I am incredibly lucky. I have never faced any adversity as a consequence of my gender when doing the things I want to do. At least, nothing that I can put down to being a woman. In fact, on occasions it has felt the other way around, like I’ve experienced positive discrimination, which although this is not an amazing feeling, is soooo much better than the alternative. This is why I have no ‘nevertheless’ in my title, because truly nothing has stopped me coding, other than my desire to do so. I only wish all people could have this experience.

Today I was at an awards ceremony for Women in Tech and Data, and it was wonderful to see an equal mix of men and women celebrating achievements of women in this space. The message there was that although a lot of great progress has been made to increase diversity in our tech world, there is still a great deal of work to do. And it benefits us all, from the workplace environment to the products we create.

So here’s to progress: life is hard enough, let’s enable all people to be their best, because that kind of support feels great, doesn’t it?

Thanks for reading :)