Echoes of the Past - Tech is Still Not Equal for All

This is a submission for the WeCoded Challenge: Echoes of Experience

Earth has traveled around the Sun, and it's time for the We Coded again! I've been waiting for this for a year because I have things to say. I planned parts of this blog post a year ago, so it's been a long wait.

Little did I know then how the situation would change in a year. With all the things happening in the US, the fast rise of far-right ideologies in Europe, and the attacks on many minorities, including gender minorities, it's even more important that such campaigns as We Coded exist.

In the past years, I've shared my experiences as someone from a gender minority in tech, and I decided to continue with that this year, too. It's been a heck of a year, and I can share only a fraction of what I've seen, but even that is too much.

Oh, and this year, I decided to try out something new and recorded some of the experiences as a video. It's embedded at the end of the blog post.

Blog Post Comments

So, first, some blog comments I've received. Many are from last year's WeCoded post, and some have already been deleted because of misconduct.

Let's start with this one person who was first commenting on my blog post at Dev, and then, when they got blocked, they reached out to me in Polywork.

So, there's a lot to unpack there, but I'm not going too deep with it. Just note the "other motives"-part. The message from that person on Polywork was this:

Again, they're referring to "false metoo" and "expecting special treatment as on Facebook or Tinder".

I'm just wondering, what are these people doing at work and in professional circles? Are they looking for a partner because they seem to assume that everything somehow relates to "other motives", which I'm innocently interpreting as wanting to have a relationship. But most likely, sex plays a part here, too.

And the thoughts about sex don't stop there. I cross-posted the same blog post to Medium, and it got boosted and attracted many eyes. Blake (this was the name of the commenter) decided to comment on it.

Here again, "Why do you have to shove your sexuality down everyone's throat". And I must remind you - I did not talk about sex in my blog post. Just my experiences in tech, I repeat, nothing about sex. Not even anything about my sexual orientation.

So... My only conclusion is that in Blake's eyes, just by existing as an assumed woman, I'm shoving my sexuality down everyone's throat. And I think that tells a lot about the blakes of this world, not about me.

The blog posts I wrote last year got many other similar comments. They were about "gender wars", how my experiences are invalid, and how I just should accept that this is what it is and leave it be. I'm not going to do that, by the way.

And on a related note, there was one more comment I wanted to include in this post. The blog post was about creating more inclusive gender selection options in forms with Jetpack Compose, and this comment is what I got:

Oh, how I love it when someone tells me to stay in line and not talk about things that matter to me. [/s] Like these inclusive forms. You know, as a non-binary woman, forms asking my gender are most of the time just excluding me.

Naturally, my reaction to this comment was to turn it up a notch. I'm not going to be silent about these things.

Speaking Experiences

I also do public speaking, and while not all conferences or talks attract non-nice things, there are always some. I want to share a couple of experiences from one conference last summer.

I was giving a talk about accessibility. You know, that's my specialty. I've been certified in it, and one could say I know a lot about it. Right before the talk, there was this one person who decided that it was a good idea to explain to me what accessibility is. Or, "splain" would be a better word (I'm not going to use "mansplain" because the last time I used it, someone was so hurt about it that it got nasty).

Well, I was standing there, listening. I was too polite to stop them, and I was also nervous about the talk that was about to start in a couple of minutes, so I just stood there. And when I finally began my talk, I was super stressed. It was an awful feeling to start speaking to hundreds of people.

But the talk went well, and I aced it. After the talk, I took my Q&A privately, so, not from the stage. I enjoy doing it that way because it allows for actual discussions with people, not just answering questions. And there were people! And so great questions!

There was just this one thing - a person I met for the first time that day decided that it would be a good idea to answer the questions on my behalf. So there we were. Someone asked a question, and I tried to start answering faster than this person, and when I did, they had to add something to the answer after me. And this continued until we had to leave the room for the next talk to begin.

I was shocked but didn't want to seem impolite (yeah, I should work on that), so I didn't say anything at the moment; I just tried to get through the situation.

Later, I confronted them, and they told me they had good intentions and thought they would support me because I was speaking for the first time.

I've been speaking since 2020.

So, a tip: If you genuinely want to support someone, ask them what they need and want. Don't assume. Most speakers want to answer the questions themselves that the audience comes to ask them. You know, just themselves, because they're experts on the topic.

After the talk and these incidents, I felt terrible. Like, I've been doing this for a while, and these people assume that I don't know what I'm talking about.

I doubt these things happen to men - or if they do, they're rare. But when you come from a minority in tech, you often need to prove yourself multiple times, while someone from the majority is assumed to know their things right from the start.

Being At Work

Finally, I want to talk about work. Being a non-binary woman in a team where I'm often the only non-man, I see these biased things happening constantly.

And I know no one on the team has bad intentions. They've just been in a man-dominated world and man-dominated field for so long that these biases are built-in. And many of them try to mitigate the bias, I know they do.

I had to write the previous paragraph because I know that some of them will read this blog post, and I wanted to underline that I don't assume that any of the things I'm saying were done because of some evilness, and I have no hard feelings towards them because of these things.

It also tells a lot about the emotional work we women and non-binary people do to ensure we're not misunderstood when speaking up.

The past year has contained some classic biased situations. Like when I brought up a thing we must do and was greeted with, "No, we're not doing it". And then, a couple of weeks later, my man colleague brought it up, and the answer was straight "Yes", without any discussions.

There have been many situations where something has been asked about a topic I'm very knowledgeable in, and a man colleague, who has almost zero knowledge on the topic, has answered the question before me. I've also been forgotten in meetings - either forgotten to invite, or simply not given a turn to speak when everyone else was given a turn. Of course, I was apologized to later.

These are just some examples, but they take their toll on me, year after year.

Final Words

So yeah, In the blog post, I've shared some of my experiences from the past year as someone from a gender minority in tech. I would love to say that it gets better, but on some things, it feels like it's getting worse because of the general attempts to turn the clock many years back on the human rights front.

I also want to make this all visible and say to anyone in this position that you're not alone, and it's not you. And you're not imagining it.

I could have listed some advice on how to be an ally - but I decided that this year, it's about sharing my experiences and just painting the picture of what tech can look like for an outspoken, non-binary woman in tech. Also, my previous blog posts give tips on being better ally - you can find the blog posts as part of the series at the beginning and end of the blog post on Dev.

Video

Comments

[Learn Computer Academy]

Thank you for sharing such a raw and honest reflection of your experiences as a non-binary woman in tech. It’s disheartening to see the kinds of comments and interactions you’ve faced—both online and in person—but it’s inspiring that you’re using your platform to speak out and keep pushing forward. Campaigns like We Coded are so vital for amplifying voices like yours, especially given the current climate you mentioned with rising challenges to inclusivity.

I particularly appreciated how you highlighted the subtle (and not-so-subtle) biases at work and in professional settings—like being overlooked in meetings or having ideas dismissed until echoed by someone else. It’s a reminder of how much work still needs to be done to make tech truly equitable. Your point about the emotional labor involved in navigating these situations really resonated—it’s an aspect that doesn’t get talked about enough.

We’re big believers in using tech education to break down barriers, so it’s encouraging to see someone like you challenging the status quo and sparking these conversations. Looking forward to reading more from you—especially anything on accessibility, since it’s clear you’re an expert in that space. Keep it up!

[nadeem zia]

Good information provided