"Role model" doesn't simply mean "someone you look up to". It also means "cognitively available success cases". This message board is practically a personification of that phenomenon. Among those of us running startups, most wouldn't have done so had many others not done so before us.
Carol Dweck's research on how mindset can affect educational performance [1] is probably relevant in this context. Importantly, the belief that ability can be improved with practice rather than being inherently limited by innate characteristics (including, but not limited to gender) by itself appears to be a pretty powerful factor in either supporting or limiting growth.
I suspect that having not just role models like yourself, but them also being commonplace can more easily dispel beliefs that your room for growth is limited by gender, ethnicity, etc. Obviously, if your field is already dominated by people like you, this is not a problem that you have to deal with in the first place.
That's very interesting. I had always thought of role model as referring to a specific individual, I haven't encountered the idea of collective role models forming "cognitively available success cases" before.
Well for example, why would a boy ever believe he is even capable of certain career paths if he's only ever seen females in those roles? When there is little representation, the idea becomes that only that demographic is capable of the career. An example can be seen in esports like Starcraft. When the Koreans began to dominate the competitive Starcraft field, other nationalities began to cease even believing they were capable of equal success. A similar view has been common with, say, black people and track+field sports like sprinting in the Olympics.
