Ryan Alban

Another aspect of TDD that is often emphasized is that this lets you write code "the right way," i.e., with tests, high quality, etc. How could that possibly be related to power dynamics?

I'm glad you asked! It's well-established that men taking the time to do things "the right way" are perceived as skilled, while women taking the time to do things "the right way" are perceived as incompetent (taking extra time for a simple task).

In fact, current research suggests that this tendency travels across all the power dynamics - race, experience level, etc.

But when the originators of this practice came up with it, they didn't need to think about that, because they were all white men. There was no difference in how taking extra time to do it right was perceived.

Neither the specific practice of TDD, nor the agile philosophy behind it, says anything about how to counter this perception. So people on the downward side fo the dynamics feel (correctly) that they're trying to do the right thing but their contributions aren't as valued.

Again - white men can be completely ignorant of this dynamic, since it doesn't affect them. When other people point it out, they often say something along the lines of "you're making that up" or "you're covering for your own incompetence."

(See also: my mentions. Lots of "stop making excuses" ridiculousness. They don't particularly bother me, because I know I can run circles around any of them. But when I was less confident, earlier in my career, I would have believed them.)

A heterogenous team gives you something critical - experience on the downward side of important power dynamics. Provided they have good management, such a team can construct practices and process and software that doesn't make the same assumptions of homogeneity.