&gt; “He treated you so differently!” he said. “His whole tone changed!”<p>Depending on what was meant by &quot;tone&quot;, this could be due to very deeply-ingrained learned sociolinguistic customs.  I don&#x27;t mean that justifies it, but it could be very subconscious, is not specific to &quot;tech&quot;, and seems much less offensive than some of the other examples.<p>To whatever extent men adopt a different tone when talking to women, it would probably take quite a lot of conscious concentration to control, and generations to eradicate (possibly never, if they can be picked up again by watching our contemporary media.)  So, I guess it&#x27;s something to keep an eye on and fix where you can, but not so simple as eliminating stuff like &quot;They only let you work here ’cause you’re hot.&quot;<p>Edit: tl&#x2F;dr: If &quot;tone&quot; meant treating her like an idiot&#x2F;non-technical, bad. If it meant different pitch of voice and body language, not good per se but not that bad either.<p>P.S. Actually, maintaining gender-based differences might be desirable.  Women probably don&#x27;t want to be treated exactly like &quot;one of the guys&quot;, right?  Modifying your message and presentation based on your audience is a part of effective communication.  If it&#x27;s offending your audience, change that, but maybe it&#x27;s not a bad starting position.