Tag Archives: Women & Tech

90 days to the end of the year: Four strategies to achieve your 2023 goals

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Image of an analog alarm clock with a picture of a girl superimposed giving the impression that she's trying to climb the numbers in the clock.
Image by ThePixelman from Pixabay.

Apologies to those of you who were expecting an article last week. Ten days ago my personal computer decided that it had given it all. I now have a new computer and I’m back to writing. Disaster adverted!

One of the things I was mulling over while I was sorting my computer was that from today, Sunday, October 1st, I have 3 months (roughly 90 days) left until the end of 2023. 

I was in shock first, thinking who stole my year. Then, I shifted to mentally assess how well I was doing with achieving my goals. I did that randomly, which, of course, triggered anxiety because my mind went straight to the things that I hadn’t accomplished. 

And finally, I calmed down.

I started by remembering all the things I’ve done and especially thanking my past self for writing a post before the summer compiling my achievements to date.

Next, I asked myself what were the top 3 things I wanted to accomplish before the end of the year.

Finally, the juicy question I want to share with you today: How do I get them? 

I came up with four different strategies that have helped in the past. I hope they work for you too.

Four ways to get what you want this year

#1 Ask for help

You may have been expecting something like “do a Google search”, “get a certificate”, “make a list” or any other satisfying way to proactively procrastinate. Don’t-you-dare.

Get comfortable with being uncomfortable and ask for help. In my experience, this is going to be especially difficult if you’re a giver. You’ll try to talk yourself out of it. Examples

“People are going to think I’m needy”.

“I cannot bother others with my problems”.

“Nobody can do this but me”.

Then, think about all the times you’ve helped people. Out of your goodwill, simply because you’re a kind person. Then, think that others are kind too.

And now it’s when it becomes uncomfortable for me because I’m going to do what I’m preaching…

HELP: I want to grow my coaching business so I’m looking for more clients. There are two ways people can work with me

One-on-one: I have two programs. The first focuses on becoming your own version of success The second is geared towards helping people who have experienced — or are experiencing  — hardships to move forward again and face life in a more healthy and sustainable way.

Last week I got a fantastic testimonial from somebody who finished one of the programs

I am happy that I’ve met Patricia in time. I am going through a career change period, which has become less frightening and more strategic.

She helped me see the patterns of how my mind is holding me back, and by the end of the coaching program, I noticed a shift in my self-confidence and resilience. In our sessions, we uncovered the root causes of my inaction, and solutions emerged naturally from her insightful questions. She also shared her wisdom and vision when I needed it.

She is passionate about coaching and empowering women and has all the necessary expertise to help. I enjoyed every session. Thank you, Patricia!

Alena Sheveleva, Research Fellow 

Group coaching: I’ve developed a 6-month program for people managers to give them tools to better handle the pressures of their work and move from stressed employees to satisfied professionals. The program is designed such that the managers can use the tools with their reports as well.

If you’re interested or you know somebody who may be, please connect with me.

Ufff. I did it. I asked for help.

#2 Be like a toddler

Through my years of being a coach and coaching others, a tool that comes up often is using our imaginary future self to help us unstuck ourselves.

Some examples

  • Write a letter to your future self.
  • Write yourself a letter from the future asking for advice.
  • Use visioning to meet with your future self.
  • Imagine yourself in 20 years receiving a prize, what will be your acceptance speech?

And so on.

They can be helpful to open ourselves to possibilities but they can also offer so many choices that we get trapped in analysis-paralysis limbo.

Also, sometimes it can be difficult to get inspired by a “version” of ourselves that we may not find particularly enticing.

For example, I found that some of my clients in their 60s and 70s are not super excited to ask for advice to their 80 or 90-year-old version of themselves. For some of them, it’s triggering since they wonder if they’d even be alive by then.

To prompt myself into action my trick is actually the reverse — what a toddler would do?

Because toddlers

1.- Have a great focus.

2.- Are very persistent.

3.- Make very clear what they want. .. and they are happy to let go of it if they find something better.

4.- They are open to experimenting with everything as “play”.

5.- They are extremely self-confident.

(6.- And they ask for help — see point #1 above)

So, when I’m stuck on inaction, rather than asking my future self for advice, I appeal to my “toddler energy” to get me moving.

Let me know in the comments how you’ll apply #ToddlerEnergy this week.

#3 Get a sponsor

I’ve been a mentor for years. Also, I’ve had many mentors. And as a woman tech, I’m reminded several days a week of the importance of mentors.

Let me tell you a secret: Get a sponsor.

Whilst a mentor is somebody who talks to you about their career and gives you advice based on their experiences, a sponsor is somebody who talks about you in rooms where you aren’t present (yet).

A sponsor

  • Makes introductions to people who can help you achieve your goals.
  • Recommends you to key stakeholders for projects, initiatives, and roles.
  • Uses their clout to help you to get what you want.

In summary, a sponsor actually puts themselves in the line for you — they vouch for you. 

Top tip: Unlike mentors, you cannot ask somebody to be a sponsor. You earn it. How do you know if somebody is your sponsor? 

Share with the person what you want to achieve and make an ask, for example, an introduction to somebody who they have told you can help you. If they are willing to do it, they believe in you — they are your sponsor. If they avoid committing to it, then you may want to explore if the person is more of a mentor only.

#4 Get a coach

After reading the title, some of you may be thinking that this is a rehash of point #1. It isn’t.

I’ve been a “consumer” of coaching since 2018. And it’s been life-changing. I’ve experimented with several coaching modalities — group, 1:1, Time to Think, The Model, Playing Big — and these are some of the things I achieved through coaching

  • Launching my website after talking myself out of it for 2 years.
  • Launching my business whilst keeping my full-time position at a tech company after shattering the limiting beliefs that I couldn’t have both.
  • Holding more space for my team to co-create solutions after realising that my value as a manager was not tied to “knowing more” than my direct reports.
  • Asking for more recognition at work whilst regaining a life-work balance.
  • Writing posts more regularly after learning how to calm down my perfectionist impulses.
  • Being more conscious about the manuals I have for others and how patriarchy influences my decisions.
  • Gaining awareness of when I’m catastrophising about a situation and reducing overwhelm caused by uncertainty.
  • Benefiting from a non-judgemental accountability partner.

Recap

In summary

  1. You have three months to the end of 2023.
  2. Decide on the top 3 things you want to accomplish before the end of the year (they can be less than 3 but no more).
  3. Try the strategies below
  • Ask for help
  • Be like a toddler
  • Get a sponsor 
  • Get a coach

Let me know in the comments how it goes.

Work with me

Contact me to explore how we can work together

Let’s work together

Why performative inclusion thrives? Because it’s a win-win billionaire industry

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Torso of a woman in a blue suit covering her face with a big white square piece of cardboard that has drawn on it a happy face and a flower with the colours of the rainbow.
Collage by Patricia Gestoson from Images by Gerd Altmann on Pixabay and Sharon Pittaway on Unsplash.

I’m back after a hectic and unpredictable summer break. More about it soon.

In the meantime, I want to share with you an article that I published in the economics journal The Mint Magazine about the industrial complex behind diversity, inclusion, and equity initiatives and who really gets the benefits. In it, I uncover the economic and strategic interests behind the “fixing women” programs, unconscious bias training, and allyship overload.

The great pretenders

In 2013, the then-chief operating officer of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, published her book: Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. It was a cultural phenomenon that prompted discussions about women and their professional ambitions as well as the additional barriers they had to surmount to get to the top compared to men. 

The book also reassured organisations that it was not their responsibility if they didn’t have enough women in leadership. It was the women’s fault. They were not leaning in, not putting themselves out for a promotion, they were not confident enough. As a consequence, the “fixing professional women” industry boomed. 

