Agree that forcing the balance is not the right approach. However, making people aware of it is not a bad thing. Sometimes organisations may (unconsciously) hav

Agree that forcing the balance is not the right approach. However, making people aware of it is not a bad thing. Sometimes organisations may (unconsciously) have bias in their selection process; having an invited speaker decline because of gender imbalance is certainly one way to make the organisation take a look at whether something is going on, rather than accepting the status quo as OK, which it rarely is. Outreach to encourage more submissions from women, and looking at downstream ("lesser") conferences, to help those also encourage more submissions from women, seem like the right steps to me. It can be self-perpetuating though. You go to a conference and no women are speaking, you subconsciously think you don't belong there. But hey; if you go to a conference and 20% of the speakers are women, yet 5% of the attendees are, isn't that a different kind of red flag?