Where are the women in mobile?

or digital or marketing or whatever...?!

I've just been looking at the speakers list for ihollywood which is running concurrently with 3GSM. At least there are *3* female speakers during the day (out of 27!) but I wonder how many women will attend? At least having 3 speakers is better than the zero female speakers at MediaTech as run by LibraryHouse in December last year and the very low attendance by women at the event (I counted maybe 10 women throughout the day - Library House admits they're stumped as to how to attract more women). Even at my own Swedish Beers event, men probably outnumbered the women by about 9 to 1. And no doubt it will be the same at 3GSM next month in Barcelona (with the exception of the Women in Mobile Data Event I'll be running - you see, I know they're out there, they just seem to be invisible...). Russell at Mobhappy's noticed it too.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no man-hater by *any* stretch of the imagination and clearly much innovation has been from men. But women do make up roughly half the population and allegedly are as bright and productive and as important as men (at least in Western Society). And i-mode was born of woman not man*. Except we're not (generally) represented in the digital world. This worries me. Technology is moving *seriously* fast and I believe womens voices should be heard when it comes to creating, developing, running and marketing new technology services (mobile, web 2.0 or whatever). I don't want men exclusively running my digital life thanks or my future digital life. Not least because women, in soooo many studies, are better at this communications thing than men. And let's face it, mobile is predominantly about communication. So ladies, where are you? (Clearly busy doing other important things). Stand up and be heard. Have your say and let's make this new digital world a better and balanced place by adding our 2p.

/rant

*Anyone know where I can get the 'mother of i-mode' book in English?