All-female speaker line-ups - good or bad?

Another industry conference has announced an all-female speaker line-up, it's starting to feel like a trend for 2020.

Grammarly asked me if I wanted to be more diplomatic with the next sentence. I don't.

I hate this.

It goes against everything I feel about diversity. Diversity is about including everyone. It’s not just about gender. 

We ran a workshop with Turn the Talk last year to encourage and support more people to speak at conferences. We had a diverse set of people attend, including women and men. What message does this send out to all of those men that participated in that event? It says they are not wanted.

The counter-argument will be that extreme measures are needed. We are still in a place where we are struggling to get a fair representation of women at conferences, board level and in the trade media. Yet an all-women speaker line-up is lazy. Conference organisers should be finding the best talent to speak, and they should be ensuring they have a diverse range of speakers. Yes, it is hard, but if you want to be a conference that represents the industry, then I’m sorry, but this is your job.

An all-women conference doesn’t solve the gender diversity problem. If the only way to get more women on stage is to create an environment which only allows women on stage, I think we’ve lost our way. While it may get some publicity for the conference, I don’t think it moves the diversity agenda, if anything I think it harms the movement as it promotes exclusion, not inclusion.