I read a question on r/WomenInTech and I don't know what the answer is. She's European and I'm not and I haven't spent a lot of time working a regular job.
But I would probably try to prove my technical expertise outside of meetings rather than be confrontational about it in meetings. It's a slower way to handle it but being too confrontational can backfire.
You need to win them over, not "win the war."
In my twenties, confused by how my 1950s style marriage failed to live up to my modern two career couple expectations, I read a lot of feminist books checked out from the library.
TLDR: American women have taken the very American political position of "Don't tread on me!"
They are generally confrontational and hostile and more or less take the position of "I can do the same job as you just as well as you if get the hell out of my way, asshole!" Last i checked stats, for some miniscule percentage of American women, they make roughly as much as men with similar education and work experience.
That is as long as they are single and childless.
Back when i was reading this research thirty years ago, the minute they have a baby or a man in their life, they made 2/3 what men made. The same figure the Bible cites from 2000 years ago.
When I checked stats more recently, it seemed a little better but not a whole lot better.
In contrast, European women have asked for help carrying the burden of bearing and rearing children and they have generally fared better than American women in closing the wage gap, among other things.
The US is the only developed country without maternity leave. European women generally find it easier to have both a career and offspring. Articles I've seen suggest American parents are some of the most stressed out people on the planet, except maybe folks living in literal war zones.
European women have lower divorce rates, higher salaries and more help raising the kids from extended family. It's more common for a relative to be providing childcare, for example, which tends to overall be a more positive experience for everyone involved.
I think she would be unwise to take the advice to be bitchy and confrontational that some women gave her. It strikes me as "American women trying to export their failed paradigms to other countries."
Do keep in mind I'm American, so not really qualified to advise her EITHER. But I at least won't advocate that she help me write yet another chapter in my future best seller How To Win Enemies and Alienate People which I began researching online while going through 22 months of withdrawal from multiple prescription medications and sometimes was awake for up to 39 hours straight.
I'm not really writing a book. I've just been joking about it for decades.
I'm far from perfect. I've certainly made an ass of myself at times but I generally don't agree with the confrontational, openly hostile, angry at men and blaming them approach that seems so common.
The above question (and some of the answers to it) makes me think of the fact that I briefly followed Naomi Wu on Twitter and quickly unfollowed her. It was all drama, all the time and she actively wallowed in the mud. It was all she wanted to talk about.
I later learned she's been dragging me, probably for years.
No, my opinions will likely never be popular. Lots of women are angry and appear to be happy to look to people like Naomi Wu as role models.
And it shows in online spaces where women are happy to drag men and act like men are just sexist pigs and that's the ENTIRE reason women aren't making the progress they think they "deserve."
Naomi Wu dresses like a whore and insists other people are the ones with the problem when they react "badly" to her intentionally provocative, "sex sells" choice of attire.
I recognized the fact that in the US, women have historically been given two options and they both boil down to making it on sex appeal, something men aren't asked to do.
We can either be whores or "marry well." We don't have a lot of female role models outside of actresses and singers and models who dress in a fashion that, no, absolutely does NOT translate to bring a good role model for how to "dress for success" for most ordinary women with ordinary jobs OR we have, say, The First Lady, which is an UNPAID job you can get if your man gets elected president.
And so Naomi Wu chose to dress like the sexy female "assistants" that help promote projects traditionally while wanting to be taken seriously as the person in charge of the project.
And I think you can't really get there from here.
So I've wondered how women dress and comport themselves in cultures where women have historically had real power and I've wondered how you translate male professional stuff into some kind of feminine option.
Because if you are a woman who wants to join The Old Boy's Club where only hookers and wives have ever gone in as playthings for the men and not members of the club, you find there's no acceptable answer for how to dress or behave for a woman who is a member because that's just not a thing.
And I just don't happen to think it works to show up at the door dressed like a harlots, knock and ask to become a respected member. I think it's unsurprising when they then treat you like a boy toy and not a candidate looking to pass whatever unstated tests are involved in joining.
I saw an article once where there was some snippet about some chick excitedly saying to Alanis Morissette "We're TAKING OVER!" And Alanis kind of rolled her eyes and said "We're JOINING."
So maybe that helps explain Alanis and her unusually big career: She didn't go in pissing on the men and thinking she was better than them.
There's currently no place for women in the halls of power, no role for us as anything but waitresses, wives and whores who serve the men found in the halls of power.
And I just don't think it's effective to think of those already in power as The Enemy that you need to attack nor do I think it's effective to insist that women be "respected" while behaving and dressing in an unrespectable fashion.
I think we need to invent new forms because there is currently no "dress code" for girls in The Old Boy's Club that doesn't signal "I'm merely fucking one of the guys here" either as his wife or his plaything.
Whether you're a "respectable woman" or not, you're merely a boy toy to these men. And all the current standard answers for how women should dress or behave signal to men "I'm just here to entertain you" or "I'm here hoping to marry well."
I don't have a conclusion. I've been working on these ideas for decades and it's still a work in progress with no good answers.
And damn little audience.