There are already plenty of VCs and other influencers who, knowingly or not and intentionally or not, demonstrate sexist behaviors and attitudes. You see it over and over and over.
If you're already prone to some degree of sexism, observing Theranos, Yahoo, and maybe uBeam recently might result in confirmation bias kicking in.
If you try to be rational and as self-aware as you can though, you realize these are just a handful of examples with coincident timing and there are many, many, many times as many female CEOs who are doing just fine. You also recall all the male CEOs who have been fuckups or caused tremendous damage, not only in startupland but elsewhere like Wall St, and realize that sex is probably not a significant contributor to outcome. Mindset and ethics are among the far more likely indicators.
So, will this affect things on the margin? Maybe... with people predisposed to look for negative signals about fitness of women as CEOs. Not for anyone trying to be as objective as possible.
"and realize that sex is probably not a significant contributor to outcome"
It is sort of a doubled edged sword, if race and gender have no significant effect on outcome, then in a way that could be used as a justification for blocking those people from said positions. On the other hand, if it's the opposite then is purely superficial.
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There are already plenty of VCs and other influencers who, knowingly or not and intentionally or not, demonstrate sexist behaviors and attitudes. You see it over and over and over.
If you're already prone to some degree of sexism, observing Theranos, Yahoo, and maybe uBeam recently might result in confirmation bias kicking in.
If you try to be rational and as self-aware as you can though, you realize these are just a handful of examples with coincident timing and there are many, many, many times as many female CEOs who are doing just fine. You also recall all the male CEOs who have been fuckups or caused tremendous damage, not only in startupland but elsewhere like Wall St, and realize that sex is probably not a significant contributor to outcome. Mindset and ethics are among the far more likely indicators.
So, will this affect things on the margin? Maybe... with people predisposed to look for negative signals about fitness of women as CEOs. Not for anyone trying to be as objective as possible.
"and realize that sex is probably not a significant contributor to outcome"
It is sort of a doubled edged sword, if race and gender have no significant effect on outcome, then in a way that could be used as a justification for blocking those people from said positions. On the other hand, if it's the opposite then is purely superficial.