realm. And there are intersection points, like when Galileo was harassed. When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, many people in Nepal did not believe. The moon is a god. The guy probably climbed some hill, and thinks he is on the moon, that was the sentiment.

Gender is as big a topic in sociology as gravity is in physics. It is big. It is all pervasive. Just because we don't think about it much does not mean gravity is not active every waking hour, and while we are down.

There are many - they tend to be white men for some reason - who argue technology is neutral to your background. You can be any gender, any cultural background, it does not matter. They are lying. Or they are ignorant. Some of them are evil. They are invested in persisting the status quo.

Even where meritocracy can be shown to exist, those with the merits and the skills and the intellect stand on centuries of favoring one kind of people over another kind of people. And that is when there are not outright sexist informal and formal structures in place.

Gender and technology: there are many intersection points.

Equality is something that has to be proactively sought. I don't think sexism is in the interests of men. A healthy male female ratio in the workplace and at the various leadership levels has to be attempted. This is not a male versus female issue. There are those - men and women - who are on the right side of history, and there are those who are on the wrong side. We should get more people to come over on to the right side. We have to constantly be evangelizing.

Fred Wilson: XX Combinator
Tereza Nemessanyi: XX Combinator
Brad Feld: The Discussion About The Lack Of Women In Tech
Eric Ries: Why Diversity Matters (The Meritocracy Business)

When you visit Fred's blog post, make sure you don't miss out on the action in the comments section.

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Call Out The Sexism

Image via Wikipedia

You Can't Launch the Next Generation of Startups Without Women - ReadWriteStart The current startup system essentially excludes the untapped pool of innovators who aren't developers - for example, women who want to launch Internet startups...... Women tend to take the entrepreneurial plunge later than men typically do, once they've had some professional and life experience.......... a study done in the U.K. in 2006 showed that women over 40 were more likely to start a new business than any other age group. ...... the Internet and the startup culture have been dominated and shaped by the vision and appetites of young men and old boys from the start. ..... a sharp rise in women-in-tech groups and activities lately, undoubtedly a response to this inequity. ...... revisit the startup system and create structures that foster innovation coming from a more diverse group of people (age, origin, gender)....... eak). Women tend to present their projects in terms of their value to users and society ...... women could benefit from mentoring that would teach them to conceptualize and present their concepts in technology terms and money terms. ....... today, non-technical entrepreneurs are just as likely to come up with viable startup concepts as programmers are ...... Investors need to start looking at paper projects again, and not dismissing non-technical founders. There need to be mechanisms that facilitate team building, like matchmaking resources for projects and developers.

If it is sexism, call it sexism. Don't overlook it, don't call it something else. Definitely don't call it meritocracy. If you are at a tech event, or a meeting, and some guy makes a sexist comment, then call him out. If you are a quiet bystander, you are an active participant. Tech entrepreneurship is a cutting edge thing, and there can not be room for sexism on the cutting edge. Sexism is not a problem for women to deal with. It is as much a problem for men. Our startups don't realize their full potential if we keep putting up with sexism.

If you don't have the time, inclination, penchant or patience for a long, drawn out argument, just call the guy a pig and move on. 

Shirky: A Rant About Women: not enough women have what it takes to behave like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks ...... We’re in the middle of a generations-long project to encourage men to be better listeners and more sensitive partners, to take more account of others’ feelings and to let out our own feelings more. Similarly, I see colleges spending time and effort teaching women strategies for self-defense, including direct physical aggression. I sometimes wonder what would happen, though, if my college spent as much effort teaching women self-advancement as self-defense. .... we live in a world where women are discriminated against ...... Institutions assessing the fitness of candidates, in other words, often select self-promoters because self-promotion is tied to other characteristics needed for success. ....... To put yourself forward as someone good enough to do interesting things is, by definition, to expose yourself to all kinds of negative judgments ........ the fact that other people get to decide what they think of your behavior leaves only two strategies for not suffering from those judgments: not doing anything, or not caring about the reaction. ......... Not caring works surprisingly well. ........ it would be good if more women see interesting opportunities that they might not be qualified for, opportunities which they might in fact fuck up if they try to take them on, and then try to take them on. It would be good if more women got in the habit of raising their hands and saying “I can do that. Sign me up. My work is awesome,” no matter how many people that behavior upsets.

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Indra Nooyi: Power Woman

She is a woman, she is also Indian. That is a double whammy, as far as I am concerned.

She has been on the list for a few years now, but now she is number one. That is amazing.



I thought the least I could do to celebrate was put out a blog post. How about that?

She is an inspiration. I have heard her name before, but today is the first time I am reading up on her.

In The News

50 Most Powerful Women in Business Fortune .... 1 Indra Nooyi PepsiCo

Indra Nooyi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Indra Nooyi - The 2008 TIME 100 - TIME sharp strategic mind, tremendous market insight ....... PepsiCo's international business grew 22% last year, and she is showing the way for American companies trying to do well overseas. (These days, that's everybody.) Indra, 52, was also way ahead of her competitors in moving the company toward healthier products. ....... She welcomes hearing from people who disagree with her, but she is single-minded about following the path she believes is best for her company and its shareholders.

50 Most Powerful Women in Business 2006: Indra Nooyi | FORTUNE
#5 Indra K. Nooyi - Forbes.com
America's Best Leaders: Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo CEO - US News and ...
Indra Nooyi's Graduation Remarks
Two Lessons From Indra Nooyi's Success - Sepia Mutiny you can get ahead in the American corporate environment without sacrificing who you are culturally. ....... the difficulty some women face in dating and/or marrying men who are less powerful or successful than they are ........ Have you had your snack? Ok, go play. Momma has to go acquire a multinational or two and pacify the Indian media regarding the recent pesticide allegations. ...... you don’t have to sell yourself out and tell everyone your name is “Bob” if it’s really Balwinder ...... getting her first job in the U.S. after completing her Master’s at Yale ....... determined girl, who while studying in Connecticut, worked as a receptionist from midnight to sunrise to earn money and struggled to put together US$50 to buy herself a western suit for her first job interview out of Yale ....... She lives with her husband and two daughters in Fairfax county, Connecticut ..... Nooyi attends PepsiCo board meetings in a sari ..... There’s no reason to be defensive about being a vegetarian, or preferring mango lassi to martinis, or cricket to baseball… and on and on.
Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo CEO on Mentors, Meritocracy and Maternity ... some work/life balance issues and the hard realities women face when they reduce time spent in the office ....... “If women don’t help other women then who will?” asked Indra
Duke varsity to honour Indra Nooyi, Oprah Winfrey