My personal opinion is that the person raises a valid point but I would’ve taken them more seriously if they had left the #MeToo part out of it. I lived in Boston so perhaps I'm more aware of it than most, but Media Lab has a long history of addressing social issues with innovative technology. They even have a research group dedicated to it.[1] It's one thing to dislike Media Lab's involvement in social activism generally, it's another to dislike Media Lab's involvement with feminism. My opinion of Media Lab is pretty unaffected. These “awards” are just PR to help with fundraising. I think Snowden won a few years ago. It’s just about who will drum up the most conversation.

Where I struggle with being a woman in tech is how dismissive many people can be of their female colleagues. As with any discussion that happens behind the safety of a computer screen that attitude seems to be amplified on HN.

In my experience, the assumption seems to be that women have to “prove” their tech competence where men are given the benefit of the doubt until they demonstrate incompetence. For example, I’ve been told that I “wouldn’t understand” code that I wrote. I’ve also found that my StackOverflow account gets better and more productive responses when I use the display name “Andrew” instead of “Andrea.” Just this morning I had a potential investor ask me to name my “silent tech partner.” An odd request considering I was very clear that I had no partners but it was simply inconceivable to him that I had managed on my own.

And that’s on top of the difficulties women face in male-dominated fields generally. In my prior career[2] I’ve had a coworker grab my ass in the elevator because I was wearing “fun pants.” (They were navy blue.) As an accounting student intern I attended a mandatory “Women@Deloitte” event that consisted of a fashion show and tea party while my male counterpart got to do actual work. And as an attorney I once brought a team of my direct-reports (all men) to a Board meeting only to have the new Director that I hadn’t yet met ask me to go to the kitchen to get him a cup of coffee.

As a woman, each of these things in isolation is frustrating, but I have a job to do and I try to brush them aside and let my work speak for itself. Aside from the elevator ass-grab I really, truly, don’t believe that any of these slights demonstrate intentional sexism. But that makes it all the more frustrating to try to tactfully navigate (tolerate?) these realities and then hear conversations and see posts/comments that dismiss or flatly deny that women deal with things like this on a regular basis.

Worse still are the comments that being a woman in tech is “actually easier” or “a hiring advantage.” I can assure you it’s not easier and I challenge anyone who reads this to make a new HN, SO, or even email account that indicates your gender is female and use it for a few weeks to see how differently you’re treated. Most importantly, I think it needs to be said that even if it there were some sort of affirmative action happening in the Valley I don’t want to be hired or funded just because I’m a woman. I simply don’t want to be dismissed because of my gender. Given HN’s obvious skew towards intelligence/education I really struggle to understand how so many of my brilliant colleagues just can’t seem to understand why this is a problem for us.

[1] https://www.media.mit.edu/groups/civic-media/overview/

[2] Full disclosure: I'm a 30-year old self-taught female programmer. My technical knowledge/skillset is probably about that of a recent graduate. Before I quit my job to focus on my start-up full-time I worked on Wall Street as an attorney and also happened to oversee the Information Security team. I suspect I’m more accustomed to working in a male-dominated field than most females. I (wrongly) assumed that Silicon Valley couldn’t be any worse than Wall Street. It seems that Wall Street’s culture has at least had the benefit of a generation of women working with them while Silicon Valley is still adjusting.