The most sought after the annual gathering, CES, which is scheduled to start next week reportedly has no women participants in the keynote sessions and no code of conduct that might prevent incidents of sexual harassment.
According to Reuters, there will be a lot of female models, also known as ‘booth babes’ presenting the latest showing off new consumer electronics from televisions to self-driving cars technology.
Liliana Aide Monge, chief executive of California coding school Sabio said, “The fact that this large global gathering of tech leaders is totally ignoring this issue makes them completely tone deaf and irresponsible.” She will be skipping CES for the second year in a row because of the lack of women and minority speakers. Karen Chupka, who oversees the event as senior vice president at CTA, took to a blog post last month. It read, “To keynote at CES, the speaker must head (president/CEO level) a large entity who has name recognition in the industry. As upsetting as it is, there is a limited pool when it comes to women in these positions. We feel your pain. It bothers us, too. The tech industry and every industry must do better.”
CES made a concerted push to diversify its entire speaker lineup but ultimately failed to find a high-ranking female executive for an individual keynote address.
The event has also been unsuccessful in creating a code of conduct and adopting guidelines on using inclusive language in presentations to requirements that attendees wear name tags at all events, even after hours, to deter misconduct.
The report also states that the women subjected to uncomfortable situations at CES gatherings in the past told Reuters that they did not report incidents because they were too used to it or did not recognize there was a way to do so.
