Four Stars
As someone who loves soccer and loves America, it is the greatest of news when a United States national team is victorious.
Beknownst to everyone by now, the women’s senior team is once again World Cup champions.
Tomorrow morning, the team will be paraded through the Canyon of Heroes in New York.
I’ll be lucky enough to have a view of the ticket-tape from my work window.
My gift to dad this past Father’s Day was a #USWNT Nike ($NKE) t-shirt, which has a subtle allusion to Title IX.
The Education Amendments Act passed in 1972 stated: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
The mandate of an almost level-playing (athletic) field helped that young generation of American female soccer players on a path that won the first, retroactively named, Women’s World Cup in 1991.
In a 1959 article for The Commercial & Financial Chronicle, Benjamin Graham wrote of a better approach to an investing policy when he recalled a gathering with women in 1950:
“I had the pleasure last week of talking to a group of ladies only for the first time in my career. Trying to bring this subject home to them by some analogy with a feminine quality, I pointed out to them that there were two ways of buying stocks: either on the basis that they buy groceries or on the basis that we men buy perfume for them. When you buy stocks on the grocery basis you try to get adequate quality at a reasonable price. When you buy on the perfume basis you try to buy the stock which is most popular and which gives the most prestige; you pay comparatively little attention to price; in some respects, the more the price you pay the better you seem to like it, I suggested to the ladies that if they would take the grocery approach to the selection of securities they would probably do a very substantially better job in investments than we men do, because they are more likely to see, appreciate and take advantage of a true bargain whenever they see one.”
As someone who worked in tech for a little while, it was evident that a gross gender disparity existed between men and women from top to bottom.
What made Halt and Catch Fire one of my favorite TV series was its portrayal of intelligent, entrepreneurial women who understood computer science back in the 1980s.
In an article in The New York Times last month, some are less optimistic of the gender gap closing any time soon:
“Academia is also where the next generation of tech workers is taught.
‘This definitely affects the field as a whole,’ said Lucy Lu Wang, a researcher with the Allen Institute. ‘When there is a lack of leadership in computer science departments, it affects the number of women students who are trained and the number that enter the computer science industry.’
The study also indicated that men are growing less likely to collaborate with female researchers — a particularly worrying trend in a field where women have long felt unwelcome and because studies have shown that diverse teams can produce better research.
Compiled by Ms. Lu and several other researchers at the Allen Institute, the study is in line with similar research published by academics in Australia and Canada. While gender parity is relatively near in many of the life sciences, these studies showed, it remains at least a century away in physics and mathematics.”
But as someone who is personally ingrained in investing, I love to hear about female founders doing ambitious work and the angel investors and mentors who are financially or otherwise supporting them.
Statistically, a lot needs to improve across many avenues of society, but people continue to do good and it’s worth keeping an eye on the next generation that aspires to achieve a higher level of commitment to excellence:
“I wanted to thank you guys for coming out tonight.
‘You guys.’
See what we’re up against?
When I graduated from Berkeley in ’75 with a degree in computer science, nobody batted an eye. That’s probably because back then, coders were like secretaries and engineers, meaning little solder soldiers on the assembly lines, were kind of invisible. And we’re used to that.
But somewhere along the line, these jobs became important. And don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to hang out with ‘you guys’ any time and eat good food, but I hope that by the time my daughters are my age that they don’t have to have gatherings like this anymore to remind themselves that they’re actually here.
I’ve been in tech for 18 years.
I’ve won.
And I’ve lost.
I am a woman who voted her female partner out of her own company, the company she founded. I am a woman who lost a marriage to, among other things, this line of work. I can’t sleep at night sometimes worrying if I’m seeing my kids enough or if I’ve been there enough for them or if it’s already too late.
But…
… I’ve done things.
That always comes with a price, but I did them.
One of the many things I’ve learned is that no matter what you do, somebody is around the next corner with a better version of it, and if that person is a man, it might not even be better. It just might get more attention. And sometimes, that person is you.
The you that’s never satisfied with what you just did because you’re obsessed with whatever is next. The one constant is this. It’s you, it’s us. The project gets us to the people. Because it’s people that got me where I am, people like Diane Gould. People like my husband and my first partner, Gordon Clark. People like my last and best partner, Cameron Howe. And for all the rest of you, I hope that tonight can be the beginning of something, something so that even if we see each other across the corporate battle lines one day, that you will know that I am rooting for you.
I can’t help but not.
Because I am a partner by trade and a mother and a sister by design.
I am so proud to be on this journey with you.”
