Woman here. I have been working as a software engineer for ten years now. I have worked on game engines, machine learning, data science, pretty much anything fun.


There’s a push because it honestly is a lot harder grtting into tech as a woman. There’s all these weird hoops like I have to be “one of the guys” to fit in and any sign of femininity is taken as a weakness. For example, most women who have worked in nonfrontend programming I’ve seen over the years avoid makeup or use minimal. They also speek like an octave deeper around teammates than around me. Most women just weren’t encouraged like a lot of men are to get into tech when they do show an interest. I know like some men I had to fight tooth and nail to get where I am today—there’s a disparity here with how accessible tech is made to men vs women. Heck, even on IRC most of the women I know on freenode and the like go to great lengths to conceal the fact that they’re women because people will automatically treat them with less respect.


I have a trans woman friend who confirmed what she experienced as a male in tech and what she experiences passing as a woman in tech. Its very interesting how insecure or jusf plain shitty men get about women doing intellectual things, almost as if it threatens some of them.


All in all I’ve worked with mostly pleasant people but its stupid to pretend this reality doesnt exist and that women have less opportunity to succeed in tech than men om average.


Like my male friend who I just taught to code just got a high paying job which took me years ro get to that point when i was on my own.


Yes there are womens reachout orgs that help women get into tech, but the reason they exist is because texh is currently an extremely masculine space. I know that sounds absurd but if uve ever worked with a mostly female team vs a mostly male team ull notice differences. I wish tech to be more accessible and pleasant for all.