[mickronome]

I'm a senior developer 20+ years of experience, but due to whatever reason most people tend to assume I'm between 25 and 30, which is more than a decade off.

My experience is that the kind of extrovert personalities we more often see in management or sales tend to undervalue both competency and experience unless I either prove myself spectacularly, or use a much more assertive, and to my sensibilities almost aggressive, style of communication.

Only rarely does this kind of problem occur with more introvert and/or majorly creative personalities commonly found on the tech side.

My belief is that while there obviously are straight up gender discrimination of a more structural nature, there also exist multiple trait dependent discrimination/biases which affects anyone regardless of gender, but sometimes to different extent.

A mild mannered 6' giant will still be listened to, a similarly mild mannered rail thin 120 pound brute will be ignored to some extent, I can only imagine that a similarly mild mannered petite woman will face quite brutal ignorance.

[TheOtherHobbes]

IMO this is very much more of a problem than "sexism". The reality is that business and politics are full of noisy self-regarding idiots, a fair proportion of whom are spectacularly incompetent.

Feminism seems to assume that there's a homogenous social and political group called "men" which is made up of people like this, and which automatically gives males free entry, with corresponding privileges.

Conversely being female means you are excluded from this group.

Both positions are nonsense.

The problem is behaviour, not gender. While it's - arguably, but probably - true that a disproportionate number of these idiots are male, it's absolutely not true that all males are like this.

It's also not true that no women are like this.

Again - the problem is behaviour. Not gender.

So when one of these annoying people talks over a woman in a meeting, women assume it's because of sexism. When in fact it's because of a political and cultural phenomenon that treats quieter and more thoughtful men in exactly the same ways.

Even though this phenomenon is absolutely endemic in business and politics, it doesn't even have a name.