“It’s really frustrating to still see a lack of queer women on panels, especially those delivered by LGBTQIA conferences”
BY DIVA STAFF
At the recent EUROUT Conference, Europe’s leading LGBTQIA conference for graduate students, MBAs, PhDs and alumni from top business schools, only a third of the speakers were women or non-binary people. DIVA is calling for next year to ensure more diversity within the speaker panel as a way to fully represent the entire LGBTQIA community.
The purpose of the annual EUROUT Conference is to “empower LGBTQIA graduate business students to build the life and career they want”. Some of the speakers from this year included drag performer Sophia Stardust, It Takes A Village founder Chloe Davies, and Trans In The City director Emily Hamilton. Only 16 of the 48 speakers were LGBTQIA women or non-binary people.
Polly Shute, co-founder of the LGBTQIA speaker’s bureau OUTSpoken Speakers, said that we need to do better. “It’s really frustrating to still see a lack of queer women on panels, especially those delivered by LGBTQIA conferences,” she told DIVA. “We set up OUTspoken Speakers network to address this. The lack of voice and visibility means our stories and vital perspectives are not heard. In 2024 OUTspoken will be launching a charter and one clear ask will be that panels have 50% female and gender diverse representation.”
EUROUT responded to these concerns and told DIVA: “EUROUT envisions a future where LGBTQIA individuals are proportionally and authentically represented in the business world. We firmly believe that amplifying a diverse range of LGBTQIA voices is critical if that vision is to be realised.”
“This year’s EUROUT organising committee proactively sought to ensure that we represented the broad range of sexual and gender identities in the 2023 speaker lineup. In addition to the collection of diversity monitoring data, all panels featured at least one woman and efforts were made to exceed this number. Further, LGBTQIA women joined EUROUT 2023 as MCs, workshop leaders, spotlight speakers, and as a keynote speaker.”
“We also chose to spotlight the broad range of LGBTQIA identities as part of this year’s conference programme, with our 2023 agenda including discussions on ‘Leveraging the strength of our diverse identities’ and ‘How Companies are Failing Trans/Queer Employees’.”
“While cis-men currently form the largest proportion of senior LGBTQIA businesspeople, EUROUT exists to support the career development of all LGBTQIA-identifying businesspeople so that senior leadership teams can more closely reflect the rich diversity of the world we live in.”
A report by Universal McCann in partnership with dating app HER revealed the uncomfortable truth that lesbian women don’t feel represented in most parts of society. 86% of the 500 LGBTQIA women surveyed said that they felt queer men had greater visibility in public life than queer women. Eight out of ten women also said that they felt that society tries to sweep queer women under the rug.
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