This conference was not built for you

Chantal Stekelenburg opens by asking who conferences are really built for. She argues that gender inclusion in cybersecurity is often treated as already solved, even though women make up roughly 20 percent of the workforce. She traces the gap back to childhood messages about toys and praise, unequal steering toward technical education, and few visible role models. Her focus is the stage before a call for papers opens, when people quietly decide whether they belong.

She then examines the assumptions behind a common claim that a lineup lacked diverse submissions. Equal access to time, money, employer support and caregiving is not a given, and neither is equal confidence, a safe path to visibility, or equal access to the network that hears about a call early. She points to dark, high-contrast conference branding and speaker pages dominated by white men as signals that shape who applies. Her practical fixes include inclusive wording in calls and job posts, directly inviting people to speak, offering coaching, flexible timing for parents, and blind first-round review followed by a check on lineup balance.

She closes by framing inclusion as an operational problem. Using the AirTag stalking episode, she argues that homogeneous teams produce narrow threat models, and that diverse perspectives add the friction and disagreement security depends on.