Sitting in a project kick off meeting, for the client there are four gentlemen sitting across the table from me and a colleague. Throughout the meeting for all technical things my male colleague gets addressed, for organizational things I also get looked at.

At another client, after weeks of meetings and discussions, all of a sudden one of the client’s engineers wonders why I had to deal with this kind of things, he thought I would ‚just‘ be a manager, not an engineer.

At a trade show for electronics and components wherever I ask for technical details the engineers present at the booth would start with reading top level data to me and then starting to explain everything in very broad and general terms – though I asked very specific and very technical questions. Same thing at a conference just a few weeks ago.

Did something like that happen to you too? No? Then it is likely because you are a man!

I am not at all amazed why so few women are in tech. It is not that this environment would be hostile. But it is like constantly running on sand, it is exhausting. Seriously exhausting.

And I should know since I know how it is to run on solid ground, did that for 42 years before my transition. And with my transition I did not loose brain cells, experience or knowledge. But what I lost is this instant respect bonus that men in tech have, just by being a man. When I turn up instead it is assumed that I am „just a manager“ and not an engineer, that if I talk tech I do not really know what I am talking about and that one should better explain everything to me from the ground up, as if I was a child or first semester student, a form of „mansplaining“ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansplaining).

Let’s face it, there is a bias in this tech community and this bias is that women are less capable than men. And this does not end just at the mansplaining level, it also creates what is called the glass ceiling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_ceiling). It is much harder for a woman to make a career in tech, to rise up in the company hierarchy and to receive the same respect for the same (or better) achievements. Many women in tech work their butts off but the men around them receive the merits. Why? Because it is easier for the other men to accept that actually they did the job and succeeded than the women, because of the bias. It is just assumed, no proof necessary. Women constantly have to work against these assumptions and prove their grounds where men just walk through.

For me this is now just plain frustrating (and sometimes something to lough about loudly). I am in my early 50s now, I have a decent job and position and to get there I had the luck to start my career as a man. Now I can actually compare, I know both sides. For people born as women they always had to live with that and probably only get a vague idea that something is weird in this world. But I know because I know how it was before, as a man, with the same expertise compared to now, simply with another gender. It is not just weird, it is plain wrong and great injustice!

The difference is staggering, as the few examples in the beginning may have shown you. These examples are just a glimpse, just some very obvious ones. Most of the time you do not get to know which chances have just passed by without presenting themselves to you, which contacts did not reply because they did not take you seriously or what men talk behind your back.

This must end. And we women must fight this! Actively! Examples must be given, publicly, to create awareness of the problems. We must speak up, when these things happen, with all due respect, but these things must not be silently ignored or worse being accepted. No, this can not be accepted! This is injustice and inequality, right here, right now! And it must end, as soon as we possibly can.

If you have more examples, let us share these in the comments… I am seriously tired of eating these things.