Folks interested in the hot topic of diversity in the business world got some pretty big news last week. Tech giant Intel (INTC) announced it is going to invest $125 million in minority-led startups over the next five years — news that comes on the heels of a $300 million diversity initiative from the corporation.
Cue the applause.
As many have pointed out, VCs are more likely to fund ideas that come from traditional sources, and fund folks who are similar to themselves — this is often human nature more so than an explicit choice.
Efforts like the fund Intel is putting together, however, help force us away from that habit.
While in a perfect world we wouldn’t need such an initiative, the tough reality is that for now, we do. We need quotas, we need accountability and we need awareness to achieve equality. Intel’s investment is the kind we need to force equality to become a snowball effect, a self-fulfilling prophecy … call it what you want.
But let’s also realize that every effort like this isn’t perfect.
Equality (Someday)
As an entrepreneur, investor and feminist, one might think I would applaud any fund or initiative that explicitly focuses on investing in women leadership.
But while we do need to see more women leading startups, raking in venture capital and climbing to the top rungs of corporations, there’s often good reason to be skeptical about this kind of “progress.”
As it stands right now, when women do get appointed to high-ranking positions, there’s a reasonable accompanying worry that a token female will only help a company check a box and earn a feel-good headline, but lead to little further progress.
Such diversity-washing is often little more than savvy public relations — a reality supported by a laundry list of recent diversity reports.
And when women are explicitly sectioned off — sometimes by others but oftentimes by ourselves — one has to wonder to what extent that actually perpetuates many of the problems it’s trying to solve. Examples aren’t hard to come by, from the Forbes Most Powerful Women Summit to the 17 million networking groups for badass ladies or wine-drinking entrepreneurs or (God forbid) women who decide to give their meetups names like “Vagina Power” — a real name proposed for a real networking group I recently attended (cringe).
Such separation often spotlights gender as the defining quality of a woman.
When we hear stats about how “more women leadership means more profits,” they come with good intentions and may yield desirable results. But they also raise the question of how saying that women are better investors because they take on less risk, for instance, is any different than making a sweeping generalization that women are overly emotional or bad at math.
Such divisive stereotypes are still … well, divisive stereotypes. They just sound more positive.
The point — although it runs the very real risk of sounding both cliche and naive — is that true equality will only come when gender isn’t the main consideration. (And you can say the same thing about race as well.)
Put another way, choosing a woman simply because she is a women doesn’t seem far off from not choosing one for the very same reason.
If we invest in diversity just for diversity’s sake, it can actually do more harm than good, as it may mean propping up companies that don’t have strong prospects. Because if they fail, it reinforces many of the negative stereotypes we were trying to shed to begin with.
While these concerns ring true for Intel’s news as well, the bright spot is that the fund can’t (in theory) fund bad technology just because it has diverse leadership. Instead, the fund has a quota for the return on its investments — so Intel is indeed on the hunt for great technology and great companies.
It’s just making it a point to explicitly hop over inherent bias and longstanding stereotypes as it does so.
Bottom Line
Intel’s announcement marks the largest fund of its kind and isn’t a disguised charity case. So while we shouldn’t throw out all caution, we can be optimistic that this might make a tangible difference when it comes to changing the landscape of the business world.
Alyssa Oursler is based in San Francisco and writes about technology, investing, gender and entrepreneurship. Her work has appeared on Business Insider, MSN Money and more. You can follower her on Twitter here or check out her personal site here. As of this writing, she did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
