The organisers behind the Dublin Tech Summit have defended the price difference between tickets for male and female attendees after a backlash emerged online.

Users of social media site Reddit reported that there was a €290 price difference between tickets for male and female attendees, which sparked anger from the site's users.

"This is blatant discrimination," one user wrote, while another chimed in "Always see ladies nights, free entry and first drink free. Never have I ever seen a mens night."

Despite this week's backlash against the event, this is not the first time the Dublin Tech Summit has used staggered pricing such as this.

Last year, the event offered 400 tickets for free to female attendees, then another 600 at €7 each. This year the tickets for women are €59 as standard, while tickets for men are €349.


Defending the ticket pricing, Daniel Kyne, Speakers Manager for Dublin Tech Summit, told Buzz.ie that the pricing helps to dramatically level gender levels in attendees, and that the prices are mainly geared towards companies buying tickets for their employees.

"The aim of the price difference isn't to discriminate. The vast majority of purchases for DTS tickets are made by companies, not individuals. The price difference encourages companies to send more female employees to tech conferences." Kyne said.

"Last year's attendee gender breakdown was 49% female. This is more than double the ratio of other major tech conferences."

Achieving a 49% female attendee rate is no easy feat, and Kyne says it is pricing, coupled with their speaker selection, which helps Dublin Tech Summit to achieve such high female attendance.


"This approach also feeds into our speaker selection process," he continued.

"We have nearly 45% female speakers (excluding moderators). For reference, NOAH Conference London (one of Europe's largest tech conferences) had 3.5% female speakers last year.

"It's an overall approach we are taking to try level the playing field in tech by balancing figures like speaker ratio and attendee gender breakdown."

Dublin Tech Summit takes place April 18-19 2018, with tickets available from their website.