That would make me uncomfortable. Not people who like art and thus do art&craft together, that is cool. But people who tie that to femininity for no good reason.

The comments about more formal workspaces are interesting. Adult-oriented workspaces may be more bland and superficially less creative, but a space where you can be left alone to get on with your work and where "culture" isn't being forced on employees seems like it could be more likely to give everyone freedom to simply be professional.

Can you give us a sample interaction that concretizes this, if it doesn't compromise the anonymity of you, this individual, or your company? I think some men can fall prey to perpetrating this even subconsciously, and it could be very useful for a lot of people, myself included, to see an example.

All of that might be attributed to his own self-consciousness if it weren't for the fact that he was deferential to male engineers in code review, and during the height of the tension with me, during scrum he started openly criticizing/mocking a female contractor's work (on an entirely unrelated project that he knew very little about).

This is a pretty egregious example, but I could imagine that a much subtler version happens more often (possibly it's happened to me but it seems more pragmatic to assume it's not related to sexism if at all possible).

In my home country I'm part of the racial majority. In my adopted country, I'm a racial minority and I've worked in offices both places. I've experienced bullying in my home country and racism in my adopted country and it really doesn't feel any different to me. If someone is targeting you for abuse, it doesn't really matter what the reason is. I wish both were recognised as being inappropriate in the workplace.

Source: I worked at a ~75 person consulting company; we had two female recruiters who tried really hard to get more female engineers. I think we had like 4.

Could you elaborate a little bit more please, beyond the cringey paper-scissor activities?

I do not have a tech job, but I have taken classes on things like social psychology. Attempts to address sexism, racism, etc often suffers from a problem of tokenism. This is not just the problem described in Dedeh Howard's "Black Mirror" of "We already have one black model on staff, so there is no room for you" but also just looking good superficial BS that amounts to metaphorically including pink decor, but not actually promoting women or taking them seriously.

At some point, I saw an article on HN by a woman who wrote that, no, she will not show up at your thing and be the woman talking about women in tech. It isn't her area of expertise. If you want her there to talk about the actual tech she actually knows something about, she is happy to sign up for that. But, no, she won't give speeches on women in tech. This is a widespread form of tokenism where women in tech only get invited to talk about the issues women in tech face for being women in tech while never being invited to actually talk about tech per se. It is hugely soul sucking and suffers from the problem of being belittling and demeaning in a way that makes it hard to rebut or complain about.

- Ignored (only for the same idea to be suggested by another, receiving whoop-whoop, pat on the back)

- Disdained (do your job yeah but you're not supposed to do it so well it makes your colleagues inferior)

- Tokenistic photo add-on

I ain't taking that crap anymore so I'm flying solo now.

To be fair, I was usually saying this about some issue other than being a woman with a job. But I did decide I had no future there and could blithely move on after a senior programmer in the department I wanted a job in asked me for a date. He was the only guy at the entire company in five years of working there who even knew what GIS was without me explaining it and he did not go "OMG. You have a Certificate in GIS? My department could use your skillz!" Or even "Gee, I wonder if she is networking with me and hoping to further her career." Nope, he went straight to "OMG It's a girl and she is interested in some of the same things as me. I wonder if I can get a date!"

Your description has me curious and sympathetic. What is a "minority within a minority within a minority" in your case?

ignore the hype, tune into the culture.

Regarding diversity events, I slightly disagree with you. Ironically I became an advocate only after my engineering education, when I suddenly experienced 'different' treatment. Welcome to the real world, they say, but it affected me quite badly. I suddenly found those women support groups comforting. None of the meetups I went was ever "Down with the opposite sex!" although yes, I find myself wishing that there's more rad startups than just fashion and makeup. But there is something refreshing about just listening to leaders, entrepreneurs and hopefuls, all driven and comfortable with their identities, including being female. I mean, if they can do it, I can do it too, right??

As a father, it bothers me to see those considerations described as "women-friendly." Why is it assumed that my wife is the one who has to leave early to pick our daughter up from school? The most "woman friendly" policy would also involve changing the expectations on men to allow women's partners to take on more of the care giving role (for example). I strongly agree with seaknoll in characterizing them as "human friendly" policies.

If HR doesn't have to worry that I'm a bigger liability because of my gender (after all, the man sitting next to me also gets flex time and leeway to pick up his kids) that's a bonus for me.

The worst case is when there are no opportunities, or when they're so lopsided (14 weeks paid parental leave for women, 2 weeks for men) that you become a liability.

(I was going to quote seaknoll's comment until I realised that you already mentioned it!)

While I agree with your sentiment (as a father with ~18 month parental leave behind me) It would be nice to know if there are common policies that are problematic in your view.