Mike and Jason highlight how women are STILL excluded from speaking at web conferences

Hats off to Mike Monterio (The Web STILL hates women) and Jason Kottke (Gender diversity at web conferences) for hammering on the lack of women speakers at web conferences.  This is especially outrageous given the number of kick-ass women in the field (make sure to read the comments for additional names).

Here's Jason's statistical breakdown:

Future of Web Apps - San Francisco
September 13-14, 2006
0 women, 13 men. 0% women speakers.

Tokion Magazine's 4th Annual Creativity Now Conference
October 14-15, 2006
6 women, 30 men. 17% women speakers.

PopTech 2006
October 18-21, 2006
8 women, 30 men. 21% women speakers.

Web Directions North
February 7-10, 2007
5 women, 16 men. 24% women speakers.

LIFT
February 7-9, 2007
10 women, 33 men. 23% women speakers.

Future of Web Apps - London
February 20-22, 2007
1 woman, 26 men. 4% women speakers.

TED 2007
March 7-10, 2007
12 women, 41 men. 23% women speakers.

SXSW Interactive 2007
March 9-13, 2007
147 women, 378 men. 28% women speakers.
164 women, 373 men. 31% women speakers. (updated 2/22/2007)

BlogHer Business '07
March 22-23, 2007
43 women, 0 men. 100% women speakers.

An Event Apart Boston 2007
March 26-27, 2007
1 woman, 8 men. 11% women speakers.

O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference
March 26-29, 2007
9 women, 44 men. 17% women speakers.

Future of Web Design
April 18, 2007
2 women, 12 men. 14% women speakers.

GEL 2007³
April 19-20, 2007
2 women, 11 men. 15% women speakers.

MIX07³
April 30 - May 2, 2007
0 women, 4 men. 0% women speakers.

Web 2.0 Expo 2007
April 15-18, 2007
17 women, 91 men. 16% women speakers.

An Event Apart Seattle 2007
June 21-22, 2007
0 women, 9 men. 0% women speakers.

(Thanks ALV!)

Comments

[Eric Suesz]

I hear what you're saying, and I get it, but perhaps if we knew how many men and women attended these particular events, percentage-wise, we might be able to draw some conclusions beyond the seeming truth that the Web (still) hates women. Also, it may stand to reason that nearly all organizations "hate" women in this fashion. For example, are churches any better at this? I would bet an academic convention is better, but I can assure you that a gun convention is going to be worse. Model train builder convention: don't even ask. I guess what I'd like to know is how much "worse" does the Web hate women than usual. It may be that the Web actually "likes" women. Anyway, not haranguing you; it's a tricky subject. Ya got balls for bringin' it up (tee-hee).

[Jason Schultz]

I'm not sure what we'd really learn from the percentages of men and women attending the conferences, actually. I personally know dozens of women who could speak on these panels and who are at the cutting edge of these fields. Even if the entire audience was men, there's no reason not to invite an equal number of women and men to speak on panels.

Now, if you try to invite women and they turn down the opportunity, you have a more complex problem (e.g., maybe they're not interested or maybe your conference is hostile to women -- hard to know). But I think there's no excuse for failing to send out gender-balanced speaker invitations.

As far as the comparison to gun conventions, I've never been to a gun convention, but I know a ton of women who attend web conferences. For example, if you go to South By Southwest Interactive, easily 30-40% of the attendees are women.

It's also a cause-and-effect issue, e.g., if more women spoke at these conferences, more would attend.

And not all organizations hate women. there are tons of professional conferences that have good gender balance in both speakers and attendees. Law conferences, for example, are not perfect but are often more gender balanced, even in the area of high technology and intellectual property law.

But again, I don't think this is a classic "pipeline" issue where the argument is that there aren't enough women in the field yet. There are enough women. We know who they are; we just have to start inviting them to speak.