An indicator of this boom is the exponential growth in Google searches for imposter syndrome since 2015. Increasingly, workshops, programmes, and newsletters have been relentlessly targeting women in male-dominated sectors like tech and finance with the promise of giving them confidence as a means to reach leadership positions. A peek into the publishing industry proves that imposter syndrome has also colonised our bookstores in the last few years.  

However, unconfident women alone couldn’t explain the whiteness of executive and board teams. So training in unconscious bias came to the rescue. It was appealing to organisations because again it focused on individuals rather than on the organisation’s processes and culture. Moreover, it exculpated leaders too, who could blame their “primitive” brains for the inequities in the workplace.

Workshops, programmes, and newsletters have been relentlessly targeting women in male-dominated sectors like tech and finance with the promise of giving them confidence.

It was a marketing success. In 2017, McKinsey estimated the annual spending in the US on unconscious bias training at $8 billion. This despite researchers reporting in 2001 that training initiatives focused on changing employees’ attitudes and behaviours that reflected more subtle forms of discrimination and exclusion rarely led to the desired long-term changes.

Ironically, as most organisations made those trainings optional, the typical attendees were employees bearing the brunt of unconscious biases – women and people from underrepresented groups – which reinforced the obvious conclusion: unconscious bias training was a lovely ticking box for organisations because it was quantifiable in terms of money spent and number of events but let key stakeholders get out of jail free.

Unfortunately, it didn’t result in the effective diversity and inclusion game-changer that we were led to believe it would deliver. This was not a surprise since it rested on the premise that learning about unconscious bias and its impact on decision making was enough to solve it, while ignoring that by design, most of our mental processes are unconscious. Even Dr Daniel Kahneman, who was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work on heuristics and biases, has been vocal about his inability to keep his unconscious bias in check. 

Diversity training needed a revamp and the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 brought a revival of the word “allyship”. In 2021, Dictionary.com named it the word of the year.

This “allyship continuum” is very attractive to organisations and leaders. First, it reinforces the lack of accountability at the senior level by equally distributing the responsibility of building inclusive organisations among all employees .

In the Global North, “allyship” and “allies’ are words that bring memories of the World Wars, being on the right side, and sacrifice. In the workplace, it has become an all-encompassing term for framing the interactions between a person in a position of privilege and a targeted person or group. From simply becoming aware of oppressive actions on less privileged groups, to deploying institutional change to tackle the discrimination of protected categories, all can be considered an act of allyship.

This “allyship continuum” is very attractive to organisations and leaders. First, it reinforces the lack of accountability at the senior level by equally distributing the responsibility of building inclusive organisations among all employees . Second, it’s self-congratulatory. Under a premise that we could summarise as “every little helps”, it enables us to embody the identity of an ally with minimal effort. Finally, it reiterates the belief that diversity, inclusion, and equity (DEI) are under-represented group problems that allies can help to mitigate from the margins.

And allyship training excels at marketing. Some of its promises are building empathy, addressing biases when they arise, and even helping those suffering the burden of discrimination to stop complaining about microaggressions and instead listen without getting defensive – a big relief to human resource departments.

But overpromising is not the only problem. Our obsession with rebranding all DEI strategies as allyship also waters down powerful initiatives by drowning them in a sea of sameness. For example, recently, the Mayor of London office announced that it is investing £1 million in an allyship training package available to every secondary school in London to educate and empower young Londoners to take a stand and help prevent violence against women and girls. The package – a teacher’s toolkit titled, Ending gender-based violence and abuse in young people’s relationships – doesn’t contain the words ally, allies, or allyship. Still, the mayor’s press office felt the need to rebrand it as allyship training. 

Regarding effectiveness, the key problem is that reported measures of success are typically based on people’s perceptions of themselves – or others. Research shows that men are worse allies than they think. For example, 77% of executive and c-suite males think that most men within their organisation are “active allies” or “public advocates” for gender equity but only 45% of women at that level agree. This gap in perception increases at lower management levels.

Is tackling imposter syndrome, reducing unconscious bias, or promoting allyship useless?

Would replacing allyship with a different word boost the commitment of employees and organisations to make workplaces more equitable? Suggestions abound: advocate, champion, co-conspirator, co-liberator – the list goes on. Moreover, is tackling imposter syndrome, reducing unconscious bias, or promoting allyship useless? I posit that they are mostly a distraction from tackling systemic inequalities at work and the responsibility of leaders to drive those changes. 

For example, whilst we throw money into addressing underrepresentation or making privileged employees feel good, the UK gender pay gap has increased by 3.8% from 2021 – black African, Bangladeshi, and Pakistani women earn, respectively, 26%, 28%, and 31% less than men and disabled employees earn a sixth less than non-disabled workers. And organisations dodge responsibility for the fact that 50% of women who take a tech role drop it by the age of 35 or that 20% of British businesses get away with lacking policies to support LGBT staff.

How do we move away from sympathy for the hardships of under-represented groups to embedding equity in organisations? How can we escape the trap of DEI-washing?

Organisations need to shift from the comfort of snapshot statistics such as annual diversity audits, to measure the progression of women and underrepresented groups through the ranks.

For example, asking themselves how they can attract brilliant women in their 20s and keep them until they retire, and realising that’s much more than thinking about maternity leave. It involves mapping the journey of employees such as a neurodiverse, female software engineer until she becomes chief technical officer, or a black, nonbinary person joining as a junior sales manager and reaching vice president level. This will uncover blockers to accessing opportunities and career progression within the organisation and provide insights into the initiatives needed to overcome them. 

Individuals are not off the hook either. It’s paramount we teach people how to transgress boundaries such as gender, ethnicity, class, age, or disability to achieve the collective gift of freedom. Building inclusive and equitable workplaces is a practice, not a certificate.

As Aboriginal elder, activist and educator, Lilla Watson, said, “If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” 

QUIZ: Patriarchy and You

How much is patriarchy ruling your life and career?

We believe that we make choices based on logic and objective criteria.The reality is that the patriarchal rules embedded in our socialisation often decide for us.

This 3-minute quiz will tell you how much patriarchy impacts your life and career choices.

QUIZ: How much is patriarchy ruling your life and career?

Welcome, not just tolerate: Redefining relationships in the workplace

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Grey wall with the text "Everyone is welcome" stamped on it.
Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash.

I’ve been part of committees as well as advisory boards for several years on very varied topics: emerging tech, DEI, customer support, operations…

After some reflection, I recently decided that I wanted to broaden my impact and I started to apply for non-executive board positions.

It’s not been easy or quick because I’ve been very picky about the organisations I’m submitting my applications to. First and foremost, I want to be part of the board of an organisation connected with my values and the legacy I want to leave behind: Working towards building inclusive products, workplaces, and societies.

The feedback I’ve got so far on my applications it’s that my background is difficult to “put in a box”.

  • I’ve been working on software companies for 18+ years BUT not in the IT or software development departments. 
  • I’ve been part of the acquisition integration team operationalising the transfer of thousands of support tickets, accounts, and contacts, as well as creating standard operation procedures for support, onboarding thousands of customers and internal employees, and running support operations BUT technically I’m not in the operations department. 
  • I have countless proof of DEI advocacy — including spearheading diversity initiatives, writing, speaking, inclusive leadership programs, mentoring, and coaching — BUT I’m not in HR.

In summary, I’m not enough or — even trickier — I’m too original, as I was told in France when I applied for a job for which I fulfilled all the requirements but — guess what? — the fact that I had done my engineering and M.Sc. degree in Venezuela, my Computational Chemistry Ph.D. in Canada, and my post-doc in Greece meant for them that they couldn’t relate to me or my experience. Frightened by the difference I was bringing with me, they decided to go with a candidate from the same university that everybody else in the department.

