The bad person here is the social norms and expectations formed due to the field being male-dominated. Author mostly forced herself to live by those norms, des

The bad person here is the social norms and expectations formed due to the field being male-dominated. Author mostly forced herself to live by those norms, despite facing different challenges. i.e. no male founders have to worry about pumping breastmilk between meetings, so asking to do that feels awkward. If she chose to embrace her differences, and break more social norms (like taking longer maternity leave), her life will be easier. However, there is also the risk that the company could have failed by a thousand cuts that are difficult to attribute, she wouldn't have known at the time.