XPost: alt.fan.madonna, alt.atlanta, atl.general   
   XPost: oc.general   
   From: too_many_tooools@yahoo.com   
      
   Paul Solman: Silicon Valley entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa is a   
   widely heard voice on the value of immigration for the U.S.   
   economy. We first featured him a year ago in "Man v. Machine," a   
   story on the automation of work and did so again on this page   
   last fall on the threat posed by a programmable robot named   
   Baxter.   
      
   An immigrant himself (from India), Wadhwa used to think Silicon   
   Valley was a a paragon of open access: talent like his would   
   inevitably prevail. But he has been writing and speaking lately   
   about the Valley's "myth of meritocracy." All, he realized, was   
   not as it seemed, and he followed up his dawning disillusionment   
   with research, which he will publish soon. But his findings   
   seemed so noteworthy, I asked if he would share them with us at   
   the NewsHour. And so he has.   
      
   Vivek Wadhwa: Visit any company in the Valley, and you'll see   
   that it resembles the United Nations. At the Google cafeteria,   
   they always serve Indian, Chinese and Mexican food; hamburgers   
   and hot dogs are nowhere to be found. Indeed, my research team   
   documented that 52 percent of startups in Silicon Valley during   
   the recent tech boom were founded by immigrants -- like me. So I   
   used to call Silicon Valley the world's greatest meritocracy.   
      
   This was before I moved to the Valley and my wife pointed out   
   something strange: that practically all of the people at Silicon   
   Valley's big networking events were male. They were mostly   
   white, Indian, or Chinese. Women, blacks and Hispanics were   
   nowhere to be found. When I analyzed company founder data from   
   the Kauffman Foundation, I was shocked to learn that only 3   
   percent of the tech firms were founded by women. When I looked   
   at the executive teams of the Valley's top tech firms, with a   
   couple of notable exceptions, I couldn't find any women   
   technology heads. Even the management team of Apple didn't have   
   a single woman in it. And I learned that virtually all of   
   Silicon Valley's venture-capital firms are male dominated -- the   
   few women whom you find there are in either marketing or human   
   resources. Indeed, of the 89 venture capitalists on the 2009   
   TheFunded list of top venture capitalists, only one was a woman.   
      
   So I was wrong; this is no meritocracy.   
      
   Since then, I have researched this topic in greater depth. When   
   I analyzed data from my own studies on entrepreneurship, I was   
   surprised to learn that there is virtually no difference in   
   motivation between men and women entrepreneurs. Women start   
   companies for the same reasons as men: because they want to   
   build wealth and capitalize on business ideas, like the startup-   
   company culture and are tired of working for others. Women   
   entrepreneurs are as highly educated as their male counterparts,   
   have the same early interest in starting their own business and   
   learn the same valuable lessons from their work experience and   
   from prior successes and failures.   
      
   This raised the question: Are women less competent as   
   entrepreneurs than men? Are they not cut out for the rough-and-   
   tumble world of entrepreneurship? The answer turned out to be   
   none of this. An analysis performed by the Kauffman Foundation   
   showed that women are more capital-efficient than men. Babson   
   College's Global Entrepreneurship Monitor found that women-led   
   high-tech startups have lower failure rates than those led by   
   men. Other research has shown that venture-backed companies run   
   by women have annual revenues 12 percent higher than those by   
   men and organizations that are the most inclusive of women in   
   top management positions achieve a 35 percent higher return on   
   equity and 34 percent higher total return to shareholders.   
      
   Could the education of women be the problem? Not according to   
   data from the National Science Foundation. Girls now match boys   
   in mathematical achievement. In the U.S., 140 women enroll in   
   higher education for every 100 men who do. Women earn more than   
   50 percent of all bachelor's and master's degrees, and nearly 50   
   percent of all doctorates. Women participation in business and   
   MBA programs has grown more than five-fold since the 1970s, and   
   the increase in the number of engineering degrees granted to   
   women is almost tenfold.   
      
   This shows that there isn't a fundamental problem, and that   
   things are moving in the right direction. I have also   
   interviewed about 300 women in tech over the past three years,   
   and my research team at Stanford University recently completed a   
   survey of more than 500 women founders. We are still analyzing   
   the complex findings (and will likely publish a paper in the   
   summer). At a glance, though, the new research shows a distinct   
   change in attitudes over time. Women are becoming more confident   
   and assertive, and they are helping each other. Men are also   
   beginning to mentor and coach women.   
      
   That's not all. Many technologies are now advancing   
   exponentially. We all know how computing is advancing -- our   
   computers get more powerful every year as prices drop. The same   
   is happening in fields such as robotics, artificial   
   intelligence, 3D printing, nanomaterials, medicine, and   
   synthetic biology. This is making it possible for small teams to   
   do what was once possible only for governments and large   
   corporations to do: solve big problems. Starting exponential   
   companies requires relatively small amounts of money, and   
   entrepreneurs with cross-disciplinary knowledge and skills have   
   the advantage. This plays to the strengths of women: they are in   
   the catbird seat for the new era of innovation.   
      
   To encourage, inspire and educate women to become engineers,   
   scientists and entrepreneurs -- and help solve humanity's grand   
   challenges, I am myself taking advantage of an exponential   
   technology: crowdsourcing. I plan to harness the genius of the   
   crowd to produce a book about women at the frontier of   
   technology. Along with journalist and author Farai Chediya and   
   my lead researcher Neesha Bapat, we are planning to ask hundreds   
   -- possibly thousands -- of women to co-author this book with   
   us. We will presell the book on a crowdfunding site such as   
   Indiegogo and donate all of the profits to fund the tuition of   
   women through the Graduate Studies Program at Singularity   
   University and to support women-led startups coming out of this   
   program. This is a 10-week program designed for leaders who want   
   to build innovative solutions to global grand challenges.   
      
   So Silicon Valley may not have been the perfect meritocracy, but   
   there is hope that it will soon be, and that our women may save   
   the world.   
      
   http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/03/silicon-valley-   
   discriminates-against-women-even-if-theyre-better.html   
      
            
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)