SAN
FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The technology industry’s premier annual gathering kicks
off next week with no women leading the keynote sessions and no code of
conduct
that might prevent incidents of sexual harassment, despite efforts by
organizers to cast the show as a more inclusive event.
CES, the
showcase for the latest consumer electronics from televisions to self-driving
cars, is known for mostly male attendees and female models known as ‘booth
babes’ showing off the new technology.
It has
attracted criticism for not making itself more welcoming for women or toning
down its sexualized atmosphere even as the issue of harassment and assault has
grabbed headlines in the last six months and propelled the #MeToo movement into
life.
“The fact
that this large global gathering of tech leaders is totally ignoring this issue
makes them completely tone deaf and irresponsible,” said Liliana Aide Monge,
chief executive of California coding school Sabio, who is skipping CES for the
second year in a row because of the lack of women and minority speakers.
The
organizers of CES, which opens its doors to nearly 200,000 attendees in Las
Vegas on Tuesday, drew criticism last month from executives at Twitter Inc
(TWTR.N) and other tech companies for a keynote list dominated by white men.
CES made a concerted push to diversify its entire speaker lineup, but
ultimately failed to find a high-ranking female executive for an individual
keynote address.
“To keynote
at CES, the speaker must head (president/CEO level) a large entity who has name
recognition in the industry,” said Karen Chupka, who oversees the event as
senior vice president at the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), in a blog
post a month ago. “As upsetting as it is, there is a limited pool when it comes
to women in these positions. We feel your pain. It bothers us, too. The tech
industry and every industry must do better.”
On top of
that, CES also will go forward without creating a code of conduct, a mechanism
several conferences in technology and other industries have adopted in recent
years to set rules for behavior for attendees, from guidelines on using
inclusive language in presentations to requirements that attendees wear name
tags at all events, even after hours, to deter misconduct.
”It’s sad
that CES doesn’t have a code of conduct,” said Y-Vonne Hutchinson, founder of
ReadySet, a diversity-focused consulting firm. “They have a lot of influence.
If they’re choosing not to leverage that to promote diversity and inclusion at
large, that communicates to the rest of the industry that maybe it isn’t as
necessary as we keep saying that it is.”
HIGH STAKES
Evidence of
the effect on shows’ safety and tone is mostly anecdotal, but several
conferences with these codes, including hacker convention DEF CON, CoreOS Fest
and Cloud Foundry Summit, say they have removed attendees after reports of
harassment.
The stakes
are high for the technology industry, rocked in the past year by a sexual
harassment scandal at Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] and misconduct by some
prominent Silicon Valley investors.
The
organizers of CES say they expect attendees to heed their own companies’
standards of business conduct and will kick out anyone who behaves poorly, but
will not introduce a set of guidelines.
”We don’t
necessarily have specific rules because we assume everyone will be held
accountable to the standards of being in an office,” said Chupka.
“Unacceptable”
behavior would be addressed by the executive team and legal counsel as
necessary, the CTA said. “We have the right at any time to revoke a show badge
and/or trespass an individual.” CES notes that it has received no reports of
sexual harassment at the event in recent years.
Women
subjected to uncomfortable situations at or near past CES gatherings told Reuters
that they did not report incidents because they were too used to it or did not
recognize there was a way to do so.
To change
that thinking, the show is debuting a security app that lets attendees report
issues from crimes to broken elevators. While there will be no effort to
promote the app specifically as a way to report sexual harassment, attendees
may do so, and CES said its lawyers will be ready to act.
SLUSH CODE
The need for
a code of conduct became apparent at Finland’s Slush tech startup event in 2016
when multiple women spoke up about being inappropriately touched and receiving
unwanted propositions for sex by male attendees as well as being ignored by
investors who were only interested in working with male entrepreneurs.
The
following year, it doubled security, trained staff on how to handle reports of
harassment and instituted a code of conduct, including a requirement to wear
name badges at all times as a way to make it easier for attendees to identify a
harasser.
A similar
approach has been adopted by some in the U.S. tech industry. Salesforce.com
Inc’s (CRM.N) Dreamforce event, second only to CES in attendee numbers, added a
code of conduct in 2014, while film, tech and music conference South by
Southwest added one in 2016. Meanwhile, large conferences run by Oracle Corp
(ORCL.N) and RSA Security have not adopted such a code.
It remains
to be seen if CES’s lack of a code of conduct will prove costly.
Las Vegas’
reputation for excess is part of the problem, said Liz Lopez, a tech marketing
professional who has attended several industry conferences in the city.
“People are
over the edge in their behavior when they’re in Vegas,” she said.
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