[Gayle]

As a (female) software engineer at Google, I once staffed a booth at CES. CES doesn't, to my knowledge, have many booth babes, and there certainly weren't any at the Google booth. Despite this, I had a number of people DIRECTLY ask if I was a booth babe. And who knows how many more people just assumed I was and avoided talking to me entirely...

It wasn't a big deal. I mean, I'd seen this my whole life. And that's just the thing. It's every job, every conference, every meetup, every event, and every single conversation. It's constantly having to prove that you're technical.

And even once you've offered up a bunch of credentials, you still aren't perceived as being as technical as a man with the same credentials.

It's exhausting. And I'm so, so tired of it.

Changing how people think is hard; changing company policy is much easier. Ending "booth babes" is one of many steps to ending sexism, but every step counts.