I don’t know how to be a woman in tech
I find myself talking about ‘women in tech’ fairly often, perhaps once or twice a week. It’s usually prompted by a news story — the recent releases of tech diversity numbers have been a driver these past couple of weeks. Men will ask me for my general thoughts on the issue, typically related to something they’re working on where they’d like to have more women involved.
I never know what to say. I never know what guidance to give. My response often resembles a jumble of personal stories and random analogies. Just because I am a woman in tech doesn’t mean I’m a topic expert. To me, it’s almost as if someone asked me how to create more entrepreneurs in the US. Just because I am an entrepreneur living in the US doesn’t mean I know how to find, educate, guide, and support a massive group of individuals, of whom I have only slight assumptions as to their aspirations, talents, skills, and capabilities, let alone the visible or invisible characteristics that would affect their capacity based on where they’re from, their previous experiences, current family situation, physical health, etc etc etc.
At the same time, I do recognize that there’s a problem. One almost daily reminder stems from the feeling that I never quite feel like I fit in (…in my case, this is probably also due to the fact that I’m not American, and up until 3 years ago was working as a climate change scientist). When I look at the team pages of startups and VC firms, I rarely see someone who looks like me, and innately sense that I’m not the same as ‘those’ people. When I read guidance on fundraising, working with advisors, securing partnerships… again, it’s rare to read stories from women.
I worry that I’m part of the problem. I publicly announced that I was raising an initial round of funding for my company Quibb a few months ago. Out of a total of 25 investors (a mix of funds and angels), only one is a woman — and she’s a close family friend. Am I doing something wrong? Should I have somehow encouraged more women to invest, spent more time nourishing and persuading those women that I know to join the round? Beyond that — What does it say when the proportion of women using my product is much lower than 50%? What does it say when I can’t get one woman to contribute to an article? Am I failing utterly at being a woman in tech?
I worry I’m singing the ‘fuck you, I got mine’ chorus, simply by not saying otherwise. My silence isn’t meant to show my complacence nor satisfaction with the current situation, but my inability to identify what I should or could be doing. Should I embarrass the men who assume I’m ‘the marketing lady’? Should I name the VC Partner who incessantly asked me to dinner after our first meeting, under the guise of ‘tech talk’? Should I refuse to attend events once I realize I’m the token woman? Should I change my title to CEO, even though I feel that for a company with one employee it’s a bit silly? Maybe I could do more, or maybe I’m not doing the right things.
I feel lost. There is a problem, the discrimination and sexism is real. But I don’t know what more I can or am able to do to actually drive progress — or at least not unintentionally create added strife and problems. So for now, I’ll keep sharing my experiences when asked, support the correction of unintentional missteps (my own included), and call out misbehavior when I see or hear it. But otherwise I’ll remain silent — not because I don’t support those leading the dialogue, but because I’m not an expert. I don’t know how to be a woman in tech.