But this week something different happened.

I met with the CEO of an organisation with several open board positions to learn more about them and check if my profile was of interest before submitting my application. The position description specifically asked for DEI expertise. 

At the meeting, the CEO described the organisation and I was in awe at their purpose and impact. Then, it was my turn to talk about my background. I told him about my different roles as Director of Support and Customer Operations, award-winning inclusion strategist, as well as a DEI board advisor for an NGO focusing on making AI work for everybody. 

We talked about the need to diversify their board members and that they wanted to operationalise DEI in their organisation. My brain began to talk me out of the position. I mentioned something along the lines of “I fully support the need to diversity your board and obviously I’m white” and “I’m an inclusion strategist but I don’t have an HR background”…

And then, the magic happened.

The CEO told me that they were recruiting for 3 positions — not one, as I thought — and that my experiences as an immigrant in different countries, my work in tech, and my DEI journey would bring a very unique perspective to the board. 

Suddenly, I experienced a shift.

From feeling that I needed to fit into boxes created by others — to be tolerated- I moved to feel welcome.

Welcoming users

This is not only about hiring people. It’s about customers too.

Some months ago, I was talking with an organisation that works towards ensuring that data and AI work for all people and society. They wanted my feedback about their website in the context of my hat of inclusion strategist.

I pointed out that the site didn’t comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) international standard. But that was only the beginning. 

For example, I told them about how there were no images showcasing people with disabilities, old people, or children on their website. I also mentioned the lack of pronouns and the signals that sends to users from the LBTQAI+ community. 

Once I finished with my high-level evaluation of their website, I waited for my interlocutor’s feedback:

“You mentioned visitors of the website feeling welcome. I never thought about a website in this way”.

And his face lighted up. I hadn’t realised until that moment that I used the word “welcome”. I’m glad I did.  

To welcome people, start with your own feelings

When we talk about DEI, we often talk about “managing” the feelings of the people that society puts in a low-status category: Women, LBTQAI+, disabled, old…

  • We should make them feel included
  • We should make them feel that they belong
  • We should make them feel…

But the reality is that we can only control our feelings. The idea of “making somebody else feel like they belong” is a nice construct but doesn’t reflect how our brain works.

We’re a “circumstance” in others’ lives. We’re their “environment”. Their thoughts about that environment are what make them feel included or excluded — that they belong or they are only tolerated.

What if instead of thinking about others’ feelings, we started by thinking about our thoughts and feelings?

In other words, when you have a new colleague, manager, direct report, neighbour, or family member, my challenge to you is to interrogate your thoughts about that person. 

For example, are you thinking?

  • “I need to make X, Y, and Y so the person doesn’t think I’m racist”
  • “I must watch what I say to avoid hurting the person’s feelings”
  • “I should say X, Y, and Z so the person knows I’m their ally”

and as a consequence, are you feeling?

  • Stressed
  • Judged
  • Inadequate

Instead, I offer you to “try” thoughts like

  • “I’m interested in what I can learn from this person”
  • “This person will be an asset to the organisation”
  • “As a manager, I can help this person to fulfill their potential”

And what feelings do those thoughts elicit? I can share how I feel when I “try” those thoughts with a person.

  • Curious
  • Interested
  • Energised

In summary, we should care about our own thoughts and feelings because they drive our actions.

If you feel “judged” because you think “I must watch what I say to avoid hurting the person’s feelings”, probably you will “send vibes” to the person about being hypervigilant, sound scripted, and you’ll minimise your contact with them.

On the other hand, if you feel energised because you think that you can help this person to fulfill their potential, chances are you’ll share your knowledge with them, introduce them to your networks, and assign them stretching projects that will lead them to promotions.

The bottom line

We put a lot of effort into discussing actions to affect others’ feelings of inclusion and belonging.

Instead, if we truly want to produce meaningful DEI progress, we should start with our own thoughts and feelings. Only then, we will move from tolerating to welcoming.

QUIZ: Patriarchy and You

How much is patriarchy ruling your life and career?

We believe that we make choices based on logic and objective criteria.

The reality is that the patriarchal rules embedded in our socialisation often decide for us.

This 3-minute quiz will tell you how much patriarchy impacts your life and career choices.

TAKE ME TO THE QUIZ

Unmasking patriarchal productive procrastination: Empower your professional path

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Woman in a library carrying a stack of books.
Photo by cottonbro studio.

This week, I had amazing coaching conversations with my clients about their professional careers. 

A recurrent theme came up: The “evermore education” career trap — using courses, certifications, and programs as barriers to their own career progression.

This is part of what I call productive procrastination.

Productive procrastination

The Cambridge Dictionary defines procrastination as

“the act of delaying something that must be done, often because it is unpleasant or boring”

We associate procrastination with either doing what we call “nothing” — resting — or embarking on pleasurable tasks — watching TV, gaming, gardening— instead of doing the work we have decided we should be doing.

However, for my clients, a recurrent blocker in their career progress has not been bingeing on Netflix instead of searching for a job. It’s been doing something that on the surface appears to be aligned with their professional goal but that it’s procrastination in disguise.  

“Not All Speed Is Movement”

Toni Cade Bambara

I’m talking about the neverending cycle of “taking another course”, “reading another book”, and“mastering another tool” before applying for a new job, asking for a promotion, or launching a business.

In summary, you convince yourself that before any meaningful step towards progressing in your career, you must learn something that it’s going to take you a considerable amount of time AND that until you complete that step you cannot pursue your career goals.

Why you love productive procrastination

The reason productive procrastination is so efficient is that — unlike bingeing on Netflix — it makes us feel good. How?

  1. It gives us permission not to risk rejection; that is, not to engage with the person that actually can help us in our career progression: manager, recruiter, or sponsor.
  2. It allows us to delay our career progression “rationally” — instead of exploring the reasons why we’re resistant to have conversations about our career with key stakeholders, that 3-month course or 6-month program gives us the perfect alibi to “delay” those uncomfortable discussions for another 3 or 6 months.
  3. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy — as we learn more, we discover other areas/topics/skills in which we’re not an expert. That enables our brain to come up with yet another“learning milestone” that we “absolutely need to master” before going back to our job search.
  4. We’re sure to please most of our friends, mentors, and loved ones. When we share with our network of supporters thoughts like “I learned today that it’s good I do course X before I launch my business” or “I’m going to pursue program Y towards my career change”, we — consciously or unconsciously — already know they are going to tell us things like “Great idea”, “I’m pleased you’re taking action”, “Sounds like the right next step”. You feel good, they feel good, and nothing changes.

Why do I say that productive procrastination is a patriarchal strategy?

Because whilst you are “happily busy” learning and perfecting, those with more privilege than you are 

  • Sending half-cooked CVs to recruiters.
  • Asking for warm introductions to hiring managers.
  • Launching a website with some typos.
  • Negotiating a pay rise.
  • Discussing their promotion with their managers.
  • Running a survey among their targeted customer group to get feedback on a business idea.

Moreover, productive procrastination reinforces the feeling of “not enoughness” that patriarchal structures feed to women and people from underrepresented groups since we’re born.

How else do you explain that in spite that there are more women than men with university degrees in Oceania, the Americas, and Europe, most leadership positions in those regions are in the hands of men?

How do you detect you’re a victim of productive procrastination?

