Backlash over fake female speakers shuts down developer conference

canpolat@programming.dev to Programming@programming.dev – 208 points –
Backlash over fake female speakers shuts down developer conference
arstechnica.com
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From the article:

"To spell it out why this conference generated fake women speakers," Orosz alleges, it was "because the organizer wants big names and it probably seemed like an easy way to address their diversity concerns. Incredibly lazy."

How hard is it for these organizers to actually reach out to women developers and extend an invite to talk about any topic they are interested in? In the very least, there are tons of high-profile bloggers who are vocal about things and stuff. Even though women are severely outnumbered, you almost need to go way out of your way to avoid actually extending an invite to a woman in the field.

This reminds me of some Ohio Christian university advertising racial diversity in all their media, and some guy exposed them as having exactly three non-white students, all whom turned out to be shills from another country who were technically employees.

See, the thing is, a lot of these women will not agree to speak at your conference if you're a total creep.

How hard is it for these organizers to actually reach out to women developers

What? You want men coders to somehow make up the gall to

speak

to a woman?

I mean, that quote you mention sounds pretty innocent, but the other ones, like

was accused of making up fake female speakers to attract high-profile speakers

fake profiles created by the event organizers to make the event look diverse in order to "successfully attract some of the most heavy-hitter men speakers in tech."

Sound almost like it was going to be a human trafficking fair rather than a programming conference. If the idea that some great male speakers will come to the conference just because there will be female speakers is correct then it's fcked way beyond what I would imagine. Sounds as if IT is a bunch of creeps although I know for granted that it's not (only) like that

I think the idea is that big-name men will show up to support women and work for equality, not to creep on them.

Yes, that was totally that 🌚

!In all seriousness, they may have had that idea but I can't make me see it that way reading that article !<