I smiled

Virginia DeBolt — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:04:01 -0600

when I got my SXSW flyer with the equal mix of men and women, too. And, as you pointed out, SXSW gets additional points for not being 100% white, as does BlogHer.

http://www.webteacher.ws/
http://first50.wordpress.com/

Gender Representation in Conference Promo Materials

sarahdopp — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 12:05:06 -0600

BlogWorld Expo is coming up this week in Las Vegas. Being a blogosphere devotee myself, I'm intrigued by blogging conferences and I like to see what's going on. So I took a browse through their site and landed on the "sneak preview" speaker list:

And without even stopping to read the names, one insulting fact jumped out and slapped me in the face: These are all men! No wait. There's one woman. Down there in the bottom left hand corner.

Contrast this with the SXSW Interactive flyer I just received in the mail yesterday, which has a very similar tiled-thumbnail promotional sampling of speakers. (Please forgive the crappy Treo650 photo quality...)

Hey, lookie there... Four men and four women. What do you know? One of the most prestigious tech conferences in the country has a completely equal representation of men and women on their conference promotional materials. How fascinating... Maybe they're trying to reach their audience?

Now, I'm not (yet) accusing BlogWorld Expo of sexist advertising (or even of having a sexist lineup of keynote speakers... which, it appears, is 100% men). I'm all about strategic marketing and accurate representation of demographics, and maybe they have good reason for their choices. Maybe they're only interested in targeting men.

Because maybe all of the important bloggers out there (who would be interested in a conference) are men.

And maybe, let's face it, maybe the only good public speakers they could find were men.

Because, really, let's get to the point here, women have nothing of value to say in this arena.

That's it. Of course.

I know it doesn't always travel in writing, so let me make absolutely clear that the above four statements were said with angry sarcasm. Because they're prominent assumptions in the tech industry, and they've all been proven wrong over the last few years by many organizations, not the least has been BlogHer -- an annual bloggers' conference that features only female speakers. And according to June 2007 statistics, it's the largest bloggers' conference on earth. Period.

To pre-empt another counterargument, yes, many of those women blog about "serious" issues, like world news, economics, technology, politics, and finance. And some of them have even become absurdly famous through their blogs, bearing a massive fan base asset that would boost ticket sales just as much (if not more) than any man on the lineup.

And to address the matter of public speaker quality... (SXSW, I love you for your flyer and I mean you no harm, so please forgive what I'm about to say...) BlogHer's panels, on the whole, were far better than those at the much-acclaimed SXSW. They carried a consistent quality that I haven't seen at any other conference. Every single one was well-curated with tested speakers who gave the audience what they were looking for.

We're no longer buying the notion that women bloggers don't have an intelligent voice, a valuable presence, and a hunger for conferences. Not representing them in keynote lineups and conference promotional materials is both irresponsible and insulting.

(Okay, now somebody else please pick up on the fact that all the speakers on that page appear to be white and take it from here...)

BlogHer - Gender Representation in Conference Promo Materials - Comments

I smiled

Gender Representation in Conference Promo Materials