“But after attending the recent Crunchies Awards, I realized that something important is still missing — women entrepreneurs. I was shocked that the only woman CEO on stage during the entire event was TechCrunch’s own Heather Harde. Nearly all the companies that competed in the event (other than the PR firms) had males at the helm. This dearth may be one of the reasons for which the Venture Capital community is in such sharp decline, and why the Valley isn’t achieving even more success.”—
Silicon Valley: You and Some of Your VC’s have a Gender Problem
My head is spinning after reading this post and especially after reading the comments. I would be willing to bet that there are a TON of women with comments who are not posting them on TechCrunch - just as I haven’t. Over the years I’ve come to find the TechCrunch comments area a hostile environment, and just as I have been trained to be paranoid about walking to my car alone at night and avoid potentially dangerous situations, my online behavior tends to be similarly hesitant, avoiding those potentially hostile environments as much as possible.
As a woman who is leading her own startup now, I do want to write something about this - maybe for my WomenGrowBusiness post this month… clarifying thoughts on this - more to come.
One of the SXSW survey questions was: Who is the most innovative / most visionary woman in technology today?
I had a really difficult time with this question, mostly because I couldn’t think of very many candidates. In the end, I chose Caterina Fake, who I think is certainly deserving, but I wish I was able to even think of 3 candidates. Who would you choose?
