I didn't down vote you. I did consider it.

My suspicion is you were likely down voted by someone with strong feelings to the contrary who sees no point in arguing it given your stated position and the fact that this is an overwhelmingly male forum.

I post as openly female. I try to be really evenhanded. But I have been here nearly 9 years and have been trying to figure out how to make money online during that time. I know people who made good money because of connections made through HN and that has not worked for me. It is clear to me that my gender is a large factor in that.

It's pretty offensive to me to read that you want to protect the wealth of men on the grounds that "women can support themselves" while acknowledging women generally make less and simultaneously decrying the imposition of needing to pay child support.

I'm not really interested in debating this with you or anyone. I remain appalled that I could spend so much time here while homeless and struggling to eat while men here poo poo the idea that sexism is any kind of real financial burden for women.

I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leaderboard of HN (under a different handle). That's one woman out of quite a lot more than 100 people over the years given that names on the board come and go.

I like HN. I have a lot of good things to say about it. But comments like yours still leave me shaking my head and astonished at the blindness that can be found in such a generally intelligent, well educated etc crowd.

If it makes you feel any better I'm male, have been here roughly as long as you, and have yet to find a reliable way to make money online either. But I think I might be getting closer.

I do not believe that a significant portion of the population on HN makes their money online. I believe remote work is an extremely small percentage of workers, regardless of gender.

The HN forums are mostly for discussion of the tech industry and emerging tech/trends. Job hunting is very secondary here.

Women in America most definitely can support themselves easily. We are a top country for gender equality. Even with a small pay gap, women can still support themselves here. BLS has a lot of informative data on women in the workforce for those interested.

So to summarize, yes - women can support themselves without a man in the USA today. Which I think was the poster's point.

I don’t think your gender plays as large of a factor as you think. I think most people do not make any sort of money or connections through HN, even if they are plain straight white males.

The ones that have made fortunes off of here could probably do it through any other place just as easily.

Hell, some days I feel like I can’t even get a word in, and I’m the epitome of a Silicon Valley straight white male.

I replied to give my opinion as to why you were down voted. Your response is to be essentially personally dismissive of me. Meanwhile, I am currently downvoted to zero and pretty much expecting to be ROFLstomped for daring to say anything.

I will reiterate that this is exactly why I think you were down voted: someone disagrees with you, doesn't care to engage you in discussion about it and doesn't care to deal with the fallout from voicing disagreement in an overwhelmingly male forum that will generally be sympathetic to your concerns.

If sexism is not an issue here, where are the other 16+ openly female members of the leaderboard?

Piss on me as an individual all you like, but the data does not support an assertion that gender is irrelevant on HN.

There are probably not many women here because it's not fun to be on a forum full of finance-obsessed manchildren and brogrammers unless you are one or identify as one. The actual benefits from being on HN are basically null, yet most men who use it think it'll improve their careers. It won't, but it helps sama and paul graham.