{"id":44674,"date":"2023-10-20T15:37:35","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:37:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/all-too-achievable-its-bullshit-that-other-conferences-claim-its-hard-to-get-to-gender-parity-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:37:35","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:37:35","slug":"all-too-achievable-its-bullshit-that-other-conferences-claim-its-hard-to-get-to-gender-parity-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/all-too-achievable-its-bullshit-that-other-conferences-claim-its-hard-to-get-to-gender-parity-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"All too achievable: \u201cIt\u2019s bullshit that other conferences claim it\u2019s hard to get to gender parity\u201d – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

For the organisers of Melbourne tech conference Above All Human, getting an equal gender split in its speakers wasn\u2019t a great achievement.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Taking place on Friday, the conference brought a range of local and international speakers on tech and startups, half being women.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But during the opening address<\/a>, organisers Susan Wu and Bronwen Clune said they shouldn\u2019t be lauded for this.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t that hard for us at all,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe did it in our first year of launch and we\u2019ve done it again this year – all the while growing our attendee base to over 1000 people on a modest budget. And without having to \u2018lower any bars\u2019.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no magic, just commitment and follow through.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

They also said it\u2019s disingenuous for other tech conferences to claim it\u2019s difficult to get an equal amount of female speakers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s bullshit that so many other tech conferences claim it\u2019s too hard to get to gender parity,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t laud us for this, don\u2019t call us trailblazers. All we\u2019re doing is reflecting the world as it is.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThat anyone considers a tech conference with 50% female speakers as an achievement in 2016 is ludicrous.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Last year Australia\u2019s biggest startup conference SydStart was criticised for producing a first round of all male speakers<\/a>, with an organisers saying it was difficult to find women speakers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Speakers at the Above All Human conference included director of customer experience at Slack Ali Rayl who described how the startup giant was created from a failed computer game<\/a>, and design guru Mike Monteiro, who urged attendees to create technology for the greater good<\/a> rather than the \u201cfrat-boy demographic\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

More coverage of the conference will be on StartupSmart<\/i> throughout this week.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Follow StartupSmart on<\/i> Facebook,<\/i> Twitter, and<\/i> LinkedIn.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  For the organisers of Melbourne tech conference Above All Human, getting an equal gender split in its speakers wasn\u2019t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59134,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,11,24,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44674"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}