📣🚨 Action Alert | Real Leaders' Lack of Investment in Equality Shows: Top 50 Keynote Speakers List Includes Only 16% Women

Political figures aside, when you think of the real leaders in our country, those who you may want to hear deliver a keynote address, who do you think of? Maybe Bill Gates? Jeff Bezos? The co-founders of the Black Lives Matter movement? If we asked you to make a list of 50 of the top keynote speakers right now, surely you could come up with 25 men and 25 women, right? Too bad the list-makers at Real Leaders could not. Their list of the Top 50 Keynote Speakers in the World 2020 includes only 8 women! According to Real Leaders, 84% of the top speakers IN THE ENTIRE WORLD are men. We call BS.

Thank you to GenderAvenger April Rinne for bringing this list to our attention and for taking Real Leaders to task. They did respond to her post, stating that they “honestly overlooked one of our contributing author posts and want to apologize,” and they went on to invite her “to send us stories suggesting other keynote speakers since we’d like to embrace this opportunity to be better!” This speaks to Real Leaders’ real lack of investment in equality. They certainly have access to the best speaker lists in the world, which definitely would include women’s names on them. Remarkably, still they asked a woman for free labor to make one for them. There’s been no answer to April’s follow-up question about whether or not Real Leaders will reprint the list once it’s more inclusive. We won’t hold our breath on that.

Make it known that this is not okay:

‪📣🚨 When @aprilrinne called out @Real_Leaders' Top 50 Keynote Speakers in the World for a lack of women — only 16%! — they asked her to do the work for them and send names. When asked if they’d reprint a more inclusive list… crickets. #GenderAvenger https://www.genderavenger.com/blog/action-alert-real-leaders-lack-investment-in-equality