Hi, Here is a very painful-to-read blog post, about "Technical women and women-in-tech", by Iris Meredith. Date published: 2024-10-07 https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/women_in_tech It starts with:

The tech industry is and will likely remain misogynistic: women are comprehensively excluded from senior or technical roles, relentlessly abused and have serious trouble making headway in tech careers.

However, there's also a massive amount of writing and literature that gets put out about how the same companies are doing wonderful things with women in tech, and we regularly see profiles of women tech leaders be given pride of place in industry literature and suchlike. I've been trying to resolve this contradiction in my head for a while, and I think I've finally reached a conclusion: the way that much misogyny in tech operates is by creating a category of women-in-tech that's distinct from technical women or women who have technical skills in the wider sense, and in fact has very little overlap with it.

... points out a lot of intersectional-marginalisation... and issues with emotional labor... ... goes into the core of a problem:

women-in-tech as a construct seem to exist primarily in order to suffer abuse. Actually being technical or making a technical contribution is, by-and-large, irrelevant, and women in the wide sense are not accepted or allowed into tech: we have to force ourselves into the women-in-tech mould and take all of this abuse on.

... and ends on a very sad note:

We try and make our own way in the world: pushed out of the prestigious spaces where the abuse is the strongest, we make a meagre living on the margins of technology, some of us in the public sector, some of us trying to scrape together freelance and contract work, some of us trying to build more involved businesses, knowing that it's an uphill fight every step of the way. We're exhausted, burned-out and broken down.

If you, too, recognise yourself in these descriptions -- please know that you are not alone, that we are here to to support each other, and that you are seen! Alternatively, I wish that we can gather some counter-exmaples on this list. Please share that too. Because:

It shouldn't have to be this way.

Regards, Vesna