From the Cover: Inbal Rodnay Says I Love Being a Woman. Being Classified as One Used to Scare Me to My Core

I grew up learning which room I belonged in.

At family dinners, the women were in the kitchen making coffee while the men sat in the living room eating cake. At synagogue, my dad and brother walked through the main entrance while my mum and I were sent to the back, behind the wall, with the other women. After my brother got his driving licence, my mum quietly moved to sit beside me in the back seat. After meals, he and my dad went outside. I was sent to help Mum clear the table.

As a teenager, when I started naming what I was watching, my dad would ask, “What are you complaining about? You are lucky. Two kilometres to the east, or twenty years into the past, you’d be married off by now.” He wasn’t wrong. In the regional council where I grew up, only the father of the household could vote. Women voted only if there was no man in the house. I was a child, watching.

I watched women around me stay in relationships that were crushing them, because leaving required money they didn’t have and independence they were encouraged not to build.

Being classified as a woman, I learned early, meant being moved to a smaller room. And smaller rooms were not just inconvenient and terribly limiting. They were how you got trapped.

I did what seemed sensible to me. I studied. I built a career. I made my own money. I made sure I would always have the kind of independence that meant I could leave if I needed to. And when I eventually wanted to, I could afford advice, I could keep safe, and I could make fairness happen. For women, professional success and financial independence are not just ambition. They are safety.

Professionally, I made sure I was never reduced to a category. When I walk onto a stage, and I speak to many rooms, someone introduces me first. I make sure they talk about the firms I’ve worked in, the practice I’ve built around making AI accessible for professionals, and my years as a software engineer. They don’t mention that I am a woman. Not because I’m ashamed of it, but because it’s not the headline. My work is the headline.

I’ve spent my adult life making sure of that.

So when I was first nominated for an award, Women in Finance – Innovator of the Year, it landed hard on me when someone close asked, “Why aren’t you going for a real award? Why a women’s award?” It reaffirmed my own belief: women’s rooms are second league. My heart sank. How did I let myself get excited about this?

Then came Sydney.

I was a finalist at the inaugural Australian AI Awards across three categories. I booked a flight. I booked a hotel. I brought a friend. I put on my best pantsuit. I let myself think, quietly, that with three finalist positions, I might actually win one.

The categories were called one by one. AI Academic of the Year. AI Software Engineer. AI Rising Star. AI Consultant. Category after category, a mixed list of finalists, and a man accepting the award. Every single time. I sat with the frustration building slowly. The room was all celebration and smiles, and I wasn’t sure if I was seeing a pattern or imagining one.

The dissonance was real.

Then came AI Leader of the Year. The one that mattered the most. The finalists appeared on the big screen and I took a photo. Nine men. And me. A man won.

I sat there and tried to make sense of it. There were ten women strong enough to be finalists in the AI Female Leader category that same night. Ten women the judges had deemed worthy of recognition. So how come only I got into the mixed category? Were all nine of those men really better than all nine women? Were we writing our submissions differently? Were we less visible somehow, less loud, less practised at putting ourselves forward? Or had some of those women assumed they belonged in the women’s category, and therefore didn’t put their hand up for the main one? I am confident no one was deliberately excluding us. But I also know that this is not about intentions. It is about outcomes. And the outcome, category after category, was the same.

By the end of the night, I had grown a powerful, deep belief: I am not winning material.

I flew home carrying that.

The following year, I was a finalist at the Women in Finance Awards – Fintech Leader of the Year. I bought my ticket to the ceremony and organised my flights. But as the event got closer, I decided to cancel. I travel endlessly for work, and an extra night at home felt like the more sensible choice than sitting in a room waiting for a result I had already decided wasn’t coming. So I stayed home. I went to sleep.

In the morning, I picked up my phone and found a flood of messages. Congratulations. Someone had shared a video. I watched it, still half asleep, and heard my name being announced.

I had won. I wasn’t there.

The disappointment landed heavily for days. I wasn’t just disappointed about missing the moment. I was disappointed in myself for being so convinced I didn’t deserve to win that I hadn’t even shown up. I had done to myself what I had spent a lifetime refusing to let anyone do to me. I had put myself out of the room before anyone else could.

And then came the other thought. Quieter. More uncomfortable.

How do I feel about this award on my profile? About the “women” qualifier landing before me on every stage? Does it shout that I am not worthy of a real award?

I sat with that for a while.

Here is what I’ve come to.

I understand why women’s awards exist. I know they open doors. I know they create visibility in systems that would otherwise keep us invisible. And I am living proof of it. While I was busy insisting on fighting for my spot in the main room, other women were quietly making sure that women like me still got called. And when I had talked myself out of my own worth, it was their work that saw me anyway.

I’m deeply grateful for that. It is a complicated gratitude, but it is real. I’m still uncomfortable being segregated. It will take time for this to feel safe and to heal. But I am also standing here with a title I almost didn’t let myself have, because someone built a room that could see me, where others didn’t.