Part of my master’s dissertation in Digital Humanities deals directly with digital inclusion.
To think about inclusion, we must first understand who is affected by digital exclusion. As I delve into this field of study, I’m guided by the light that so many authors have shed on structures we often prefer to ignore. And it is in this process of reading and reflection that I’m flooded with memories — experiences I’ve lived over the past three decades, to which I would now respond very differently… and far more forcefully.
When I was a teenager, preparing for college entrance exams in Rio de Janeiro, I had a young chemistry and biology teacher I already knew from regular school classes. One day, after I got an exercise wrong, he looked at me and asked:
“Why don’t you take the test to work operating a stove instead of trying to get into university?”
He was absolutely convinced that some of the boys in the class would pass with ease. I — the only girl among 15 students — was little more than a walking joke. In his eyes, wanting to study something in the tech field was a delusion.
My young teacher may not have realized it, but his words carried centuries of symbolic exclusion. Ironically, he would later face, personally, the pain of dealing with the feminine side he always tried to suppress…
Today, that comment sounds absurd, offensive, and completely unacceptable. But in the late 1990s, even at a private school, it caused no reaction at all. It was seen as “normal,” just a joke — one of those that, under a seemingly light tone, hide deep-rooted structures of inequality and the naturalization of female inferiority in technical-scientific knowledge.
That feeling of not belonging continued into university.
In the Computer Science program, we started with 42 students. Only four of us were women — and that number didn’t grow by graduation. Completing the program, occupying that space, was already a political act. A gesture of resistance against erasure itself.
Even in the job market, the stigma merely takes on new forms. The demand for “emotional intelligence” falls almost exclusively on women — often in a condescending tone, and rarely directed at men.
When a man is cold or firm, he is seen as “assertive.” When a woman expresses emotion or intensity, she’s labeled as unbalanced or “hormonal.”
Irony: one of the most emotionally unstable professionals I’ve ever worked with was a man — who dumped his romantic frustrations onto the systems he managed and the people around him. Yet no one questioned whether he had the emotional intelligence required for the role.
These personal experiences reflect something much bigger: a system that has sustained and perpetuated gender inequalities for centuries.
As Gil-Juárez, Feliu, and Vitores (2012) argue, gender digital exclusion isn’t just about access to devices or technical training. It reflects historical inequalities that permeate social structures, school curricula, media discourse, the collective imagination, and professional opportunities.
In this context, technology is not neutral — it carries power relations. From an early age, boys are encouraged to explore, dismantle, challenge. Girls are taught to care, obey, remain quiet.
To this day, toys, schoolbooks, advertisements, and everyday comments reinforce these roles. By the time many women reach technical careers, they’ve already overcome countless symbolic obstacles — and many give up not due to lack of ability, but out of sheer exhaustion.
These barriers are not always explicit. They hide in the absence of female role models, the lack of institutional support, isolation, silent sabotage, the constant need to prove one’s competence.
Being in these spaces — and staying in them — is not just a choice: it’s an act of confrontation.
And I know — I’m sure — that as you read this, some are thinking I’m complaining too much. That I’m exaggerating, being dramatic, playing the victim — simply because I’m a woman writing about this.
But I ask: if a man were sharing these experiences and proposing this analysis, would the reaction be the same? Or would it be seen as critical thinking — legitimate and courageous?
The difference in how we’re heard says a lot about who has the right to narrate pain and propose change without being discredited in the process.
But we are here. We’ve always been here. Often in silence, often pushed to the background.
Still, we keep creating, leading, solving, connecting.
That’s why in my research project, I propose the intersection of agile management, digital inclusion, and cultural preservation not just as a form of innovation — but as a form of historical repair.
I want to build bridges so that more women — alongside public school students, Black people, Indigenous peoples, and people with disabilities — can actively, creatively, and critically engage with technology.
Because resisting in this field also means rewriting memory. It means refusing erasure and claiming space.
It means showing — in practice, in data, and in care — that no territory is off-limits to us.
Maybe one day a teacher — young or seasoned — will look at a curious girl and see in her a future scientist, engineer, digital curator, researcher. Because that’s what she is. And always has been.
And I would love to see those same men experience the surprise I so often witness when people find out I built that system, developed that project, sculpted that digital twin.
Or perhaps hear someone say to them, “Control your hormones” — because yes, men have them too.
I dream of the day when a man borrows a screwdriver and, instead of being granted automatic trust, receives the same look of suspicion so many of us know — followed by the question:
“But do you know how to use that?”
That’s precisely why, in recent months, I’ve been dedicating myself more and more to inclusion and digital autonomy — especially for women coming from non-technical backgrounds.
No… I’m not going to teach them how to use ChatGPT to search for recipes. I’ll leave that experience for the men who need to become more self-sufficient in the absence of a woman at home.
To these women, I want to teach how to strengthen their research skills — especially in the digital preservation of cultural and historical heritage.
Because this is not about liking or disliking men…
In truth, most of my close friends are men, and due to the nature of my work, it’s often easier to connect with them.
This is about recognizing — with clarity and honesty — that unequal structures still shape our paths.
It’s about refusing to romanticize these asymmetries as fate or coincidence.
It’s about making visible what has historically been hidden: the presence, the competence, and the power of women in science, technology, creation, and leadership.