Some clues that you’ve become a productive procrastinator

  • Overcomplicating — You keep adding courses/workshops/certificates to your to-do list of things you have decided you absolutely need to finish before starting to take action.
  • Endless polishing — When you look at your CV, website, or business idea, you tell yourself that you’ll need a ton of work to create/develop/improve them and you keep refining the draft versions for weeks, months, or years. 
  • Neverending sense of “not being enough” — Do you note a pattern of embarking on back-to-back certifications, even if you continue to promise yourself that this will be the last one?

How you get unstuck from productive procrastination

And here are some strategies to unhook you from productive procrastination:

  • Overcomplicating — what’s the minimum education or piece of work you need to start interacting with stakeholders in your career?
  • Endless polishing — When you look at your CV, what overwhelming evidence do you have that more polishing is needed before you send it?
  • Neverending sense of “not being enough” — Decide in advance what’s the minimum you need to “learn” and what’s the deadline. And then stick to it. 

BACK TO YOU: What’s one way you’ll stop productively procrastinating to block your career progression this week?

PS. I can help you to unblock your career 

Book a strategy session with me to explore how coaching can help you to become your own version of success.

Book a free strategy session

How patriarchy teaches you to talk yourself out of what you want

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Patricia Gestoso delivering a talk in front of a screen that reads: Career vs Patriarchal version. Under career, there is a workflow that starts with goal, plan, people, implement, and ends with achieve. Under the patriarchal version, the workflow starts with play small, magnify obstables, do one test, judge ourselves, and ends with conform.

In May, I delivered a talk to the University of Manchester at the EDIA Colloquium “Women in Science, Industry and Academia”.

The title of the talk was How Patriarchy fosters your Perfectionism, Self-criticism and Self-doubt and what you can do about it”. To my surprise – and maybe yours – the title was not suggested by me but by the organisers of the event after reading my posts.

During the keynote, I shared with the audience how I talked myself out of launching my website focused on the intersection between technology and DEI for three years.

Reasons I gave myself:

Lack of role models: I hadn’t met yet anybody that worked in tech – I was senior manager of support at the time – and had a personal blog about diversity, inclusion, and equity.

Perfectionism: As a non-native English speaker, I catastrophised about the possibility to have a typo on the website or that my grammar may not be flawless.

Validation: The patriarchal structures had educated me that my worth was dependent on validation from others. I was concerned that people in my network and at work would see me as “less” for having a blog.

Credibility: I have a Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry but not in HR or DEI. At the time, I felt my lived experiences as well as my work advocating and spearheading diversity and inclusion initiatives weren’t “enough” to grant me permission to write a blog about DEI.

How did I overcome all those obstacles? I’d love to tell you that I “cured” myself by repeating in my head “Fake it until you make it” or “Be confident”. But it was not the case.

I had to do the work against two powerful enemies.

The first was my brain, that’s wired for survival and hates anything new. My brain knows me well so it would always throw me “thoughts” to discourage me to pursue a stretching goal.

The second was patriarchy, which is an even mightier adversary. Through the years, it has built for me a big encyclopaedia called “Good girl rules for Patricia”.  In it, it’s carefully detailed the very few things I’m allowed to think, feel, and do and all the other things I can’t even dream about because “good girls don’t do that”.

Among the patriarchal rules that are extremely successful at minimising women and people from underrepresented groups is the idea of the “role model”. It’s the perfect self-fulfilling prophecy.

Take women in tech.

Society says “Women need more role models in STEM”. That causes women to think that they need a role model to have a career in tech. And if they don’t find it, they abandon the idea because “you can’t be what you cannot see”. Not only that, if you’re indeed a woman in tech that has succeeded, society imposes on you the “obligation” to act as a role model on top of your full-time job. This can go all the way from agreeing to be the company’s speaker at STEM events to sponsoring the female employee network. All that whilst the men around you prioritise their careers.

How convenient, isn’t it?

That’s the reason that I told the audience that instead they should cherish the opportunities when they don’t have a role model. That means they are creating original work. That means they are trailblazers!

Moreover, I invited them to think about being role models themselves and have impossible goals. In my case, I want to be a role model of what’s possible for an immigrant woman in tech.

In the end, I shared with the audience a tip and a quote

The tip is that you need to learn how to move whilst feeling fear. There is no “imposter syndrome” vaccine. Fear will always be there when you attempt greatness, when you disrupt the status quo. The trick is to acknowledge it and explore the techniques that will suit you to still go ahead in spite of the discomfort.

The quote is

“If someone is unhappy with your life, it shouldn’t be you”

Brooke Castillo, Life Coach School

BACK TO YOU: How are you talking yourself out of doing what you want?

PS.

Do you want to get rid of chapters in the “good girl” encyclopaedia that patriarchy has written for you? Book a strategy session with me to explore how coaching can help you to become your own version of success.

Book a free strategy session

How to integrate quitting your job into your career success strategy

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Text that reads both as "Don't quit it" and "Do it".
Photo by Leeloo Thefirst.

Work is currently designed for an idealised version of a White young single man with no care responsibilities.

And it goes beyond the scheduling constraints of a “full-time job” – 40 hours/week, 9 to 5 straight hours, and the Monday to Friday working week. From what we consider “looking professional” all the way to the expectations of having to be always on just in case the business needs us or even setting the office temperature, which was developed back in the 1960s through an analysis of the resting weight of a 154lb (69kg) 40-year-old man.

It’s not a surprise that women and people from underrepresented groups feel they don’t “fit in”.

And it goes beyond dress codes and schedules. We’re expected to put up with microaggressions, weaponised incompetence, office work, and harassment, to mention a few.

However, rather than questioning the current state of affairs, patriarchy has trained us to think that we’re the problem and it’s upon us to either fix it – for example, through championing DEI initiatives – or simply toughen up.

In addition to the mental load to either fit in or fix the system, the problem with that kind of indoctrination is that assumes that quitting a job is not a valid option. It’s seen as a failure rather than a choice. And that hurts our career and diminishes our leverage.

How do I know? Because I’ve done so.

My quitting story

After finishing my master in chemical engineering in Venezuela, I decided to pursue a Ph.D. abroad. At the time, I wanted to become a professor at the university and I felt that was the best next step.

The problem? I didn’t have the money to pay for 5 years of living abroad and expensive tuition fees. One of my master’s advisors came up with a solution: There was a professor in Canada that was looking for a Ph.D. student and he could pay me a minimum wage – enough to live.

Our email interactions hinted some worrying signals about him not being an easy person to work for but I was so keen on the opportunity – I kept telling myself that was “the only” chance available to me – that I decided to take it and go to Canada.

I should have listened to my gut feeling. He was a bully. I was the only woman in the lab but we all suffered harassment and discrimination at different levels. One of the people even died from suicide.

How was he able to pull it off? We were all on a student visa. Pushing back, denouncing him, or leaving the lab meant to have to go home empty-handed. In one word, fail.

I kept telling myself that if I was able to cope, it’d be worth it. I got really good at diminishing in my mind all the things that were wrong with my boss’s behaviour and minimising myself such as not bringing out the worst of his character.

Moreover, most people around me that knew about his behaviour empathised with me but also reminded me that quitting would mean “losing” the time I’d already spent on my Ph.D.

To cut a long story short, after 1 year and 4 months, I quit. When I announced it to him, he told me that he’d publish my work without my name, which he did it. He tried to make me change my mind with threats and nice words.

It didn’t work. I left and I moved to another lab where I thrived. The difference was that now I had a great advisor that supported me rather than put me down. I wrote 5 papers and completed my Ph.D. in 4.5 years.

What about the others in my first lab? They stayed. And they all told me that they regretted it.

From my side, I didn’t regret going to another lab and start again my Ph.D. That previous experience was not a waste of time. It helped me to know that I have non-negotiables at work like respect, mental wellbeing, and appreciation.

