Via Sarah Rios.

It’s surprising how many problems don’t get solved because of who has them.

Originally shared by Cindy Brown

Men have dominated the entrepreneurial field since, well, basically forever. And that means many of the problems that their companies try to solve are focused on straight, cisgender men, or at best they’re gender-neutral. It makes sense; you can only solve a problem that you know exists. But because other groups, including women, have largely been excluded from those conversations, issues that affect non-dudes have gone ignored.

Even today, women who pitch male-dominated venture capital funds have a hard time being taken seriously. When Janica Alvarez invented a far superior breast pump, she had to bring her husband to pitch meetings because she otherwise faced questions about how she could possibly run a business while raising a family, or got VCs literally telling her the pump was gross. It didn’t seem to matter that this was a solution to a problem that millions of new parents have: breast pumps are terrible. They’ve always been terrible. The technology that Alvarez’s version uses isn’t even all that advanced—the innovation is in bothering to make a female-centric product better.

https://www.popsci.com/heist-tight-engineering-women