You Are Responsible For Everything That Is Happening To You. Yeah Women In Tech, I'm Looking At You.

Reading that a Gender Pay Gap Bake Sale led to death and rape threats, brought up a questio “How did we get to this?” Being a minority in the office (1 female and 6 males) do I feel the gender inequality? Not anymore, but it hasn’t been always like this.

Quit my first job, because I was underpaid. In couple of years I’ve found out the reason: my parents were rich. Quit my second job, because guys in the office were making bets behind my back that I wouldn’t be able to complete one task or another, tasks that were also assigned to them. After the second fiasco, reconsideration had to take place. Who else is going through this? Is there a way out?

Women are often the subjugated population in the tech world due to the hard felt presence of sexism that exists in the segment. You can find those that feel discriminated, are a minority in the industry, underpaid, and often misrepresented. Try reading the stories following #techsexism on Twitter to see what I am talking about or that you are not alone.

Jane Lansing said in her blog that there are only two ways a woman can “fit in” without having to “tough it out” in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) field.

1. Commit to knowing your own mind and speaking it.
2. Grow and become sure of your competence.

Get your fundamentals right. Excelling is what helped me to become confident and stop being pushed around. The women from the 80s may not have had so many resources at their disposition, and thus Jane Lansing mentions that most of them “vanished” after a few years of joining tech companies. The key to sustaining a tech career is to keep oneself updated with the innovations and new systems. Be a complete badass if you are up-to-date on your skills and expertise. So, don't hold yourself back and get down to business. Luckily, we are privy to a few courses and communities for women in the tech field.
- "Girls Who Code" is one such program that inspires, educates and equips girls with computing skills to pursue 21st century opportunities.

• "Hacking For Women" offers scholarships for ambitious women entering technology. Interestingly, the founder, Shannon, has launched what she calls Code Shannon, a fund-it-forward scholarship program that enables women to overcome the gender gap in technology. Likewise, there are a plethora of small groups that have made empowerment of women their sole mission and are doing a great job achieving it.

"Women's Coding Collective" is one such web development community with a mission to narrow the gender gap in technology. They offer two-week online courses which begin at $50.

Another online platform for women to learn is the "Ladies Learning Code" they have private workshops and teen clubs for girls to start young.

"Girl Develop IT" is a non-profit organization which provides affordable opportunities for women to learn web and software development. They have regular classes and community support groups that aim to help women from diverse backgrounds too.

"Women Who Code" is a non-profit organization dedicated to inspire and connect successful women from tech backgrounds to share their stories and encourage more women to reach for their dreams. They cater to the umpteen questions that women have regarding their tech careers.

Shree Bose, Co-Founder of Piper said, “I think the best piece of advice I can give to anyone with a dream is to never be afraid to share your dreams and talk about what you wish to create and see in the world. It’s often hard to share those pipe-dreams at the risk that they might not work out, but you never know who has the collaborations, networks, and visions to make your dreams a reality. So be careful and vigilant and protect yourself intelligently of course, but never be afraid to ask for help.”

By valuing yourself, your skills, and just being you in an uncompromising matter not only can land you a job in an office full of males, who respect and value you, but it can let you be in the field that you want to continue growing in. Success is an accumulation of knowing who you are, believing in what you do and what is it that you are doing for others. It was a long trip for me to get from point A to point B and I am glad that it’s not over.

What is one thing that you would do for global gender equality? Does anything needs to be done at all?