I learned from that experience that it was paramount that I integrated quitting into my career strategy.

But how to do it?

Coaching tool: decisions ahead of time

One of the reasons that makes it so hard to quit is that we only consider it when we have the feeling that we’ve run out of “other” options. That means we’re not in a very generative state. We feel exhausted, defeated, or angry, to mention a few typical emotions.

What’s more, we feel disappointed with ourselves for allowing the situation to reach such a low point. Typically the reason it’s that we’ve experienced the boiling frog syndrome.

The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability or unwillingness of people to react to or be aware of sinister threats that arise gradually rather than suddenly.

Wikipedia

How to avoid finishing like the frog? Or wait until you’re burnt out to jump out of the boiling water?

I recommend a coaching technique called “decision ahead of time”. In brief, plan how you’ll think, feel, and act in advance of certain triggers appearing.

How does that work in practice?

List your non-negotiables at work. That can be about the culture, the perks, your promotion aspirations, your schedule, your participation in projects, your salary expectations, and so on.

Then, decide in advance what changes in those areas will give you hints that you may want to leave, how leaving would look like, and how that would integrate into your career strategy.

In those terms, quitting doesn’t look like a failure but as part of a plan. It’s framed as a healthy way to avoid burnout and practice setting boundaries.

If not quitting, what are you doing about your career?

The boiling frog syndrome is so seductive that can make us forget our career by focusing on our current job.

How do we know if we’re trapped in our own version of the boiling frog syndrome?

Ask yourself the following questions:

  • Do you know where you’re and what you want out of your career?
  • Have you delegated to your manager, CEO, or organisation your professional ambitions?
  • Are you hoping to finally get promoted but you don’t have a clear commitment from your manager about what you need to get it or when it’ll happen?
  • Do you keep talking yourself out of your promotion aspirations, telling yourself that it could be worse?

If after reading the questions above you feel you’re ready to jump out of the boiling water, join me for the Joyful Career Promotion Week later this month.

Let me tell you more about it.

WHAT YOU GETHOW THAT WILL HELP YOU TO GET A PROMOTION
20+ page workbook1.- Step-by-step guide to writing your 2023 mid-year career review.
2.- Examples of framing the promotion conversation with your manager.
3.- Insights into how to tackle the common pushback from your manager about discussing your next promotion
Three one-hour group virtual coaching calls via Zoom1.- Get coached on your mid-year self-assessment review and specific career progression goals.
2.- Learn from others getting coached about their promotion challenges.
 Live pop-up private online community groupGet asynchronous feedback about your written mid-year assessment, the promotion conversation with your manager, and career progression.

When? Mon-Wed-Fri May 22-26, 2023 – 12.00 BST | 13.00 CEST

If you’ve been thinking about working with me, this is the perfect opportunity to get introduced to the power of career coaching with a very small investment.

I look forward to working with you on making your career aspirations a reality!

Are You Falling for Weaponised Incompetence at Work? Here’s How to Stop

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Senior Caucasian man holding a blank empty banner covering his mouth with a hand, looking shocked and afraid because of a mistake.
Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash.

I’ve written in the past about how women – especially non-White women – are expected to do the office housework: Those administrative tasks that are important for the business to keep moving but that are undervalued and not likely to result in a promotion.

And last week I learned that office housework has an ally: Weaponised incompetence.

Definition:

“Weaponised incompetence or “strategic incompetence” as it’s sometimes called ― is the act of faking incompetence at any one task (though usually an unpleasant one) to get out of doing it.”

Examples:

  • Your partner claims they are “not good” at household chores so you do them.
  • Your family says that they are rubbish at planning, so you get stuck with organising family gatherings.
  • Your roommate consistently does a poor job at cleaning the toilet so you step in and do it yourself.

But it’s also alive and well in the workplace.

How do you identify weaponised incompetence at the workplace?

By the task

They are typically mundane tasks or activities perceived as low-value – taking the minutes, planning office events, handling conflict among colleagues, or soothing unhappy customers.

By what they tell you

  • You’re praised by how well you do the task, e.g. “You’re naturally good at taking notes during the meetings”.
  • They make you responsible for their faked incompetence and delegate the task to you, e.g. ” Remember last time how bad it was when I did it? You’re so much better than me at this”.
  • They say they don’t know how to do it, e.g. “It’s so difficult to update the Excel spreadsheet with the new leads”.

By what they do

Some strategies to deal with weaponised incompetence

  • Recognise you’ve been manipulated.
  • Communicate the patterns you’ve noticed.
  • Set boundaries AND STICK TO THEM.
  • Leave them on their own to figure things out
  • Coach them through doing the task themselves.
  • Take the opportunity to start a discussion about how valuable is the task, who should be doing it, and how it should be rewarded.

Are you a “perpetrator” of weaponised incompetence?

It’s also important that women – and people belonging to other protected categories – check if we are using weaponised incompetence against other people. For example, as I mentioned above, non-White women are expected to do more office housework than White women.

We, White women, need to step up and help break the cycle rather than reinforce it.

The first step is awareness.

  1. Look at the low-value tasks you convince yourself “you’re not to be good at” or that you don’t want to learn.
  2. Reflect on the reasons why you don’t want to learn to do them or why you think you’re not good at them.

Next, think about to whom you deflect that task.

  1. Is it always the same person?
  2. Is there a reason why the task shouldn’t be rotated among other people?

If it’s always the same person and the task is not core to the person’s role, step up and break the cycle of weaponised incompetence.

Final reflections

During an insightful discussion, Rose Cartolari challenged the use of weaponised incompetence as an expression that may further the divide between the giver and the receiver of the action. Instead, she offered the less violent and loaded term learned helplessness for reflection.

The American Psychological Association defines learned helplessness as “a phenomenon in which repeated exposure to uncontrollable stressors results in individuals failing to use any control options that may later become available. Essentially, individuals are said to learn that they lack behavioral control over environmental events, which, in turn, undermines the motivation to make changes or attempt to alter situations”.

I wonder if a term like strategic helplessness could be used instead of weaponised incompetence. I love to get your feedback on the comments on this expression.

BACK TO YOU: What do you do when co-workers use weaponised incompetence to get you to do low-value/unpromotable tasks?

A gift from me to you

Are you interested in discussing how setting boundaries can help you achieve your professional and personal goals?

Then book a free strategy session with me.

“Am I Making Sense?” – Language and Power Dynamics in Meetings

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A photo of a woman surrounded by overlayed question marks looking doubtful.
Image by Sophie Janotta from Pixabay.

As I non-native English speaker, I was puzzled by women finishing their sentences with “Am I making sense?”. I finally understood the reason.

Although I’d been fluent in English for many years before, it was not until I moved to the UK that I lived in a place where English was the native language by default. (Yes, I’d lived in Canada for 5 years but it was in Quebec City, where most people have French as their mother tongue).

Back to my life in the UK, I remember being intrigued by how women – and only women – would finish their interventions in meetings with “Am I making sense?”.

Why? Because, it didn’t make sense to me that very confident women – at least they looked that way to me – would ask that question after sharing their opinion in a concise and assertive manner.

And I began to find explanations for it.

1.- For women confident in their ideas – Confident women are a hard pill to swallow in leadership. We expect women to be “collaborative” – e.g. take the notes, be the admin for the team, do the glue work – not be assertive or confident.

How do women tackle the bias against confident women?

“Playing” dumb. By downplaying what they are saying, they’re hoping to not look threatening and get others’ buy-in (or mansplaining).

