For one week in June, Israel’s second city drums to a different beat: A mass of bronzed and oiled bodies descend on beachside bars and cafes festooned with rainbow flags, downing lunchtime mojitos to a soundtrack of pumping techno. This is Tel Aviv Gay Pride, the culmination of which is a traffic-stopping parade Friday that attracts some 200,000 people from around the world. Despite the predominance of muscled men on a rolling catwalk of ever smaller swim shorts, “Women in the Community” is the 2016 theme, and behind the scenes, it’s LGBT women who are really shaking things up.
Lesbians Who Tech combines two distinct yet quintessential facets of Tel Aviv life: a vibrant LGBT scene (voted the No. 1 gay city in a 2012 poll) and, with more high-tech startups per capita than any other country in the world, an established tech ecosystem. The pithily named organization “for queer women [working] in or around tech,” which started in a San Francisco bar three years ago, has since swelled to more than 16,000 global members in 35 cities. American founder Leanne Pittsford caught the industry’s attention with events such as #BringALesbianToWorkDay, and the group found its new eastern Mediterranean home in December. Six months later, LWT was holding its first Tel Aviv tech summit, bringing together lesbian women for a series of networking events and presentations in Google’s Tel Aviv offices.