MELISSA CODES
Young black woman advancing her coding skills
For anyone working in tech, closing its gender and
racial gap can feel like an uphill battle on stilts. Women+ (cis and
trans) and gender non-conforming folks face challenges that their white
cis male peers simply don’t. If you’re a woman+ developer of colour,
breaking into and thriving in tech gets even trickier. Coding as a black
woman often involves having to meander the emotional hurdles that come
with being singled out for your ethnicity through senseless comments
(micro-aggressions) and putting twice the effort in to offset negative
conceptions of people who look like you.