2.- For women concerned that their ideas may be too much – These women have picked up that their organisations and peers like to congratulate themselves on doing exactly the same things over and over and they won’t support rocking the status quo. In the past, those women have proposed a visionary project, an innovative idea, or a transformational initiative and it has been rejected for being too much.

How do women tackle the bias against their ideas?

They downplay their ideas by presenting them as a “thought” with the hope they’ll stick this time around.

3.- For women concerned that their ideas may be too little – Society has indoctrinated women that perfection is expected from them, with no margin for error. Those women don’t believe they have permission to express their opinions because they judge their ideas as not strategic” enough, “visionary” enough, or “fully formed”.

How do women tackle their bias against their own ideas not being “good enough”?

They share their opinions with the caveat “Am I making sense?” in the hope that the feedback they receive it’s not too harsh.

My take

In the past, hearing a woman saying “Am I making sense?” used to upset me.

Now, I salute all those women that use “Am I making sense?” as a way to overcome the patriarchal constraints imposed on us.

I’d still prefer those women experiment with other ways to connect with their audience and instead use alternatives such as

  • “comments?”
  • “any questions?”
  • “I’m curious about what’s your feedback.”

BACK TO YOU: What’s your take?

P.S.

Are you tired of patriarchy, stereotypes, and cultural norms creating obstacles to achieving our goals?

Then book a free strategy session with me.

The luxury of overconfidence when you have privilege

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Chart showing the comparison between UK men's and women's confidence about beating several animals in a fight unarmed. The highest confidence is for beating a rat with 77% men vs 57% women, and the lowest is for a Gorilla, 2% men vs 1% women.
Chart from YouGov UK.  

(5 min read)

As a woman in tech, every day I’m reminded that my problem is a lack of confidence. I’m constantly showered with newsletters, offers of webinars and coaching, as well as articles telling me that confidence is a fix-all from the gender pay gap to solving the shortage of women in CXO roles.

All that in spite that there is no correlation between confidence and effective leadership! When I mention this fact, most people look puzzled. I don’t know why. It’s not like we have a “confid-ometer” that enables us to correlate our leaders’ confidence to the success of their initiatives.

What’s more, I’m adamant that our economic, political, and social problems are often rooted in overconfident leaders. If in doubt, only look at how the overconfidence of some political leaders has resulted in disastrous outcomes on the flight against the COVID-19 pandemic. I wish they could have been much less confident and more humble to follow the advice of others that actually know better.

Still, people are resistant. It’s so easy to attribute to self-doubt the lack of CEOs that are disabled, non-White, or self-identify as women…

Early this year, Caroline Perez Criado’s newsletter came to help me! She shared the results of a survey by YouGov on Which animals could Britons beat in a fight?

Guess what? The results show that 28% men vs 9% women think they could beat “unarmed” an eagle in a fight. Gets better, 12% of men vs 2% of women think they could beat a King Cobra, again, unarmed! By the way, in the same article there is also a reference to the US study and how compares with the UK. Priceless!

We can continue to assume that because some people think they can beat a cobra, they can actually beat it. Or, we can confront the myth that confidence is a predictor of effective leadership.

What should we care?

I’ve been coaching and mentoring for years university students, direct reports, peers, clients… And confidence is a topic that comes often. “If I were more confident… ” People talk about it as it was an unreachable superpower such as being invisible or capable to fly.

Confidence is simply about how we feel about a decision. If we feel good, we tell ourselves that we’re confident. When we feel bad or unsure, we lack confidence. So far, so good.

The problem is that we assume that this particular feeling is a good predictor of success. And it’s not. This delusion has even a name!

The Dunning-Kruger effect is “a cognitive bias whereby people with low ability, expertise, or experience regarding a certain type of a task or area of knowledge tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge. Some researchers also include in their definition the opposite effect for high performers: their tendency to underestimate their skills”.

A chart of confidence vs competence with the title “Dunning-Kruger effect”. The curve starts a zero confidence and competence. Then, it increases rapidly in confidence and very little in competence to drop very quickly in confidence as competence increases. Then, the curve continues to increase slowly in confidence and compentence until it reaches a plateau. The plateau is lower in confidence than the peak reached previously.
Confidence vs competence: The Dunning-Krugger effect (Patricia Gestoso).

Moreover, we reverence so much confidence that we have made it a key prerequisite to be considered for any meaningful progression in our careers. I cannot recall how many times I’ve heard hiring manager justify their choice of candidate because the person “looked” confident, even if the other candidate had a superior CV.

What if Instead of pushing people to do power poses to boost their confidence, we demanded our overconfident leaders to demonstrate with data and facts the bases of their confidence in their strategy?

What if hiring managers asked candidates to share the evidence supporting their level of confidence rather than assumed it correlates with their competence?

Let’s stop fixing women and underrepresented groups’ confidence. Our problem is not confidence but overconfidence.

Before I go

For reflection

In this 4-min article, Mary Fashik – a queer disabled woman of color – and Corie Walsh – a White disabled woman with wealth privilege – share the regular erasure, oppression, and disrespect they experience as disabled women. They also discuss how the pandemic was a missed opportunity for the world to learn some of the lessons the disabled community has long known like “collective care is the way forward”.

A boost of energy

On International Women’s Day, the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, issued a posthumous apology for the “historical injustice” of witch hunts. From 1563 to 1736, an estimated 4,000 people in Scotland were accused of witchcraft, of which about 80% were women. “These women were targeted because they were vulnerable, some of them owned land that others – usually men – wanted access to, or they were unmarried or widowed, or they looked or spoke or acted differently.”[reference] Two-thirds of those accused were executed.

For comparison, during the worldwide famous trials of Salem, 200 people were accused and 14 women and 5 men were hanged.

News from me

I’m writing a book and I need your help!

As some of you know, my DEI work was prompted by my dismay at realizing in 2015 that fantastic women that had started with me had either quit tech tired of fighting over and over the same battles or given unappealing jobs when they came back from maternity leave – I don’t have children myself.

Unfortunately, little has changed. Seven years later, still, more than 40% of women that start in tech leave the sector.

So, this year I decided to write a book about how women succeed in tech worldwide. There are great books written about this topic focused on US corporations. I also believe we can learn a lot by casting a wider net. My first step? Asking those women what has made them stay and what they need to thrive in the next 5 years.

[ASK] I’d be immensely grateful if you could complete and/or share with your network of women in tech this short survey about your/their experiences at work.

What do I mean by “Women in Tech”? Women working in any function (R&D, HR, services, finance, CXO) in the tech sector (software, hardware…) or in tech-related functions in other sectors (e.g. IT, cybersecurity…).

Whilst the survey is anonymous, you’ll have the option to get involved in the project before submitting the form.

Thanks for your support!

Inclusion is a practice, not a certificate!

13 Books to think differently about technology, business, and inclusion

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People in a bookstore reading books sat in either comfortable seats or a bean bag chair.
Image from Pixabay by LubosHouska.

In 2021 I read 38 books. Following from my CuriousMindsDiversePeople Challenge, I kept track of the diversity of authors and topics. For example, 25 of the authors self-identified as women, 14 were non-US authors, 4 discussed disability and 11 LBTQ+ topics.

Below are my personal highlights from 13 of them that made me think differently about data, artificial intelligence, design, sustainability, feminism, pleasure, and God. I’m listing them in the order I read them.

Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions by Gloria Steinem. If you are a feminist and somehow feel guilty that all the books on the topic depress you, I thoroughly recommend this book as audio, since Steinem herself narrates most of it. It’s a collage of articles written at different points in her life about walking the talk on feminism and women’s rights and the importance of challenging both the small and the big oppressions. All that is delivered with wit. A huge bonus!

