Hi, I got my CS degree from a university in Australia back in the early 90s. It was hard to find a job after I graduated, lots of companies prefer guys to work for them. So I had to start from a very bottom position, data entry. After a year, I managed to find a position as a junior programmer. I had the lowest salary in the team. I liked technical challenges, but hardly got any because all the interesting projects went to the male (junior mostly) programmers. Younger male programmers were more ambitious, in terms of getting somewhere. So they didn't stay in the company for long. One day, we received a job for a big government project (multi millions dollars) and there was only me, the manager and the project manager left. So I was sent to do the project with no prior experience or knowledge for this particular software. Long story short, I managed to complete the project, by myself within the time frame. I built the hardware (cards, screws, motherboard etc) by myself, installed, configured and programmed the whole thing. During the project, I was never invited to a technical meeting. I believed I was the first female in Australia to build this particular system.

Then I moved to another job, with higher salary. It was hell. The bullying was obvious, even in front of the customer. It was very stressful time for me. Then I got pregnant. After 3 months, I notified my manager that I was pregnant. I was made redundant few weeks later.

The whole experiences were very stressful for me. It was a brutal environment. IT industry is not kind to female staff. I did not enjoy sitting and coding for hours/days/weeks. I enjoyed building the hardware, writing code to make it work etc. The commitment to long hours also discouraging. I know a few female around my age that have CS degree and were doing IT stuff but gave it up because the environment were too toxic. Most of them gave it up after having kids or switch to other non technical job. Having lots of overseas workers coming to do the job also bringing in a different set of culture into the tech world. They provide cheap labour, but it does not mean they solve the problem of gender diversity in the long run. In fact they might contribute to the current problem. What I can see, employee would hire foreign workers (graduated in foreign countries) first instead of giving Australian female graduates the position. my2c.