Rooms shape power: How culture signals exclude women in tech

I recently stood in an art gallery in Chania, Crete, looking at a set of scales. On one side was a bird. On the other, an egg. The scales were balanced, and yet, the bird is not the egg. The egg is not the bird. But both are necessary.

"Balance the scales" isn't about proving one is better. It's about recognising interdependence. The Yin is not the Yang. The Man is not the Woman. The question "which is superior?" is no longer intellectually serious.

The more honest question is: who makes the sandwiches?

It sounds flippant, but it isn't. Because until the invisible labour of home is balanced, the visible leadership of work will never be.

Balancing the scales in marketing and technology

In marketing and tech, we talk about AI bias, algorithmic fairness, venture funding gaps. All real issues. But underneath it sits something far more basic: time. Cognitive bandwidth. Freedom from default domestic responsibility.

You can write policy all day long. But if one parent is still the default for school lunches, sick days, permission slips and emotional logistics, the scales are already tipped. Technology doesn't fix imbalance. It amplifies whatever already exists.

Design the systems that are sustainable 

"Balance the scales" to me means designing systems, at home and at work, where neither side collapses under assumed obligation.

The bird needs the egg. The egg needs the bird. The scales only work when both are visible.

I think women should be celebrated daily. Champagne, diamonds, roses, lay it on!

But International Women's Day is no longer a celebration of women per se… it's political. A cultural pressure test.

Marketing and tech shape what we see as "normal." They define who gets funded, who gets platformed, who gets invited.

What does playing poker have to do with women in tech?

I recently saw a prominent tech leader invite startup founders to network over poker.

And I thought… "fascinating". Actually, I thought WTF, but that may not fly.

Private poker nights? Go for it. But positioning that as a "community" invitation tells you exactly who the community is imagined to be. If you're serious about building ecosystems, you have to be more thoughtful than that.

Because rooms shape power. Power shapes funding. Funding shapes the future.

International Women's Day matters in our sector because subtle signals compound. Who feels welcome? Who feels peripheral? Who feels like they need to adapt to belong?

The scales don't tip through one dramatic policy failure. They tip through a thousand small signals that say "this space wasn't designed with you in mind."

Marketing and tech leaders don't get to pretend they are neutral. We architect culture.

IWD is a reminder to look at the rooms we create and ask: who did we not unconsciously design this for? The biggest challenge here isn't talent. It's load.

Women are not underrepresented because they are less capable. They are underrepresented because the total system load is uneven. And that load starts at home.

Someone has to make the children's sandwiches. Someone has to leave early for school pickup. Someone has to carry the mental inventory of who needs new shoes. As long as that remains coded as "women's work," workplace equality will plateau regardless of policy.

We can debate venture funding percentages and AI governance – and we absolutely should. But until domestic labour is culturally redistributed, leadership pipelines will continue to leak.

Real change is creating networking formats that don't default to masculine-coded rituals and teaching our sons to share the load, and make killer sandwiches.

The bird is not the egg

But if one side carries all the weight, the scale tips. And once it tips far enough, it doesn't matter how many policy documents you publish as the imbalance is systemic.

That's why International Women's Day still matters. Not because women need a day, but because the scales are still not level – and, pretending they are is intellectually lazy.