Επιχειρηματίες ανδρών και γυναικών: Όχι αυτός διαφορετικός

In any debate, it is easy to revert to anecdote and highlight examples that exemplify one point of view. Recent TechCrunch posts about women in tech have done just that. The latest of these claimed that women don’t want to run startups, because they’d rather have children. I can understand why: TechCrunch and its editors focus on the Silicon Valley/Web 2.0 world. In this world, most startups—or at least those that get attention— are founded by young white males; aggression and arrogance are considered positive traits; companies need to be grown very fast—even recklessly—because markets change rapidly; and venture capitalists pay promising students to drop out of school to start companies that will likely fail and wreck their careers. So if you’re debating this tiny slice of the tech universe, it is fair to say that women and minorities can’t—or don’t want to—compete. But this isn’t representative of the larger tech world; and it certainly isn’t representative of American industry. Take the issue of whether the desire to have kids or just run lifestyle businesses makes women averse to running startups. This is an accurate description of some women: they just aren’t cut out for the rough-and-tumble world of entrepreneurship—which requires extremely hard work and in which most startups fail. But it’s the same with men: men too avoid entrepreneurship because they fear risk and aren’t ready to put in the long hours. There is no black or white: many women with children have succeeded with startups, while other successful women entrepreneurs have chosen not to have children.