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itsybaev | 13 years ago

imho, your example is not very good, because VCs don't give funding preferably to those with male names. According to the article VCs just "can’t see the world from a woman's perspective". Then the question is why VCs don't hire more female experts if they "can’t see the world from a woman's perspective".

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travel123|13 years ago

Excerpt from the linked article: ------ At one point, the founder was introduced via email to the head of a VC firm and got a reply from one of his associates. “We were given explicit advice that if we were introduced to a venture partner in a certain way and they passed us off to an associate, we were supposed to respond with, ‘Thanks so much. I’d love to talk, but I’m heads down on a product right now and I’m only able to talk to people with decision-making ability,’” she says. She composed a reply saying as much. Before sending, she showed it to five different male friends who were also founders and they thought the tone was fine. But the response she got from the associate at the firm was shocking. “I got a massive slap on the wrist,” she says. “The tone of the response I received was, ‘Don’t get too big for your britches, little girl.’ And it happened a second time as well.” When she showed the reply to the male founders, they were amazed by the brazenness of the email. They had never received anything similar in tone and couldn’t understand why the response was so cold and angry. ------

Another excerpt: ------ Money men look for people who are a younger, better, smarter version of themselves. It's human nature. The typical funder is an old, straight, white male, hence the typical fund-receiver is a young, straight, white, male. ------

There's a hierarchy of (generally unintentional) discrimination. In practice, there's a lot more discrimination when meeting face-to-face than when just confronted with names - but even in controlled conditions like the above math example, there tends to be a massive amount of bias against women in technical fields. And it's not a matter of perspectives.