The Responsible Business: Reimagining Sustainability and Success by Carol Sanford. In 2020, I learned about the concept of regenerative as an “upgrade” to sustainability. This book provides food for thought and examples about how to make businesses adopt practices that benefit their employees, users, communities, and the planet. However, I missed a more critical view of some of the study cases, especially for big tech companies, which is the area I’m more familiar with. For example, Facebook and Google are portrayed as the paradigm of regenerative businesses, without any mention of their questionable practices as employers and business models. Still, the book provided valuable insights for my talk Regenerative Business: Embedding ethics and inclusion in workplaces, products, and services at the Cambridge Agile Exchange last February (recording here).

Continue reading →

How are you losing business today by skipping diversity and inclusion in business operations and how to fix it

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Photo of a wooden staircase in a bamboo forest by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay.

(10 min read)

I’ve been beating the drum of the business value of diversity and inclusion (D&I) in tech since 2015. Many moons later, still every time I engage in this discussion with business leaders, they invariably default to either the diversity of their workforce or the McKinsey reports correlating the gender and ethnic makeup of their leadership teams to increased financial returns such as higher earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT).

In my experience, it’s hard to use correlation to convince the skeptics or to support D&I champions. On the flip side, through my professional and personal path, I’ve witnessed innumerable instances where D&I has played a crucial role in the success and failure of initiatives and organizations.

How did I come to witness all that evidence? I’ve been a unicorn all my life. I became an emigrant before I was a year old and I’ve had the opportunity to live in 6 countries and 3 continents. As a woman, my professional path is “atypical” by Anglo-Western standards. I studied engineering and computational chemistry, which are considered typically male occupations. Beyond academia, I’ve worked for chemical and tech companies. I don’t have children. I still remember talking to colleagues in December 2015 about the need to put in place a strategy to retain women in tech as half of the young women who go into tech drop out by the age of 35 [source]. To my surprise, often my puzzled interlocutors would ask me if “diversity and inclusion was an American thing”.

Fortunately, nowadays there is much more awareness about diversity and inclusion in business, including the tech sector. Also, there are some companies that are getting tangible value out of understanding the value of developing solutions for underserved populations. As I’ve written in the past, people with disabilities and their families constitute a market the size of China ($8 trillion/year). Closer to home, the UK’s 12 million people with disabilities have a spending power of £120 billion as per AbilityNet, a British charity focused on the digital inclusion of people with disabilities.  

But how to go beyond preaching to the converted? Moreover, how to engage with organizations that don’t have the budget for a Head of D&I?

What business leaders want to know about the value of D&I

Early June this year, I launched a survey asking business owners, managing directors, CXOs, and board members their top question about the business value of diversity and inclusion. In return for answering the survey, I offered respondents to email them my answer to their question.

I categorized the 50 answers I received into four buckets. Even in such a small sample, still we can trace a roadmap for how organizations approach D&I at workplaces

Continue reading →

Women’s battle for fair access to leadership positions in tech

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Brown woman in casual attire with a laptop in her lap typing software code.
Photo by Christina Morillo from Pexels.

I’m delighted to be featured in the last issue of The Mint Magazine on the digital economy. The piece, entitled Motherboard Matters, is my first contribution to an economics journal!

In this article (5-min read), I highlight how the pervasiveness of patriarchy, exceptionalism, and meritocracy in the technology sector is at the core of women’s battle for fair access to leadership positions in tech.

I also share how we need to overhaul tech so it moves from extracting to contributing to society and the planet.

Motherboard Matters

I’ve now been working for over 15 years as a head of services in the tech industry. Throughout my career, I’ve strived to support other professional women with the determination to see workplaces reach gender equity during my lifetime.

The pandemic has wrecked that hope in the tech sector even though it is thriving financially. The reason? Tech hasn’t seen the opportunities to challenge practices such as unpaid care work and the revered 40-hour workweek that keep women away from leadership positions. Instead, it has brushed off the problem with platitudes: flexible working… work from home… hybrid working…

This lack of questioning is the product of the pervasiveness of patriarchy, exceptionalism, and meritocracy in technology, which hinder the deep transformation required to upend the status quo. These characteristics are part of its DNA and have long stayed under the radar of most people, including myself.

When I started in software, I wasn’t particularly uncomfortable in a sector where you must work much harder to progress in your career if you are not simultaneously white, heterosexual, able, and male. I’ve been an immigrant all my life, so I was used to being “the other” and to have to prove myself over and over.

Then, in the early 2010s, Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote Why Women Still Can’t Have It All and Sheryl Sandberg published Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. In different ways, those powerful women sent the message that women didn’t have the same opportunities as men to get to the top and that imbalance had to be fixed.

Around that time, I was promoted. I quickly noticed that often I was the only female senior manager in projects and meetings. The smart and promising women that I had met years earlier had come back from maternity leave to unappealing part-time jobs, without access to the plumb assignments that lead to career progression.

The motherhood penalty revealed to me systemic patterns where before I’d seen only coincidences.

The tipping point was when I joined a group of professional women working in various industries and at all career levels. Our honest conversations about men stealing ideas, the harmful effects of unconscious bias, or the motherhood penalty revealed to me systemic patterns where before I’d seen only coincidences. That prompted me to create the first employee-led group focused on fostering gender equity at my company, which positive impact was recognised with the 2020 Women in Tech Changemakers UK award. I also spreadhead other initiatives to grow diversity and inclusion in other organisations. I also discovered that power asymmetry was not a bug but a feature embedded since the birth of tech.

In the 1930s, women were hired to solve mathematical problems that were considered at the time as repetitive work. Some of those calculations were as complex as estimating the number of rockets needed to make a plane airborne or determining how to get a human into space and back. When computers took off in the 1960s women became the programmers while men focused on the hardware which was regarded as the most challenging work. As programming gained status during the 1980s, men pushed women out of those jobs. That prompted a sharp increase in the salaries of software developers, institutionalising patriarchy and the gender pay gap.

Historically, tech has approached these issues by “fixing women.” For example, women in the sector are coached to develop stereotypical male leadership traits. In the past decade, tech leaders have promoted the abdication of responsibility for solving gender inequalities and charged women with mitigating the damages. For instance, female executives are expected to act as role models on top of their full-time jobs. This can go all the way from agreeing to be the company’s speaker at STEM events to sponsoring the female employee network.

This transfer of responsibility is also alive and well in start-up tech businesses. A venture capitalist shared with me his view that the key to increasing the funding received by women’s businesses was that they were mentored by successful female founders. I replied that those top performers were often overburdened by the demands of paying back to society and that men could also mentor women. Later that day, he asked me to mentor a woman with a promising business idea that he was trying to help. He introduced us via email mentioning my interest in supporting her and inviting us to connect. His “helping” was done.


In recent years, the most popular software development approach, agile, has become a staple of the business jargon. The origin of this methodology can be traced back to 2001 and 17 software developers unhappy about what they considered excessive planning and documentation practices. They came up with their own set of rules: The Agile Manifesto.

The rationale is that tech is special and its regulation is counterproductive and stifles innovation.

But agile is more than a project management approach. It buttresses tech’s deep cultural belief in exceptionalism, the idea that our sector is inherently different from, and even better than, all the others. This helps to explain how we allow tech companies to go fast and break things while we impose strict regulations on the food and drug industries. The rationale is that tech is special and its regulation is counterproductive and stifles innovation.

The debates about the ethical use of artificial intelligence (AI) are perfect examples of how this sector dodges the rules applied to other industries. For example, I recently met with other professionals to discuss future trends in support software. Everybody was very excited about the use of AI tools such as sentiment analysis to improve the user experience. Then, I brought up the proposal for regulating those applications released by the European Union a month earlier. The participants – who were unaware of the document – quickly asserted that the directive had nothing to do with support. In summary, norms are for others.

