In order to not derail my talk, the following are some experiences I've had working in technology over the past decade. In my career, most of the resistance has been subtle, but persistant: People assume (or insist!) I'm a secretary, and want to talk to a "real developer" I had difficulty getting a mentor (particularly early in my career), ended up joining women in tech organizations to find one I was once reminded by everyone on an interview panel that I'm a woman, and would be the first one the team (pro tip: it's worthy of note, but having everyone repeat it was a bit troubling, and ended up being an indicator of toxic work environment) Have been exposed to companies expressing "poor culture fit" as reason why they don't hire women for their technical teams Want your engineers to have open source experience? The open source world can be much worse: Debian death threats (I received one): http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/03/debian_death_threats/ Public sharing of my home address and phone number to shame/expose me after running a competition supporting girls using Ubuntu Frequent comments on looks, age and marital status Explicit sexual public comments on IRC and Twitter following the hosting of a Linux installfest Any failure to succeed ascribed to lack of merit rather than taking into account the complex social and political structures that exist in all software projects (the fallacy of the "meritocracy") Interesting perspective that may help those in the majority understand: "Is This What It's Like For Women At Every Conference? Experiencing Grace Hopper as an interloper by Jamie Talbot" - https://medium.com/grace-hopper-2013/17d1a8607199 Full talk slides here: http://princessleia.com/presentations/LOPSA-East-2014-Keynote-ekjoseph.pdf