This goes beyond founders. We're seeing this problem at the level of developers, technical writers, and design folks. In some teams, critical feedback given to our female colleagues would almost always be twisted and escalated as sexism. One time the situation worsened until no one would say much, other developers had to take on extra workload and fix low quality work from other developers. Good engineers started quitting and the team crashed and burned.

In other teams, the folks are super cautious about hiring women because of an increasing number of such incidents. I'm also seeing this other trend where we are willing to hire women from within the company because they're a known quantity, while hiring few or zero women from outside, while accepting men from within and outside the business just based on their capabilities.

The article is right on many levels. I myself rarely share controversial or difficult feedback with female colleagues or acquaintances unless I know them very well, and know they will take it the right way. It's just not worth the professional risk to me.

I don't know if this is the exception, and I work with several female colleagues at various levels of seniority where we are professional and open. Whatever - it's a sad state of affairs.