This framework conveniently disguises the dearth of opportunities for underrepresented groups as being the result of a lack of intelligence and skill.

And the most pernicious cultural tenet in tech is its self-proclaimed meritocracy. How do we heal a system that considers itself virtuous? The idea that tech is inherently fair is rooted in its connection to logic and mathematics which commonly translates as objectivity and reason. This framework conveniently disguises the dearth of opportunities for underrepresented groups as being the result of a lack of intelligence and skill.

Can we extricate patriarchy, exceptionalism, and meritocracy from tech? Yes, we can but it’ll need an overhaul of its vision, mission, and purpose. It’ll need humility.

What does that mean in practice?

First, it means moving away from methodologies that could foster power asymmetry between creators and users. Instead, we should adopt systems thinking and multi-stakeholder co-creation practices for the development of products, services, and workplaces.

Second, recognising that the financial success of our sector relies on innovations funded by governments and products purchased by customers. Hence, paying taxes that are commensurate with tech business profits is not philanthropy but a fair contribution to society.

Finally, abiding by the same rules and regulations imposed on any other sector with the potential of affecting billions of lives. Only then, will tech be able to deliver on its “Don’t be evil” promise.

Further reading

System map of the factors accounting for the low representation of women in leadership positions in tech companies.

Life under lockdown: Report on the impact of COVID-19 on professional women’s unpaid work

BACK TO YOU: What are your views on the topic? How does my story resonate with yours?

Motherboard matters
Picture of a computer motherboard that illustrates my article Motherboard Matters in The Mint Magazine.

The graduation: My first experiment with future narratives

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Green road sing with the text "Welcome to the future".
Image by mykedaigadget from Pixabay.

(9 min read)

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

Alan Kay

For the last 6 years, I’ve been very vocal about what’s wrong with products, services, and workplaces that exclude users and employees. I’ve designed visual tools, given talks, and created communities to highlight the problems and build a business case for diversity and inclusion. Whilst all those efforts have contributed to increasing awareness about the issues, change has been incremental at best. What’s more, the pandemic is already threatening to reverse any progress made in the last decades.

Exceptional times call for exceptional measures

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

R. Buckminster Fuller

What if instead I’d draw a picture of a better future? The occasion was the final assignment for a creative writing course sponsored by  Arts Council England: A 2,000-word story related to World War II.

Keep reading to discover my assignment, which is now part of the book “VE75 An Anthology of Short Stories” by Trafford Libraries.

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Unlocking change with ethical and inclusive design

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A white male hand holding an open rusty padlock. Photo by Patricia Gestoso©.

A white male hand holding an open rusty padlock. Photo by Patricia Gestoso©.

(9 min read)

I’m not Black on Monday, a woman on Tuesday, and left-handed on Wednesday.

Annie Jean-Baptiste, Head of Product Inclusion at Google

My journey into ethical and inclusive design was prompted by embarrassment, fear, and impatience.

Embarrassment: When in December 2018, six months after launching my website on diversity and inclusion in tech, an expert in disability asked me if it was accessible and pointed me to the post 10 ways to make your blog accessible for people with a visual impairment on the site Life of A Blind Girl . Reading the article was transformative. It made clear to me that, irrespective of my intention — promoting diversity and inclusion — my impact was the opposite: Continue reading →

5 Strategies to make Unconscious Bias Training Effective

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A man throws a bag with the sign "unconscious bias training" in a trashcan with the label "Nice to Have".

Unconscious bias training being thrown in the trashcan of the “nice to have”.
Figure adapted by Patricia Gestoso from this original image by OpenIcons from Pixabay.

“I’ve studied cognitive biases my whole life and I’m no better at avoiding them”

Daniel Kahneman, 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics Sciences

Four years ago, my interest in human behavior — crucial for my work as head of customer service — led me to Daniel Kahneman’s book “Thinking, fast and slow”. The book details how biases and rules of thumb play a crucial role in our decisions in the back of our minds. Serendipitously, around the same time, I started some initiatives to further diversity and inclusion at my workplace and I stumbled on a wealth of studies naming unconscious biases as one of the major barriers women encounter to thrive at work.

The more I learned, the more I realized — in hindsight — how unconscious biases had plagued past decisions. I read books and articles, talked to experts, and watched Continue reading →

UK Gender Pay Gap Awareness: How to broaden the conversation at the workplace

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3DSGenderPayGap_Coventry

Chairing an employee awareness session about the UK Gender Pay Gap in Tech at the Dassault Systèmes office in Coventry.

Recently, I was invited to chair a “Breakfast & Learn” session at our Dassault Systèmes office in Coventry (UK). The topic: UK Gender Pay Gap. This article is a reflection on that great learning and interactive experience.

What is “Breakfast & Learn”? One-hour monthly awareness sessions organized by our Great Place to Work (GPTW) ambassadors around a specific theme. Ideally, the presenters should keep the topic light and open, avoid the profusion of slides, encourage the audience participation, and limit the use of jargon. A healthy breakfast is provided along.

Why me? I founded the EuroNorth Dassault Systèmes Lean In circles in 2016 to advance diversity and inclusion initiatives at a regional level, I’m a member of the EuroNorth Diversity and Inclusion Council, and I’ve had the pleasure to host virtual employee meetings with our UK HR team to discuss the findings of our gender pay gap reports for 2016/2017 and for 2017/2018.

Why this topic? I learned that the recent publication of the Dassault Systèmes Gender Pay Gap report had been a hot topic for discussion in this office. There were different views regarding the scope, key indicators, and impact of the UK gender pay gap as well as the usefulness of reporting the data. Continue reading →

Two Alpinists in Mount Tech. Take #1: Meritocracy

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A woman and a man climb a mountain with the inscription “Mount Tech”. They have reached the same altitude, which is marked by a dotted line pointing to a vertical ruler labeled as “meritometer”. The woman has attached four weights of four different colors. The man has climbed the mountain using four pitons colored in the exact four colors of the woman’s weights. A legend indicates the colors represent bias, society expectations, stereotypes, and salary. At the top, a man thinks “That’s what true meritocracy looks like”.

From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Piton  \ ˈpē-ˌtän \ : a spike, wedge, or peg that is driven into a rock or ice surface as a support (as for a mountain climber).

Weight \ ˈwāt \ : a heavy object to hold or press something down or to counterbalance.

Meritocracy \ mer-ə-ˈtä-krə-sē \ : A system in which the talented are chosen and moved ahead on the basis of their achievement.

How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings

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HowToBeSuccessfull_SarahCooper

Last weekend I finished Sarah Cooper‘s third book “How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings“, out on October 30th. Given that I thoroughly enjoyed the previous one, “100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings“, and my interest in female leadership, purchasing her new book was a no-brainer. Sarah is a writer, comedian, Continue reading →

Women, Tech & Systems Maps: My alternative to the magic bullet

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Woman of Asian ethnicity with a worldmap in the background. The countries in the worldmap are creeated using 0 and 1.

Women, Tech & Power (Figure adapted by Patricia Gestoso from Pixabay images).

As a woman joining the university in the late ’80s to pursue an engineering degree, I took for granted that gender parity in the workplace was around the corner. The few female professors in our science and engineering faculties reassured us that we were on a good track. They shared how as students they were only 2-3 women per chemical engineering cohort, whilst we could be counted by tens! The message was clear: “”Don’t complain and work hard. Women’s presence is scaling exponentially”.

It’s 2018 and the World Economic Forum reports that the workplace gender gap will not be closed for 217 years. This disappointing realization has sprung a flurry of expert Continue reading →