Portraits and interviews by John Davidson

Encouraged by the rising tide of women making their voices heard on the subject of gender bias in the tech and corporate world, I embarked on a portrait project that sought to highlight some of the women with a stake in the issue, and provide a platform for them to share their experiences and express their views.

My goal is to put faces to some of these women, to compile a portrait of women at all career levels, to elevate their voices and contribute to the dialogue.

A word about the project’s title:

The first suggestion of the project came via a book on my wife’s bookshelf  – Women Who Read Are Dangerous, by Stefan Bollmann. Bollman's work catalogues an array of paintings from throughout the centuries, each of which has as its subject focus a woman reading a book – the very act of which has, at various points in history, been considered ‘subversive.’

Are women who tech dangerous? To those in Silicon Valley, and elsewhere, those who seek to perpetrate the hegemony that unquestionably exists in the upper echelons of tech at present, perhaps.  One woman I asked referred to it as being, for her, about ‘the notion that I’m not supposed to be here because I’m a woman – but I am [here]…we are [here], and we’re not leaving.’ Still another woman described the notion that women in tech are dangerous as being, ‘in this context, almost patronizing.’ Clearly there are a range of views and experiences to be expressed.