I'm sorry you've had shitty experiences. No on deserves that. Honestly I'm terrible at names and people only remember mine because it's ethnic. I wouldn't read

I'm sorry you've had shitty experiences. No on deserves that. Honestly I'm terrible at names and people only remember mine because it's ethnic. I wouldn't read too much in clients not remembering your name correctly. Humans are generally just bad at names and it might not have anything to do with their perception of you. I have to ask though, why do you think you were often one of the few/only women/woman at these shops. Did they actively try to recruit women? Did you see women get interviewed but who just didn't make the cut? The last time I was at a shop where they made me go through resumes, I rarely even saw women in the application stack. I worked with an amazingly talented woman who started back in the day at RealMedia writing C++ codecs. She told me about several cases of harassment or even things like asking her to wear a certain dress a manager liked when she was at trade shows/booths. I also worked with an English woman at the same company several years my senior, who's been both a developer and product manager, and who says she hasn't experienced that type of harassment while in the tech sector. I hate anecdotal stuff like this though, because it just doesn't build a big enough picture, which is why actual studies are insightful. But going back to my question: do you think these shops were actively discriminating against women, passively (subconsciously) discriminating or there simply weren't enough women applicants (they do tend to get sucked up by the big players like Google/Facebook/etc.)