Even if we had perfect gender and ethnicity equality, probability tells us that we would still expect there to be some proportion of conferences where the best

Even if we had perfect gender and ethnicity equality, probability tells us that we would still expect there to be some proportion of conferences where the best available speakers are all white and male. In this case, there is self selection too. Britain is still predominantly white. And even as I accept that there must still be factors which make women feel less welcome, I remain convinced that even if no factors of unfair discrimination existed, more men than women would self-select technology careers. These factors mean that we would expect even more conferences with all white and male speakers, still without unfair discrimination. To pick out a single conference in our industry with this property is textbook selection bias [1] and doesn't demonstrate any kind of discrimination at all. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias