CONCEPT
Male-Lens Investing
Wajcman's term for the <em>systematic bias</em> in AI venture capital allocation — 80% to all-male founding teams, 0.3% to all-female teams — through which the predominantly male funding ecosystem shapes which visions of AI's future receive the capital to become real.
Male-lens investing describes the empirical pattern Wajcman documented in UK venture capital data: between 2012 and 2022, eighty percent of AI venture capital funded all-male founding teams while all-female teams received 0.3 percent of total investment. When female-founded AI startups did secure funding, they received on average six times less capital per deal. The pattern reflects neither explicit discrimination nor differences in founder quality — controlled studies have found women-founded startups produce comparable or superior returns — but a systematic bias in how the predominantly male venture ecosystem evaluates opportunity through a lens shaped by its own social position.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The term operationalizes Wajcman's broader framework of mutual shaping at the specific point where AI's future is being materially determined. Venture capital does not merely fund companies; it selects which visions of AI's future will be pursued. When the funding ecosystem systematically favors male founders, it systematically favors the problems