Although women make up almost half of the U.S. workforce, they hold just under 11% of the leadership positions in the tech industry.
Petra Jenner is part of that small (albeit growing) number of women leading in the field.
Looking back at a career that spans over 25 years, Jenner, who is general manager EMEA at the software company Splunk, says she has always been one of the first women in the room—and that “was completely irritating for the men”.
Being a “first” female leader at a firm often meant that, for the men in her team, it was also their first time being managed by a woman.
She recalls that for some the notion of women taking up space in leadership was jarring enough to speak up, Jenner reveals to Fortune.
When she joined the software company Pivotal as general manager, one of the managers reporting to her commented: “I’m not sure I want to report to you, because I’ve never reported to a woman.”
Another time, while she was CEO of Microsoft in Switzerland and trying to “create an environment where everyone felt rewarded and seen” a male worker said: “It’s great to see what you do for the women, what are you doing for the men?”
Both times Jenner thanked the concerned workers for their transparency. At Pivotal, she successfully shifted her worker’s biased view on female managers, and at Microsoft, she bolstered inclusive policies like paternity leave for men.
“Nowadays, it would be impossible to say that. But at the time, it was common sense that I was the stranger in the room and they could ask me questions, which today, no one would be allowed to ask anymore,” she says.
Although sexism has no place in today’s society, Jenner believes that male workers may still be thinking along those lines, in silence – and that the justified push on generating gender parity in the workplace may be worsening such sentiments.
Women are getting included, but men may feel left out
It’s no…