Big tech conference takes heat for booking just one woman keynote: Monica Lewinsky

Jessica Guynn | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Women are absent from CES keynote addresses As Las Vegas prepares for the biggest technology show in the country, the company organizing the event faces major backlash. Susana Victoria Perez (@susana_vp) has more.

SAN FRANCISCO — The RSA Conference, one of the world's largest cybersecurity gatherings, is taking heat for having just one female keynote speaker out of 22 this year: anti-bullying activist Monica Lewinsky.

Conference organizers say the keynote line-up isn't final — RSA has invited Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to speak, but she hasn't confirmed. And, they say, 20% of total speakers slated for this year's conference will be women, reflecting average attendance at RSA, which drew 43,000 attendees last year.

They pin the blame on the technology industry, which skews heavily male, and to the niche field of security, where 11% of positions worldwide are held by women, according to a recent estimate from research firm Forrester.

"A diverse speaking program starts with increasing diversity within the technology sector, which needs to be addressed by the industry as a whole," spokesman Ben Waring said in an emailed statement to USA TODAY.

For critics, this is yet another in a long line of excuses for excluding women from the main attraction at technology conferences and perpetuating the stereotype that women are not leaders in their fields. And some security professionals are speaking out.

"Monica Lewinsky is a wonderful and highly relevant speaker, but it’s disappointing to see the complete lack of representation by women who are actually in the field among the keynotes," Leigh Honeywell, a security engineer and frequent speaker at technology conferences who's currently a technology fellow at the ACLU, said of the RSA line-up.

In a letter sent Thursday, human and digital rights nonprofit Access Now called on RSA to explain the lack of gender parity and to take immediate steps to rectify it "transparently and in close collaboration with affected communities, experts, and relevant stakeholders."

It also asked RSA to create new policies and procedures "to ensure that this never happens again."

In a statement to USA TODAY, Lewinsky is also working to get RSA to overhaul its line-up.

"I learned about this from Twitter yesterday and immediately began addressing it with the conference organizers through my speaking agent," she said. "I'm disappointed by this oversight but RSA has about six weeks until the conference, so I'm optimistic that the matter will be rectified by then."

The blowback, which hit social media this week, mirrors the controversy that engulfed this year's massive tech confab CES, where all the solo keynote addresses were all delivered by men.

"If you're building security and privacy for everyone, you have to account for a huge spectrum of people's circumstances and concerns about their data. You also need to take advantage of the full spectrum of talents and perspectives available if you want to come up with the best solutions," said Parisa Tabriz, a Google engineering director.

"Today, women and other marginalized groups are regularly underrepresented, across the industry. We have to do better."

The dearth of women headliners has only recently begun to receive widespread attention outside the tech world.

For decades, tech trade shows have enlisted mostly men to speak to the mostly male audiences, turning them into professional obstacle courses for women, who encounter sexism and stereotypes, harassment and sexual assault and "booth babes," scantily clad women hired to lure conference goers to vendor booths.

In 2015, RSA banned booth babes, but continued to hand out keynote addresses to mostly men. Of the 22 keynote speakers this year at RSA, 20 are from the security field and all 20 are men, including Christopher D. Young, CEO of McAfee, and John N. Stewart, chief security and trust officer of Cisco.

Lewinsky, the only woman currently on the roster, is scheduled to speak on "survival, resilience, digital reputation and equality." Just two out of 22 RSA keynote speakers were women in 2017 and two out of 28 speakers in 2016.

Prominent figures from the security world added their voices to the growing criticism.

On Twitter, Facebook's chief security officer Alex Stamos offered up a list of qualified women keynote speakers and proposed a competing conference featuring women left off RSA's keynote list.

"Maybe it's time to rent out the Metreon again for an alt-conference, this time all women speakers (with me handing out popcorn). Anybody game?" he wrote.

The wave of negative attention may undermine efforts by the security industry to be more inclusive. According to Forrester Research, the industry is facing an acute skills shortage that is being exacerbated by gender bias.

By 2022, security is projected to have 1.8 million unfilled jobs around the world. If the industry is to fill those positions, it will need to recruit, retain and promote women, the study released earlier this month found.

Excluding women from the keynote roster sends the message that women are not welcome in the security field, Access Now said in its letter.

"This is a message that will be heard not only by the attendees, but by organizers of other conferences that look to RSA Conference as a source for guidance," the letter reads. "The bigger danger is that we could see this message — and mindset behind it — reflected in hiring, development, and operational decisions across the sector."