Yes. I couldn’t agree more. I just read Alexia Tsotsis’ Stop Telling Women Not To Do Startups on TechCrunch. The key moment:
Because nothing says link bait like “taking on a controversial topic” stupidly, using gross generalizations. The latest in this series is a post by Penelope Trunk, who is either a master at extrapolation or seems to have seriously conflated the word “women” with “Penelope Trunk.” I remember being a young TechCruncher reading her first post, “Women Don’t Want To Run Startups Because They’d Rather Have Children” and thinking, “Wow, this seems deliberate.”
The trouble with link bait like that, as Alexia points out, is that people read it, believe it, and use it, oftentimes use it against a good cause. It becomes justification. Rationalization. Reinforcement.
And I like her conclusion, too:
And here’s a piece of advice to women (or any other minority) in tech — Every time you get worked up over a dumb blog post, you’re wasting time that you could have spent building a world-changing company, writing your own blog post and/or proving pundits like Penelope Trunk wrong. And that starts with voting with your feet (or pen even).
So go, prove her wrong. Because a) This needs to stop b) The future depends on it.
Agreed.
(Image: from the TechCrunch post)
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As a headhunter for the past 10 years, I’ve often seen women opt for part-time work or staying at home with their children. I’ve almost never seen men take either of those paths. However, I can also say that women who do choose to stay in the corporate workforce often end up with very successful careers. I’m not sure what all of this really means, in a larger sense, for women, or for our society.
Many people build traffic through controversy, even ones they don’t really believe in.
It’s part of their business model; full on demagogues, who would play on any hot button item just to get noticed. In my 20s, I might have swallowed the bait. But, now I see them as the sad clowns they are and walk on by. But, I know there are many who just take them at their word, like they really believe all the stuff they spout and jump in, creating traffic when the value of the content would warrant none (usually content quality of those who spout these things is abysmal).
The reasons there are so few women entrepreneurs is that’s not part of the culture to promote this (that’s my opinion). The cultural background often determines the entrepreneurship level; I don’t know why it would be different for women who are influenced by the dearth of role models.