Just my opinion, but the idea of &quot;50% women speakers&quot; isn&#x27;t out of some sort of over-representative fairness to a &quot;minority&quot;, but a reflection of real world demographics.<p>In any case I can think of, roughly 50% of people in a given conference&#x27;s catchment area <i>are</i> women, and since tech is an industry in which anyone could excel, having &quot;50% women speakers&quot; is promoting and encouraging a desired ideal to both the industry and potential participants in that industry. (I must note that &quot;failing&quot; at having 50% women speakers at a conference is by no means a fatal flaw, but having the ideal <i>there</i> and the principles in mind can still effect long term change.)<p>The idea of having 50% &quot;trans&quot; people at an event would be a very different one given less than 1% of people are trans, allegedly (although given the stigma still attached, I think being trans needs to become more acceptable in society as a whole before we&#x27;ll know the true number. They&#x27;re probably a lot higher than we&#x27;d suspect, as we saw with homosexuality through the 20th century).