Lesbians Who Tech goes to Berlin

Part of the work to gain recognition for lesbians everywhere is also about creating spaces for them. This means building communities. Leanne Pittsford founded Lesbians Who Tech in 2012 at the intersection of tech and the LBTGQ communities in order to create a space that would focus on providing value to lesbian women in technology.

To spread the word about this idea, Lesbians Who Tech went to Germany to connect with one of the biggest global tech communities as well as host the first-ever European Lesbians Who Tech Summit in Berlin.

Lesbians in Tech flies to Berlin

Held last August 27 to 30, Lesbians Who Tech brought over about more than 150 lesbian women and their allies from eight countries to Germany to hear speakers on a variety of topics. These range from starting a company in Berlin to civic engagement through technology as well as the #ilooklikeanengineer movement. This is part of the series of Lesbians Who Tech events, which was first held in San Francisco last year.

In an online essay in Medium, Pittsford said she created Lesbians Who Tech as a community for lesbian women in technology, “a group that’s rarely represented in either of the communities of which they are a part: the tech community, or the LGBT community.”

She added, “I’d been to way too many events all over the world where the voice of queer women was missing from the conversation, whether you go to tech events, LGBTQ events or women’s events, it felt like queer women’s perspectives and voices were simply not there.”

More than anything, Pittsford wants lesbian voices to be heard in the communities they belong to: “For queer women our issues our magnified. If women make less than men, two women in a couple are dealing with an even greater economic disparity and disadvantage. Not to mention we just have so many different experiences that are unique to being queer.”

Lesbians Who Tech is a community

Pittsford further explained she wanted to bring this community— already global with 10,000 members, having held 200 events in 25 different cities across the world— to Berlin because the city is the pulse of the new European trends in both tech and culture. Likewise, Berlin is also bringing in some of the most talented people from all over the world.

“With every Summit and every event, our focus is on highlighting incredible queer women who are doing cool things in the tech sector. We are hoping that the Summit in Berlin will be the beginning of a great, ongoing conversation about the LGBTQ tech community in Europe,” she declared.