Since the market IS so completely non-discriminatory, why do you think that there are so few women starting tech companies?

In my experience, the male and female hackers that I've met have been about equal in terms of ability, but there are just far fewer females that seem drawn to this line of work (a bit less than 1:10). Obviously, there is *some* kind of cause. I've often wondered if there is a cultural bias against technical females, or perhaps our math and technical education is biased towards a male viewpoint, or perhaps there is just something about hacking that a greater percentage of men find appealing.

I'm not sure, but the cultural bias angle seems a bit specious; ESR aside, most technical types are pretty accepting. While it's un-PC, I think that the "more men like hacking" might have something to it, but it's not clear to me why that would be. The educational theory seems very possible as well, especially since early experience in a subject tends to point a kid in a certain direction, and then becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

For that matter, "more men like hacking" and "math is taught in a boy-centric way" would sort of feed into one another.

What we need is a test.

If the market is less discriminatory towards women than investors or corporate structure, then one would expect, on average, the following effects (at first order):

1) Of the founders of successful startups, women will have

a) spent more time to successfully raise funds.
b) been rejected more often with similar credentials.

2) Of the female founders who start startups, they will be more successful, by a greater margin than men in

a) Markets with simpler, direct to consumer distribution channels
b) Markets with more traditional business interaction, but with many female leaders,

and less successful, by a greater margin than men in

c) Business to business markets in male dominated areas, and
d) Markets with a complicated, male dominated distribution channel.

Does this test pass?

My theory:

Although we have roughly the same mind capabilities, we don't have the same interest:

- We men LOVE RISK. That's right we love adventure, the unexpected on average far more than women.
- We LOVE MACHINES on average far more than women. On average you like interpersonal links far more than men.
- We LOVE PROBLEM SOLVING, we are more rational, less emotional than women.

All this things are per se. We don't like risk, or cars or computers because of the money, position-benefits you gain from them, whatever, we love this because is there. Bill Gates hooked with the computer the first day it saw it.

@Danielle: Please stop the feminist argument-> Women will be rejected by male, you know what? We men like women, we don't hate them.

When I use reddit, digg, google, I don't care if it's done by a female worker or a male one. Nobody cares. People only cares about quality.

I love programming and CAN'T STOP doing it. I need it in my life the same way a writer needs to write. I thought I was different because I was a minority in my environment , later I discovered that in my University LUG(Linux users group) everybody had this interest.

From a population of 2500, we were a minority of 300. Something like 290 boys and 10 girls.

Those people that love computers and spend time with them later in live will be able to do things with them the other people can't. The people that not will envy the money(benefits) a startup founder get from his company, once everything works, but they won't take their selves he risk, time and resources to make it happen.

Jose,

I'm simply pointing out that *if* anti-female discrimination exists less within certain markets, we can predict certain results about which companies succeed or fail, in a falsifiable way. By applying this test we can become more or less certain that discrimination exists. I'm not asserting that discrimination is prevalent. There is an important distinction.

But if you're saying that this isn't *even worth asking*, then you've proven yourself false by direct internal contradiction. This would be a specific example of a man rejecting the thought of a woman without allowing even the consideration of whether the question is worthy of investigation.

Part of the explanation is undoubtedly the lower number of women in technology. The causes of that is another question. It is observably at least partly social conditioning from childhood.

I do think it is true that men take more risks (studies of how men and women invest have confirmed this - cannot find a url to cite, sorry). I would attribute that to greater social pressure on men to "achieve" in financial terms.

@Danielle. A weakness in your test is the interaction between the two parts: if women find it harder to raise funds that may directly lead to them being more successful once they do get funding, because only the best will get as far as getting the funding.

On the other hand the difference in women's success rates in the two types of markets would definitely tell us something.

@Isaac That's what I said. I only put my data over the table and made generalizations, every generalization is only this.

In an open organization about tech(There was another about making electronics roughly with the same ratios), few women enter, simply because they are not interested as much as in others like travel organization(in BEST you will find ratios on par):
http://www.best.eu.org/index.jsp

@Danielle
:-)
and I'm simply pointing out that one of the good things about tech is that nobody cares if you are black, white, tall or short, if you can do a better thing that others you are in.

Specially in a startup, nobody cares, they care about your product not you. On Internet nobody knows you are a dog.

@Shanon :-)
"But rationality is usually left to the machines"
What makes us human is rationality. :-) Any mammal has emotions, from dogs to cows. I agree with you the best person is the one that has their physical and mental(logical and emotional)parts perfect developed.

There is certainly discrimination within venture capital. I have been in meetings where people literally could not make eye contact with me.

@Graeme: I would not say that fundraising is some sort of strength test for women and that the ones who pass will be more successful. Being able to take abuse doesn't improve your product. If anything I'd say that it just gets you better investors, since if they invest in you they're better people than the ones who passed. It's not a strength test for future success as much as it's a ethics test for VCs.

Making something "people want" without capital is like going to Las Vegas. Sure you can get lucky, but odds are absolutely against you. Might as well just create the great products and just hand them over to better funded companies. If women don't have access to capital at the same rates as men do, women will fail at greater rates than men will.

Based on research from a group out of Carnegie Mellon, females get disengaged from programming early. Females tend to have to have a REASON to program, and early programming courses just don't have sufficient reasoning for women. To address this, the CMU group has created this game: http://www.alice.org/

It seems to be working (more women are staying in CS after having having a courses that's taught with Alice). Also, other schools are picking this approach up.

@ Jose

Nope, we're not rational. To think, organise and create tools out of raw materials to do our work for us is what separates us from animals. And it's a thin line of difference... but that's a whole other debate :-)

We rationalise our decisions, but that is not the same as being rational. Game theory and the tragedy of the commons are easy ways to demonstrate how irrational we are in our decision making. Psychologists and neuroscientists can prove that our subconscious reacts (often based on emotion) and our conscious mind rationalises the reaction.

The trolley test is a simple example - see http://www.joiningdots.net/blog/2005/12/knowledge-is-personal.html

If we were rational, we'd always achieve optimal outcomes. Instead, we rarely do. But hey, it makes life more interesting.

At the risk of being read as a mysoginist, I think a better question to ask is "Does it even matter?"

I suspect that the number of women that start and run their own businesses is much closer to 50-50 overall than it is in the technology sector alone. Is that significant? I don't think so. For some bizarre reason, technophiles and their pundits often forget that there's a much bigger world out there than is brought to you via the intertubes.

My mother, for instance, started her own business in December of 2006. She quit her job in March 2007. For FY2007, she did just over $100K in business. She's on track to do over $1 million this year, and quite likely somewhere around $2-3 million next year. She's not in the technology sector, though she did work for an engineering company for 22 years, and in her last position, she was managing their transition to Oracle.

So while the number of women in science and engineering might concern some people, it doesn't concern me. At all. After all, we don't see people pushing for more male enrollment in nursing school or any other pink collar job, do we? So why do we feel it necessary to push for more women in science and engineering?

Now, if there are barriers to entry specific to women, that's one thing. But I think those have largely been abolished beyond the gawking at women by their male counterparts, which I know for a certainty exists. That sucks, I know, but it's not a barrier to entry. It's something you put up with once you're finished.

My bigger concern is the fact that boys are now being left behind. There are more women in college than there are men, and that ratio continues to slide in women's favor. Where's the outrage there? Why must education be seen as zero-sum when it clearly is not? Why can't both sides get the help they need?