How to be taken seriously as a female founder?

@thepaintedbeat I’m not sure I have any advice, just want to say this sucks.

As a man, I see it all the time.

I had a female CEO, and I experienced it first hand.

In our case, anyone who didn’t respect her authority and preferred working with me as the founder, was out.

It was a little easier to make that decision in my case because I knew she was smarter than me and more capable in everything in her job description, so whenever that happened I knew it was someone who can’t appreciate competence and intelligence due to their prejudices - so it was easy to decide not to work with them.

Whether this was the best approach? I don’t know.

I do agree with the person who said the change should come from the top - you’re doing nothing that needs to be “improved”, it just sucks that startup culture is still so sexist.

But I’d also like to give pragmatic advice of what you can do, but nothing comes to mind, except being your best self, achieving a lot, and showing those MFs what you’re made of and what they are missing.
 
@thepaintedbeat You deal with it the way a man would. You introduce yourself and demonstrate your expertise. It doesn’t matter what people assume based on your appearance—their opinion will change when you deliver the goods.

You don’t need to be more aggressive or change your tone. You just need to be you, and speak with certainty and the authority that your expertise carries.

There is not some secret trick to make humans be suddenly unbiased.
 
@thepaintedbeat Have you tried speaking in a low voice and wearing a black turtleneck? In all seriousness, I'm sorry you are going through this and I feel lucky that I as a man am not.

I really think tone and air of confidence plays a big role in who men listen to and perceive as powerful. Based on women bosses I've looked up to personally I think I responded positively to the fact that they were collected, experienced, direct, and graceful. I think aggressive is going to be the wrong tact.

I am wishing you the best!
 
@rgod "So, is anyone else going to be joining us today?"

"No, all my developers are busy trying to quit VIM. Also, fuck tabs. Spaces for life LFG"

"...the fuck are you talking about"
 
@thepaintedbeat That's really tough, sorry you're dealing with that. For context, I'm a man also working in tech as a developer.

So I believe that generally speaking, people want to be inclusive and respectful. When they say unfortunately misogynistic things like "ask your tech guy" I think it usually comes from a place of ignorance as opposed to malice. I'm embarrassed to admit that I could see myself saying or thinking similar things purely due to social conditioning.

With that being said, I think you can nip this in the bud by providing upfront context at meetings or with business associates you encounter.

The solution to ignorance is knowledge. By starting a conversation like, "Hi, thanks for meeting today. I'm WorkerNo195 and I'm the CTO here at ______, I'll be leading the demo/assessing your product/etc. today." you can help them break their assumptions.

If you properly set the stage upfront I think that will provide people sufficient context to treat you with the respect you deserve. And if they still don't well that would be shitty
 
@alzebetha There’s also a lack of female developers out there so I guess I’m trying to be understanding. But please never dismiss or make bias jokes with any female devs unless they’re fine with dark humor and are chill. Otherwise, and trust me on this, we will overthink it and it plays with our self worth.
 
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