“But the prejudice will follow you. What will save you is tacking into the love of the work, into the desire that brought you there in the first place. This creates a suspension of time, opens a spacious room of your own in which you can walk around and consider your response. Staring prejudice in the face imposes a cruel discipline: to structure your anger, to achieve a certain dignity, an angry dignity.”

Former software engineer and current author Ellen Ullman had a fabulously thoughtful op-ed in The New York Times about her experiences being female in the tech world, and speaking about the changes she’s noticed (not ones for the better, really) in the world of coding and software for women. 

I love this last paragraph (the one quoted above) in particular, partly because it’s so real but also so genuinely hopeful. It has real promise but it casts no illusions over what it means to be female in any sort of man’s world. Ullman is talking about a prejudice that women far afield from the world of coding can instantly understand. It may not be phrased identically, but the language of dismissal, neglect and prejudice is at its heart universally recognizable and understood, as is the process of structuring the reaction to it. 

Definitely read the full op-ed.