When I discuss discrimination against women in high-tech with peers, I am referring to Web, software, and app development, not SEO or blogging or marketing. While women hold as many (and often more) leadership positions than men in marketing, SEO, content creation, social media marketing/blogging, link building, etc., they lag far behind in high-tech development, including software design, Web development, UI design, and even digital interaction design and creative direction (in both representation and pay). That’s before we even touch on the anti-women environments where sexual harassment, lack of mentorship, boundaries-steamrolling, and freezing out run rampant, and which is why the numbers of women in those concentrations are dropping.

I started in SEO when it was a new field, doing many of the activities your company offers, and switched to development and UI when I saw how versatile it was. When the Web was new and SEO had just emerged as a practice, it too was male-dominated. The pay was incredible during the dot-com days and even in the early 2000s, depending on the company. You had guys who didn’t know anything but simple HTML raking in big bucks to code tiny sites that didn’t sell anything or do anything, all running off of speculative funding from angel investors. Those who could write content and raise awareness of the sites were considered geniuses beyond compare. As Web has evolved to semantic Web, mobile, and tablet, I’ve seen the money leave SEO and go into development, and I followed it. Now, the angel investors are chasing the people who build the SaaS and social platforms that enable Internet marketing to happen.

It’s easy for anyone to say this discrimination is all my fault, and in fact, that’s the most common retort I hear in online discussion, from men and women alike, very few of whom work in the field. Frequently, the solution offered to me is “work harder instead of complaining.” That’s a nice thought, and of course I do, but after years of putting in 80-hour weeks, when you look around and notice that men who have less education, experience, and high-profile projects under their belts than you do get more respect, more job offers, better treatment, and their names on the awards you won, you begin realizing the glass ceiling in Web and software is as rigid as ever.

Absent starting my own business – not an option for me, since my state prohibits individual or small-business coverage for someone with my health profile – there’s very little I can do about the shoddy treatment. Changing companies isn’t the answer, as the treatment is endemic to the software industry, and when you lack the network and mentoring a man has, you don’t get access to the top jobs at top companies, either. “Work harder,” when said to someone who worked the weekends the men weren’t willing to work, went the extra miles after the men gave up, motivated the teams the men couldn’t, and doubled the incoming business during economic slumps, is a slap in the face. Working harder simply won’t change the fact that men and women alike – at Web/software/app development firms where I’m working for someone else – deeply resent assertive, creative, intelligent, capable, hard-working women, and do everything in their power to drive them away. My mother, who entered medicine in the 70s, at a time when 2 out of every 10 doctors were women, mentioned a similar work environment.

SEO marketing is quite friendly to women, I agree. I wish I had the interest in it and patience for it, but my heart is in the engineering of interfaces and the development of code, which is a field where women aren’t, for now. I, like you, take Penelope Trunk’s and Margaret Wente’s commentary on women in tech with a grain of salt because they’re bloggers. They write content into CMS and blog systems featuring interfaces that were designed and back-ends that were coded by other people. They aren’t creating the technology – they’re using technology created by someone else. I wish they wouldn’t speak for me, because they don’t know what I and other women in software have endured and seen.

Overall, it’s easier to be a critic than a comrade. It’s easier for other people to lay blame than to lend a hand or an ear when they haven’t been where I’ve been or seen what I’ve seen. What they’ll never understand is that I can work 80-hour weeks with a smile until I drop dead, and the respect and equal treatment – forget equal, in fact, I’ll take “decent” – won’t materialize in my lifetime, or until I’m ready to retire, like it did for my mother. It hasn’t materialized over my last decade of nose-to-the-grindstone, so it’s little wonder that the older I get, the more I feel I’m fighting a losing battle. As I see it, women who deny the existence of discrimination against other women in tech contribute to the problem as much as or more than women who claim we don’t belong here. I know I have few allies for now, but perhaps in time, the landscape will shift. For now, all I can do is speak up, even though very few want to hear what I have to say, and even fewer are genuinely listening.

Last week I just go demoted from my position, and I believe it was attributed to the fact that I acted too “feminine” in an IT consulting role.
You talk about not acting “inferior,” and to be honest I am not sure what you meant by that. Is acting “inferior” like smiling, being friendly or just manifest our feminine side??? And before someone gets mad at me, I am just saying that these traits has NOTHING wrong with them. Girls are more giggly, friendly, smiley in general. Again, there is NOTHING wrong with that.
We need change in this world. I am not acting like a guy just to get ahead. That is putting the feminist movement back. I will dress up, enjoy my makeup while being friendly and bubbly. And I should still be taken seriously at the same time. F-U, dumb managers. You two need to stop hating on girls. Male traits doesn’t equal intelligence.

I’ve been looking for information on this for a while and your post was so helpful. Are you planning on expanding on these ideas at any time in the near future?

They have their uses … making coffee, fetching sandwiches etc.,,

There’s already too much competition in the workplace