{"id":2011,"date":"2019-02-27T15:44:56","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T05:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/girl-germs.com\/?p=2011"},"modified":"2020-04-04T07:17:38","modified_gmt":"2020-04-03T21:17:38","slug":"womens-stories-from-the-tech-trenches-and-how-you-can-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/girl-germs.com\/?p=2011","title":{"rendered":"Women’s stories from the tech trenches – and how *YOU* can help!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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(Warning: this is post is LONG!<\/u><\/strong>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I gave a talk with this exact title at Ignite the Tour in Sydney<\/a>, on 14th February 2019. It was a 15 minute lightning talk, and I barely scratched the surface of what I wanted to get through – but something is certainly better than nothing!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I then submitted it as a talk for CrikeyCon 2019<\/a> as a 30 minute talk! Double the time, but still..nowhere near enough. So to make sure I get out all the information, and so people have something they can send out to others once they’ve seen the talk, HERE WE ARE!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I give this talk, I do give a disclaimer about profanity…I don’t really believe I need to do that here because, if you’re on my blog, you should already know what my profanity level is like!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I feel that this topic can be controversial and might have some people with their defences up, but I promise that I\u2019m not going to get angry at you, dear reader \u2013 after all, you\u2019re here to learn what you can do to make things better, so you\u2019re all awesome in my book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, I can only speak as a women in tech. I am not a person of colour, I am in a monogamous heterosexual relationship and while I do have several unseen<\/a> medical<\/a> conditions<\/a>, none of them could be considered a disability nor do they affect my work. So I cannot speak for POC, LGBTIQ+ or those with a disability.\u200b While their experiences may be similar, I cannot speak for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TRIGGER WARNING:<\/u><\/strong> In this post there will also be talk of sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape. These are VERY personal stories. So this is a bit of a trigger warning – if you are not in the right head space to read this, I completely understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Women’s stories<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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https:\/\/twitter.com\/girlgerms\/status\/1007338988309319680\u200b <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Back in June 2018, I wrote a long detailed tweet thread and ended with the tweet you can see \u2013 which started a whole new thread!\u200b The original thread was related to a post on Reddit<\/a> which unfortunately was taken down due to the flood of comments saying it was all in that persons head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of this, I honestly wanted to know what women in tech had experienced so I could compare against what I myself had experienced \u2013 I wanted to see if, as many men had suggested, it was just in our heads or if this truly was a widespread issue.\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I put the call out…and woah.\u200b Women spoke up. They spoke up, they told their stories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To view these images in full, please click on them so they are easier to read!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When breaking these horrendous stories down further, the following seem to be the over-arching themes of the stories I heard:<\/p>\n\n\n\n