I spent today at the Women in Tech conference since I got a free ticket.

I liked some parts of it, but on the whole I found it a bit too fluffy and not techy enough. Some talks were inspirational – women entrepreneurs talking about their companies and how they use technology to make the world better. (Some of these almost veered into advertising.) Some were sorta-kinda informational but too vague to actually be useful – there was a session about something something AI and humans, and two days later I can’t remember a single point of what was said there. There were several panel debates, mostly too short to reach any kind of interesting results.

I can think of one potential audience that would benefit from this event: female technology students on their way out into the working world, who need inspiring examples to follow.

Women In Tech is not the only network aiming to encourage more women to study technology and work in the IT industry. Various such networks and organizations occasionally invite me to join. But I never do.

Fundamentally it’s because I don’t identify as a “female developer” or a “woman in tech”. It is not how I think of myself. I am a developer, among other developers. I very, very rarely notice the fact that I am one of only three female developers in our fifty-person Stockholm office, and all the others are men.

I’ve never felt or been told that I as a woman “should not” be interested in STEM subjects, “should not” work in technology. Never felt that I am less welcome, less listened to, less respected than men in the same business.

But I guess I’ve been lucky. Both my parents are scientists and it’s always been almost self-evident that I would follow in that direction. (I wonder how they would have reacted if I had chosen to study something fluffy and less employable like, say, sociology, or art history. Or not gone down the academic path at all and become a hairdresser.) I’ve always been encouraged at school, and I’ve always worked at incredibly meritocratic firms.