Another Angry Woman At Work

**I was told not to write this. I am writing this from the position of a woman living and working in Eastern Europe in IT. This field might not be strictly male anymore, but the higher you go, the fewer women you encounter.

And for the love of God, I hope it is different in Western countries.

When I started this Substack, I was running my ideas through an AI. I wanted to write from a female perspective about Product Management and the new era we find ourselves in.

I was advised to leave the “feminist” note out of it, in order not to look unprofessional, emotional, biased, or simply to avoid losing “half” of my audience.

Very male advice to give.

I followed rules in my own writing that I had never even set for myself: stay apolitical, and preferably genderless.

But I am angry now.

And this article is fully and unapologetically coming from emotions that have been bottled up for over a decade, while I dealt with things no one should have to deal with in the 21st century because of their gender, race, or even whether they like their coffee with milk or not.

Everything that should matter is whether you are a great worker, respectful but honest, and a team player.

**The harmless years. I have worked in tech for 14 years, starting during my studies. Although I don’t have an engineering degree, I had enough enthusiasm, energy, and common sense to find my place as a Product Manager in this promising world of tech start-ups.

At the beginning, I felt I was under greater scrutiny than my male colleagues. But I attributed it to the lack of communication skills that sometimes comes with people in this industry, combined with their above-average intelligence.

In my naivety, I did not realise that the only reason I wasn’t witnessing any direct attacks was because I was still harmless in my junior position.

Not exactly a threat.

As the years went by, I became more confident, more experienced and harder to ignore.

And the problems started.

I laughed at the remarks at first. I was full of youthful energy and thought it was just one of those things I must overcome to make the world a better place.

It even made me feel special at times.

Oh, people — not exclusively men — are constantly trying to undermine me, and yet no one can get rid of me because I am actually Good At What I Do.

But I am going to be 36 in September.

And I am done with having to fight it, listen to it, or deal with it.

**Supermales & other jokes. My first proper PM job. My very first product, built from scratch and successfully launched.

I was given the opportunity to be a keynote speaker at a conference.

My boss, instead of helping me with my speech, accused me of getting the opportunity because I was a woman.

It was meant to be him.

I worked on my speech. My ideas.

The speech coach told me I smiled too much and that it made me look unprofessional.

The HR partner — who, despite being a woman herself, screwed over any other woman who didn’t play along with all the games she came up with — went to personally watch the keynote because she had heard that “I did not deserve it”.

I decided to carry on exactly as I felt I should.

I totally killed it.

And smiled.

This is just my personality, though.

And handed in my notice.

Next job.

The first words I heard from my CEO were:

“Good, another woman. At least we get our ratio up.”

One of the last things he said to me was while I was waiting at the table for a very important board member. He told me I could stay there because we didn’t just have to “talk business”.

I was the one running the flagship product at the time.

I was fired during the first restructuring, replaced by a couple of men who had no idea what the product was, but did love the politics of a medium-sized corporate.

The product was shut down afterwards, with both of them finding different positions in the same company. For a lot of money.

I think I finally understood what was happening. You can be tolerated as long as you are harmless. The real resistance starts when you become confident, influential, successful, and difficult to dismiss.

Another job.

My very own product, where I painstakingly fought to educate everyone and bring Product Management principles into a company with a track record of projects that desperately needed to pivot.

This was, by far, the most toxic patriarchy I had encountered: an atmosphere of fear, vulgarity, and the cult of “alphas”.

I wanted to stay away from problems for as long as possible.

I hid myself.

I hid my personality.

I hid everything.

No matter how much people attacked me, no matter how unreasonable they were, I did not let any emotions show.

But I did not buckle either.

I ran into problems within the first three months. I was called problematic to work with and, I quote, “not being able to work with supermales” like them.

Supermales.

These supermales, unfortunately, mostly had to sit there quietly, because I was single-handedly running the most promising product that could save the company in the long run.

However, after the first round of layoffs, I was told I was being considered because of my “problematic” behaviour.

But the product clearly had to be shipped.

As strange as it sounds, the people in my teams — including those reporting to me — have always appreciated me, my skills, and the time I take to help everyone. And they do appreciate me smiling.

So somewhere along the way, I started wondering:

Why is it that the people I work for seem to have such a problem with me, while the people I work with don’t?

**The Truth You Want And somehow, it feels like AI has made everything worse.

There seem to be fewer and fewer deep discussions that can help challenge the biases between people, move boundaries, or break the ice. The echo chamber is real — everyone gets the truth they want.

I don’t know if it is also the power it gives to bruised egos. The supermales. The superfemales. The feeling of godliness that seems to come with having a machine validate whatever you already believe.

But while the technology leaps forward, the shift in humanity seems to be going in the opposite direction.

And that is what makes me angry.

Because this is only a part of the story.

The story that has been censored, dismissed, laughed off, or taken lightly for far too long.

And I know I am not the only one.

I don’t want anyone’s pity.

I just want to say this:

• Whoever you are, look around.
• And when you see unfairness of any kind, stand up against it.
• You might think it is not your problem.
• You might think it is just a joke.
• You might think someone else will say something.
• But you can make a significant difference.
• With love,
• Zuzana