You'd think horror stories from the 1950's against women in the work place would be gone. But not in high tech, according to the New York Times. Nope. Below is a story of a women trying to obtain funding for a start-up:

CANDACE FLEMING’S résumé boasts a double major in industrial engineering and English from Stanford, an M.B.A. from Harvard, a management position at Hewlett-Packard and experience as president of a small software company.

But when she was raising money for Crimson Hexagon, a start-up company she co-founded in 2007, she recalls one venture capitalist telling her that it didn’t matter that she didn’t have business cards, because all they would say was “Mom.”

Another potential backer invited her for a weekend yachting excursion by showing her a picture of himself on the boat — without clothes. When a third financier discovered that her husband was also a biking enthusiast, she says, he spent more time asking if riding affected her husband’s reproductive capabilities than he did focusing on her business plan.

Ultimately, none of the 30 venture firms she pitched financed her company.

Ladies, please leave a comment if you have experienced a similar story. Gentlemen, if you have witnessed such a thing, you might also.

Believe this or not, of course the article goes on to blame women themselves for this brazen discrimination and refusal of tech to clean up it's own house. It's a lack of confidence, they claim. Uh, no, it's a lack of jobs, opportunity and money.

Hello, anyone see how women techies are not even getting paid the same as men?

When women do get into tech, lord help them if they wish to do advanced R&D.

Many are pushed to pursue supervisory and management jobs instead of “individual contributor” jobs involving deep technical expertise, according to a recent study by the Anita Borg Institute, an organization that explores the impact of women on the technology field.

What is the answer? Well, for one, articles like the above need to stop giving excuses and rationalizations for brazen discrimination. Just ridiculous to quote some article claiming women don't do math and then use as examples women with computer engineering, mathematics, industrial engineering degrees. Uh, I think ya gotta do mathematics to get those.

Start getting some action to stop this sort of sexism and nip it in the bud. If corporations and the culture stopped accepting it, doing nothing, going along, maybe we'd see a 40% rise in successful start-ups, employing some U.S. domestic diversity for a change. Oh yeah, we might even kick ass economically as a nation instead of cutting out half the population.

You see it, you own it. Stand up and say something. Stop being scared to death to rock the boat. This is obviously a boat that needs to be rocked and not just rocked but slammed against the waves.

Naked pictures and an invite to go sailing when trying to obtain investment funding for a business. Tell me, how many women techies have been either hit on, told they could not do something, or were in a very hostile work environment due to their sex? Even worse, how many were denied pay, fired, blamed, used as a scapegoat or forced out of their jobs. Let's get to the real meat of what's going on here.