Austin’s yearly hipster/nerd conference South by Southwest just announced the lineup for it’s comedy offerings, and there are lots and lots of amazing, talented, hilarious people performing. It’s going to be great! There’s an almost overwhelming about of top-notch comedic talent all in one place. But here’s the problem: of the 31 comics they booked, 30 of them are men. Hm.
As Kate Spencer pointed out, there are lots and lots of excellent female comedians out there, and the odds of them all being booked or unavailable are pretty slim.
It’s especially odd that SxSW, which makes people putting panels together jump through all sorts of diversity-related hoops, would be so blind to this. If you’re putting together a SxSW panel, you literally need to give them “75 words regarding where this person stands on the V-O-W-E-L diversity scale†on each potential panelist. The V-O-W-E-L diversity scale, guys! The W stands for Women! How did an organization so paranoid about being accused of things like this in its panels end up booking only one female comedian in its comedy showcases?