I’ve read that to comfortably be yourself in a group of people, you have to be able to identify with and recognize yourself in at least 30% of that group. When I started studying electric engineering, I was the only woman among more than 70 men. As I got into IT after that the odds weren't quite as bad, but women didn't make up 30% of the workforce or my teams. We still don't in most cases.

In 1976, my mom was a programmer at a large global IT consultancy firm. She was interviewed for their employee magazine as they started a program to get more women into their organization. At that point in time, 10% of their workforce were women. Now, 47 years later, we've managed to increase the share of women in IT globally to about 25%.

At that rate, making it to 30% will take us at least another 15 years. We can do better than that. And we should do better than that. When I started working in IT, I was often referred to as “one of the guys.” I was proud of that.

It felt like I earned the respect of my colleagues and like I fit in. This is not just my story. Many women in leadership roles today that I have the pleasure of talking to share that same experience. It's also not just a story about something that happened in former times. When I talk to young women in IT today, they also share the same experience.

The biggest difference between then and now is that I didn't realize that I was pretending to be "one of the guys" until about 10 years after the fact.

Thanks to the focus on diversity and inclusion and because of how smart they are, young women today are much more aware of the dynamics at play. They understand that pretending to be one of the guys isn't necessarily what makes them feel good even as they are doing it.

We aren't going to get to 30% women in IT, and especially not in hardcore tech roles like infrastructure and back-end development, anytime soon. That means that we need to support young women to find their voice while working in teams among a lot of men.

So, what can we do? First of all, we can offer them a safe space where they can talk openly about their feelings and concerns. If you are part of team where young women are in the minority, you can make sure that you encourage them to share their ideas and opinions and that you take those ideas and opinions seriously when they do. You can amplify their perspective while making sure you give them credit. You can hold space for them.

This isn't just the charitable thing to do. Because young women are trying to behave in the same way as the men they are working with, we might be losing out on their unique insights and ideas. The power of a diverse team is being able to incorporate different backgrounds and experiences into the work that you're doing and for that we need everyone on the team to be able to be their unique selves.

If we can do that, we will all win.