📣🚨 Action Alert | If Data And AI Are Our Collective Future, Where Are the Women at Databricks Data + AI Summit?
Note that we had to go all the way back to early April to find any images of women related to the Databricks Data + AI Summit under the Media tab in their Twitter account.
Given the rise in public sensitivity and awareness of the lack of diversity in public arenas, it’s likely we’re going to begin to see some organizations put women, especially women of color, front and center to present the illusion of gender balance and diversity. We know better, though, so GenderAvengers will always dig deeper.
Take the Databricks Data + AI Summit 2021 (May 24-28), for example. The gender balance of their speaker lists seems okay until you zoom out. The smallest group is the Featured Speakers, which consists of 3 men and 2 women, both of whom are women of color. Not bad, right? But when you zoom out wider to the mid-size group of Keynote Speakers, things start to fall apart. There are 15 men and only 8 women delivering keynotes, and only 3 of those speakers are women of color. Worst of all is the largest list, the Session Speakers. This group consists of 338 men and only 65 women. Worse yet, only 39 of those speakers are women of color — that’s only 10%!
By having the smallest but most visible group of Featured Speakers look so diverse, Databricks is giving the appearance of gender balance and diversity without actually following all the way through. We often see organizations include women speakers on panels but not on the mainstage, so it’s good to see women of color in such prominent speaking positions here, but women should always be part of the conversation, both behind the curtain and in front of it.
If data and AI are our future, where are the women, @databricks? You can’t just front-load them as keynote and featured speakers when they belong in every session, both in front of and behind the curtain. #GenderAvenger #DataAISummit https://www.genderavenger.com/blog/action-alert-databricks-data-ai-summit-2021