Women would trade shorter bathroom lines to see more ladies at tech conferences

About two years ago, writer Lin Classon attended AWS reInvent, Amazon’s cloud-services conference. The biggest takeaway she gained from the event was how empty the women’s bathroom was. With over 40,000 attendees, how was it possibly that the women’s bathroom was… empty? This brought up a bigger question: If all women were missing from the restroom, where else are they missing from?

Classon didn’t allow the conversation to stop here. In digging deeper, she realized how immense the gender gap really was in tech industry as a whole. She decided to conduct a study called “Speak Up: Bringing More Women’s Voices to Tech Conferences”.

In surveying over 500 women across the US and UK who have attended tech conferences, some results were expected, while others were just shocking.

She found that, 70% of women who’ve sat on a panel at a technology conference have been the only woman on the panel. In addition, One in four women have experienced sexual harassment at a tech conference. #LIS4022spr20

https://qz.com/1579078/new-data-about-tech-conferences-shows-stark-gender-inequality/