I was struck by the mea culpa issued last week by former Huffington Post and Washington Post manager-turned entrepreneur Katharine Zaleski. Her commentary, posted on Fortune.com on March 3, was entitled: “I’m sorry to all the mothers I worked with.

Zaleski said: “I didn’t realize how horrible I had been, until I had a child of my own.”

Then, she recounted the eye rolling and “silently slandering” that she participated in with colleagues – aimed at working moms who couldn’t make end of day meetings or meet for drinks after work.

That was before her personal journey and becoming a mother herself. “Empathy is a great teacher,” she said.

Zaleski has since founded PowertoFly, a job matching platform for women in highly skilled positions across tech and digital that they can do from home, or in an office, if they choose.

The time commitment to parenting contradicts office culture, Zaleski noted in her video interview with Fortune that runs alongside her column.  “We need to end the idea that work value is based on physically being there.”  In other words, she advocates, that we need to value output over time in office.

As Zaleski acknowledges, work at home and/or flexible work schedules is one solution to the problem for moms – though not the only one.

On that note, I am super excited to have the conversation “Boardroom or Baby: The Choices Women have in Tech,” at SXSW this Saturday (3:30 p.m. JW Marriott Room 407) which delves into the heart of this topic.

There are many considerations and questions women need to ask themselves if they are considering having a family and a career in tech. I’m fond of using the analogy of wedding planning:  Many of us carefully plan for our wedding day – a one day event in our lives – but don’t plan for the critical decisions we must make about our careers and our families.

As Zaleski noted in her interview: 1 billion women will be coming into the workforce in the next 10 years – 80% of which will be mothers (based on U.S. Census Bureau estimates). Yet, as she also noted, today we also see more women dropping out of the work force, more than at any time since the 70s. As she advocates, “We have to find a way to allow women to careers while they also have lives.”

You don’t need to be a woman, or to have a child to understand this is a problem that we need to address.

This is why I believe ‘women in tech’ has become one of the major discussions at this year’s SXSW- and of our time. As I noted in my previous blog, there are quite a few sessions and conversations taking place on the topic of women in tech, gender equality and diversity. It underscores that the time is finally now for this issue in our industry.

In preparation for my talk, we interviewed nearly 20 Silicon Valley women in tech, along with some men, for their perspective on gender equality in the tech workplace today.