... and lest anyone think this is limited just to (the extremely helpful and insightful) JL, we (a recent-batch YC company) have been repeatedly and substantially helped on important strategy matters by KN and CL. Reducing their roles to "taxes" and "legal" misses the point completely; they are more like "finance strategy" and "legal strategy". Both have advised us on important structural decisions we made early in our company's life.
Although I'm merely a messenger in "my" two comments above, there seem to be 2 important takeaways here:
(1) First off, it's great that several YC founders are so quick to come to the female YC partners' defense, which lends a lot of credence to PG and JL's claims about the large role of female partners at YC.
(2) We all know that even the greatest product can be held back by poor marketing. I don't personally know the YC founders my friend above referenced (via my username), but the fact that some~many YC founders would think that at all, shows that there's a lack of good marketing/branding around how active and influential women (i.e. JL/KN/CL) are at YC.
The (positive) reality clearly does not match the (negative) perceptions.
I don't know what the solution would be, and you could certainly argue that PG/JL/et al. shouldn't have to "market" or "brand" this aspect of YC at all, but clearly this a problem, especially in light of PG's latest essay, the Information/Valleywag incident, etc.
Just because your friend wasn't aware of their roles doesn't mean that his/her lack of awareness is someone else's fault and responsibility. Maybe s/he should research a little more next time before singling out and belittling female tech workers. Isn't the rallying cry of social justice something like "it's not our job to educate you?"
