2 women entrepreneurs who invented a fake male cofounder say acting through him was 'like night and day'

Typically I am one of the most senior and almost always the only party that actually understands (and has to in order to hold my credentials) economics, finance, tax law, and accounting... but I am the only woman in the room 99.9% of the time.

I'm shocked my brain hasn't exploded at this point - work tirelessly on a solution, map it out, present it to peers, decide to move forward only to find that 'the men' have decided to 'try it their way first'. Imminent failure follows, them scrambling around for solutions only to come back to me to push for implementation of their 'original idea' (read: my plan).

I am not shocked.

I was the only woman at a board meeting. An older bloke needed something photocopying and they all looked at me to do it.

Dame Stephanie Shirley always went by 'Steve' personally and professionally, so when corresponding with people, they naturally assumed that she was a man; and she deliberately didn't correct them.

She said the look on their faces when they finally met was the same every time, but they were too polite to say anything!

Being a software engineer, she knew that she wouldn't have been taken seriously, as Stephanie.

I'm tempted to do this. I'm a freelancer, often deal with clients purely by email, so I wouldn't have the worry of video calls etc.

I often feel like I get overlooked for certain projects, especially if there is a technical element. And I often think I get low balled in terms of pay. It might be an interesting experiment.

Another reason to have an androgynous first name and masculine pronouns in our email signature...

I've recently pivoted my consultancy business from a very female industry to add a specialism which is a very male dominated space and this has been one of my main 'threats' depressingly.

People won't give me the authority and weight my qualifications should deserve because I am female.

Fucking depressing.

Maybe I need a Geoff to join me

This doesn't surprise me, at all. But I think it will surprise a lot of people. And I think it's exactly the sort of thing we can share around without getting an avalanche of 'check your priviedge or TERF' comments from people who actually think feminism is pointless because women already have it all - I'm shocked how many people, many of them women, genuinely believe that. If you start from that view point any time we don't just 'shove up' sounds mean.

Another one Halt and catch fire- it’s really really good - so underrated...

It's very pervasive I pay a lot of online cooperative games..... under my dh's name. It annoys the fuck out of me to do it but other players thinking you're male gives you so much more scope. I usually out myself after a while and often try to work out who else is secretly female then we generally team up.

Parallels to the identify as men thread

Another recommendation for Halt and Catch Fire. Do seek it out!

I second Halt and Catch Fire. Really excellent observation about the differences for men and women in the same industry.

I think it's Amazon Prime

This thread gives me a chance to plug the series we've just finished watching, Halt and Catch Fire. It's probably not obvious in the first season, but it's got some good stuff on women entrepreneurs/women in 'tech'. Passes the Bechedel test easily.

Couldn't be less surprised. Glad it's received coverage.

I found lots of analysis on the Mathematical ingredients of the “gender” paygap from listening to this (gimmicky sometimes, obvs capitalist. American) podcast. This includes a name swapping exercise with predictable results.
freakonomics.com/podcast/gender-barriers/
Not the episode I was looking for.

The one I was looking for was a venture capital conference where entrepreneurs are trying to raise capital from VCs attending. Females answered the questions in the face2face meetings just as well but they got less money from the potential investors because they were asked slightly different questions. They were asked more “downside” questions. What happens if this goes wrong, etc. The males were asked more “Upside” questions. What’s the max market share & etc.
So investors finished the meeting with more “upside” answers from the men, and gave them more cash.

The conference recorded all the meetings and a researcher computerised and analysed the results.

justanotherneighinparadise I think Anneka actually did that in real life!

Am surprised that anyone is surprised. This is literally life as a woman 365.

Our opinions and ideas don't count, unless we pretend they come from Keith.

It’s often said on here that we are living in a dystopian great novel, or involuntary participating in someone else’s porn-soaked fantasy, but maybe also in something heavily influenced by biggish budget tv?