These Women Entrepreneurs Created A Fake Male...

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These Women Entrepreneurs Created A Fake Male Cofounder To Dodge Startup Sexism

Penelope Gazin and Kate Dwyer faced a lot of sexism and condescension when they launched their e-commerce marketplace for weird art–that is until they introduced an imaginary cofounder named Keith.

stoweboyd:

Penelope Gazin and Kate Dwyer respond to the biases of tech startup land by creating a fake male cofounder, Kevin, at Witchsy:
After setting out to build Witchsy, it didn’t take long for them to notice a pattern: In many cases, the outside developers and graphic designers they enlisted to help often took a condescending tone over email. These collaborators, who were almost always male, were often short, slow to respond, and vaguely disrespectful in correspondence. In response to one request, a developer started an email with the words “Okay, girls…”
That’s when Gazin and Dwyer introduced a third cofounder: Keith Mann, an aptly named fictional character who could communicate with outsiders over email.
“It was like night and day,” says Dwyer. “It would take me days to get a response, but Keith could not only get a response and a status update, but also be asked if he wanted anything else or if there was anything else that Keith needed help with.”
Dwyer and Gazin continued to deploy Keith regularly when interacting with outsiders and found that the change in tone wasn’t just an anomaly. In exchange after exchange, the perceived involvement of a man seemed to have an effect on people’s assumptions about Witchsy and colored how they interacted with the budding business. One developer in particular seemed to show more deference to Keith than he did to Dwyer or Gazin, right down to the basics of human interaction.
“Whenever he spoke to Keith, he always addressed Keith by name,” says Gazin. “Whenever he spoke to us, he never used our names.”
Rather than deterring them, these types of encounters just gave Gazin and Dwyer more motivation to push forward, and an opportunity to have some fun at the expense of tech bro masculinity everywhere.
“I think we could have gotten pretty bent out of shape about that,” Dwyer says. “Wow, are people really going to talk to this imaginary man with more respect than us? But we were like, you know what, this is clearly just part of this world that we’re in right now. We want this and want to make this happen.”
Priceless.

(Source: Fast Company)