I have always defined myself as a girl geek, but also a person who enjoys fashion, make up, shoes, bags and everything else which somehow by definition don’t really fit into the tech world which is dominated by suits and ties.

Then Marissa Mayer crossed my path. (virtually, not physically) Woah!
It was such an inspiration to see other women who had managed to find the balance between being female and working in the tech-industry. Not only working, but rocking it.

Here was a woman who could code, she wrote the code that enabled 18,000 Google employees to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on its opening night, but who at the same time got featured in Vogue for her sense of fashion.

I would like to use this space to thank her for showing other girls in the industry that it is possible to code and wear dresses and 5 inch heels without having to feel inferior. Like my fellow TechWoman Susan Scrupski writes in her Ada Lovelace post, to thank her for what she has done to encourage me, and hopefully others too, to express our femininity.

You can follow her on twitter too.

So who are we?
Cathy Brooks
Laura Fitton
Maggie Fox
Rachel Happe
Jennifer Leggio
Adele McAlear
Francine McKenna
Anne Kathrine Petterøe
Marilyn Pratt
Susan Scrupski

We are a group of women from all walks of business, and we are here to present our unique views on how technology is shifting our world. You can read our individual bios on the ‘About’ page.

I have always defined myself as being technical, ever since my childhood where I would play with Lego Technic (a Lego line of robotic products) and found building things without the manual a fun challenge. At the same time I had my Barbie dolls and My Little Ponies, leaving me feeling I had a foot in each camp.

At the same time I grew up in Norway, a country where there has been much focus on giving women the same opportunities as men and where in 2006 there was even a law passed stating that all boards of publicly owned companies must consist of at least 40% women. Growing up I never realized that being technical, a woman or a leader was something I couldn’t do.

I spent the first half of my twenties discovering everything which wasn’t technical, before I eventually ended up turning my love for technology into a profession. In the beginning I felt a bit alienated because I hardly ever met any women and when I did I often felt it wasn’t accepted for the women to simply be women, they had to be more male than the men. Combining a love for technology and at the same time being a woman was therefore something which interested me from day one. Why should there be a divide between the two?

In the resent years I have seen this change slowly, there is a higher acceptance for women to bring their female qualities into a world driven by technology. Some companies, like Xerox, have impressed me by having women on C-level who have demanded having careers on their own terms, successfully so. The CTO, Sophie Vandebroek, for instance.

This blog is for me all about a group of women sharing their experiences and views on being, well, technically women.