> Is there an extreme shortage? Or is there an extreme shortage of women who applies to speak because they're not used to seeing many women speak and assume they wouldn't get a slot?

We see at user groups women don't often give talks and user groups are normally begging for people to give talks. The fact they're not often giving talks in the smaller setting would hint that there is overall an extreme shortage. Realistically, women are a small percentage of tech and considering there is only a small percentage of people who want to give talks since public speaking is a common fear it makes sense there is an extreme shortage.

> I do find it astounding that someone making a living of arranging events don't have a sufficient network to be able to line up some speakers.

Most conferences aren't making a profit. Most a volunteer ran and people are doing it in their spare time for no compensation. They depend heavily on call for papers where people submit then they do blind appraisals of the submissions.

Personally, I think it's very demanding and entitled to demand these people spend even more time just because you want to virtue signal.

> Then they should do that. As a man, of the times I've been speaking in public-ish contexts in my life, I've volunteered or applied less than half. I'm not at all surprised it takes work to line up speakers, and more work to line up speakers of any group that has a history of being underrepresented in this field.

When you have a CFP and hundreds of talks submitted rejecting them and looking for other people because the people applying are of the wrong gender or race is discrimination.

> The way to fix that is to ensure more women get a first chance to hold a talk.

Which would be at the user group level where men five their first talks. When you go to a user group you know it's going to be a bit rough, it didn't cost you anything, you haven't booked a hotel room, you haven't gone anywhere, etc. I have no problem listening to people's first talks, I often hang out in uncons if the conference has one and listen to all the random stuff, however, I do feel for people who see conferences as a serious chance to improve their skillset and end up with a reduced quality product all for the sake of virtue siginaling.

> The point is that if you genuinely want to address diversity, and your applicant pool isn't diverse, then you need to look beyond your applicant pool. If you choose not to, then you don't really care about addressing diversity; in that case, you're just trying to do enough to be able to throw your hands up, and it's in that case entirely fair for people to judge the organizers accordingly.

The paragraph above seems to make it that they were getting the applicants but were ignoring them because of details in their education. It seems they had the applicants and just didn't hire them. To legally improve your diversity you need to increase who is applying. Not to ignore your applicants because of their sex or race. That is discrimination and illegal.

Overall, I highly suspect your way of thinking is going to result in lots of settlements and lawsuits because people weren't hired because they were white/male. Sexist and racism should not be acceptable and is illegal! Quite simply that is what is often being suggest.