I do. People often ask about the number of female founders we fund. It would be interesting to know whether it's low because of something about startups, or just a reflection of the larger pool from which they're drawn.
Actually, when a magazine interviewer asked Jessica about the percent of women among ycombinator-funded founders, I was very interested in her answer. Not because I suspected YC of bias - I didn't - but rather because I thought this percent would say something about the risks and rewards of small technical startups as perceived by women. Being a technical woman working on a startup idea, this information seemed useful to me: a possible glimpse into my personal future.
I think it may have more to do with the latter. A quick Google Scholar query of "why is computer programming dominated by males" provides some interesting results, including an abstract with the key finding that "men had more confidence in using computers than did women even when statistically controlling quantitative ability. In fact, female CS majors had less computer confidence than did male non-majors." (Beyer et al., 2003)
i believe tolerance and respect require concerted attention to counteract cultural ignorance and bias. treating differences with equality is not about not caring or not thinking about differences--many racial and gender prejudices result from not questioning or investigating preconceived notions. it takes work to sufficiently care about ones interactions with others and thus conscientiously react to and surmount differences.
it may be that you know as many or more female hackers, founders and entrepreneurs as male, and that your cultural norm is completely surprised by the notion of gender inequality in this context. in that case: cool. your experience validates the irrelevance of gender in these roles.
or it may be that you are ignorant to inequality. whenever i want to blurt out "who cares" or "why do people care", i try to stop and think about other people's perspectives. i guess the short answer is: equality is often useful.
