Inclusion riders got a big visibility push (I’d never heard of the term before) when Frances McDormand belted it out during her best actress Oscar speech.
Karolina Szczur on bringing them to tech conferences:
It’s crucial to make the inclusion requirements quantifiable and specific. We want to avoid prompting minority tokenism or organisers focusing on only one, most popularised angle of diversity.
The “rider” can happen right in email. An ultimatum if you’ll participate or not:
I only partake in conferences that have at least 40% women speaking, including representation of women of colour in the lineup. I believe it’s necessary to speak up against the exclusionary nature of our industry and this is one way of doing so.
Speaking of email, I’m blogging about it.
