How Women Should Respond to All-Male Panels

Last month, Goldman Sachs hosted a conference in London on disruptive technology. Out of 76 speakers at the event, five were women. That was hardly an anomaly: At a 2016 event in Davos organized by the company Mercer, for example, all of the speakers on a panel about helping women thrive were men. (The moderator, at least, was female.) Similarly, one count of events at six leading think tanks in Washington found that 65 percent of their panels were all-male.

Denying women opportunities to present at professional conferences prevents them from gaining visibility in their fields, and it deprives their colleagues of valuable perspectives. So in 2013, Rebecca J. Rosen proposed a solution in The Atlantic: Men should refuse to speak on all-male panels.1492454293926 If all men did this, of course, it would immediately solve the problem.