* I would explicitly not be satisfied with a process that resulted in 100% male speakers. I would have stopped once we’d reached, say, 17 male out of 22 possib

* I would explicitly not be satisfied with a process that resulted in 100% male speakers. I would have stopped once we’d reached, say, 17 male out of 22 possible speakers (being pretty conservative, I think) and insisted that the remaining five (a cool 22% female representation) would have to be women. * Nobody is saying "Nominate less qualified speakers" but what this seems to be saying essentially is "Nominate women because they are women". And nobody is saying Don't overlook qualified speakers who happen to be brown, beige, female, and/or fifty years old they're saying look at your speaker lineup and balance it out based on race/gender and age. They're advocating a purely aesthetic exercise which unfortunately just further stigmatizes those it's trying to help (i.e. "She's here because they just needed some women to balance out the lineup").