>Witchsy cofounders Penelope Gazin and Kate Dwyer created a fake male cofounder to conduct business by email. They noticed an enormous difference between how contractors and contacts treated him versus how they treated the women. They're glad to see that the story of Keith Mann, their fictional cofounder, is bringing more attention to sexism in tech and in the workplace. Penelope Gazin, Kate Dwyer, and Keith Mann are the cofounders of art marketplace Witchsy.
>But Mann doesn't exist.
>Gazin and Dwyer told Fast Company's John Paul Titlow that they invented their third, male, cofounder after repeated instances of condescension with a sexist tone, like a developer who addressed an email to them starting, "Okay, girls ..."
>"It was like night and day," Dwyer told Titlow of working through Mann. "It would take me days to get a response, but Keith could not only get a response and a status update, but also be asked if he wanted anything else or if there was anything else that Keith needed help with."
>On Quartz, Dwyer told Lila MacLellan that before Mann existed, "it was very clear no one took us seriously and everybody thought we were just idiots." But when those same people received emails from Mann, Gazin told MacLellan, "they'd be like 'Okay, bro, yeah, let's brainstorm!'"
>Dwyer told MacLellan they even gave Mann a backstory:
>"He was a dude's dude, they decided, the kind who played football in college. He was devoted to his wife of five years, and he couldn't wait to be a dad. 'He was just a really good guy,' says Gazin. 'He doesn't really understand Kate and I, but he's been happy to help us with our project before we find husbands.'"
>Dwyer and Gazin's experience struggling to be taken seriously as company founders isn't as unique as you might hope. Gender bias and sexism in the business world is well-documented.
