Two Women With A Startup And Their Fake Male Cofounder (As Seen Through The Lens Of Evolved Sex Differences)
John Paul Titlow writes at Fast Company about two female entrepreneurs who said things went better for them after they created a fake male cofounder who responded to people by email. Here's the subhead of the piece:

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.

An excerpt from the piece:

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."

I would explain it as part of our evolved psychology -- just one of those things; something to deal with not to whine about -- and good for them for thinking of a creative way around it. More on the specifics of the ev psych below.

In short, I think it's likely we take men more seriously in job situations because men, in general, have evolved to be more serious about careers and advancement because that's a primary way they attract mates.

But first, why I don't find their need to create a male cofounder whine-worthy: I see this like a friend's creative idea to be taken seriously as a composer of commercial music (like jingles) when he was about two minutes out of college. He used his bar mitzvah money to buy seriously pricey stationery and a logo to go on it. He looked professional, and he soon got jobs.

I wore fake glasses to recording sessions where clients were present when I was a producer at Ogilvy & Mather/New York right out of college. I looked about 14, and the glasses made me look older.

Do we go "waah, waah" because younger people are not taken as seriously? Or do we just come up with creative ways and think, "Heh, heh...fooled you, sucka!"

Also, the fact that other people might not take you seriously doesn't mean anything about you; it's just the way the world works. I'm not taken seriously as a writer of applied science -- research turned into practical advice. I suspect that's largely because I don't have a Ph.D. and because I write the advice with humor. However, I defy you to find many people who do it better than I do in my columns, in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," and in my next book. (I'm reading the page proofs now, and it'll be out in January.)

Here's my reply to Adam Grant's tweet:

Here is some of the research on sex differences in mate preferences from my science-based syndicated column:

...Male sexual attraction is visually driven in a way female attraction is not -- which is why strip clubs catering to men are big business while those for women are largely a bachelorette party novelty. Sure, women like a nice view if they can get it, but if they have to make a trade-off, they're likely to go for the weak-chinned self-made gazillionaire.

This is reflected in research by anthropologist John Marshall Townsend. He showed men and women photos of hotties and homelies of the opposite sex, dressed in either a Burger King uniform or biz exec-wear and a Rolex. When he asked which they'd go for, men were indifferent to how the woman was dressed -- picking the hottie no matter what she was wearing. Women, on the other hand, went for the homely business dude, and tended to nix even a hookup with the hot hamburger helper.

Another excerpt from my column:

Of course, we ladies will take a nice view if we can get it, but other things come first. Anthropologist Robert Trivers explains that what women evolved to prioritize in a partner comes out of the greater amount of "parental investment" required from us. Because a man could just walk away after sex (in the days before there was a state to come after him for child support) and because the features men find hot reflect fertility and health, male sexuality evolved to be primarily looks-driven. For a woman, however, a single romp in the bushes with some loinclothed Hunky McHunkerson could have left her with a kid to feed -- long before baby food was sold in stores in cute little jars.

So, the women whose children survived to pass on their genes to us were those who vetted men for the ability and willingness to "provide." There was no "wealth" in ancestral times -- no National Bank of the Stone Age. However, evolutionary psychologists believe a modern man's high earnings act as a cue for what women evolved to go for in a man -- high status, meaning high social standing and the ability to bring home the wildebeest steaks for Mommy and the twins.

You, however, claim that a man's status does nothing for you. Now, studies reveal how most people are, not individual differences, so you may be right. However, cognitive neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga explains that 98 percent of our brain's activity is unconscious -- including some of our decision-making -- but we invent reasons for our choices afterward (typically those that make us seem rational, consistent, and admirable). And research keeps reflecting that women subconsciously prioritize status. In a study by evolutionary psychologist Michael Dunn, women found the exact same man hotter when he was driving a Bentley than when he was driving a Ford Fiesta. Men? They found a woman equally attractive in either car, and frankly, a woman who's hot can probably get dates while "driving" a donkey with bumper stickers on the back.

Again, I think it's likely we take men more seriously in job situations because men, in general, have evolved to be more serious about careers and advancement. This makes evolutionary sense.

As I told the guy whose letter I answered at the above link:

You are right; "there's been something called 'evolution.'" Unfortunately, psychological change takes a little longer than you think -- which is to say you're only off by maybe a few million years. As evolutionary psychologists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby explain, we're living in modern times with a "stone age mind." By this, they mean that the genes right now driving our psychology and behavior were molded by (and are still largely adapted for) mating and survival problems in the hunter-gatherer environment millions of years ago.