Tech speakers, it's 2023. Stop using moms as your example of a non-technical audience. It's wrong, its not funny, and whatever you were saying, now most of your audience is not thinking about it.
Just use the exec team as an example instead and get on with your life.
And dudes, if you think this is a small thing (it's not), then it should be a small thing for you to fix your shit. If you'd like to not have to deal with people being annoying when you do it, you can literally have that.
Everyone else, if you're in a position to do so without it being a risk for you, tell the speaker and the conference, every single time.
Also? Marketing? HR? Largely female-coded work, so you're doing the same thing, but now also showing that you don't really respect your colleagues. And yes, they are actually your colleagues, and they do notice. Punch up. The CEO will laugh too, and he can take it.
If he can't, you really want to change jobs anyway.
@dymaxion Hmm! It's interesting that you're saying Marketing is female-coded. I don't think I have any such associations.
(Interestingly, I tend to conflate it somewhat with Sales, which I think of as male-coded.)
HR though, yes, strongly female-coded in my mind.
Eleanor Saitta
varx/tech
unicorndeburgh