Attracting women to tech conferences

Mike Kuniavsky made this graph of his efforts to include more women at a conference he was organizing, with a description of the process he went through to make an equitable number of invitations. The end result was the ratio of men attending to those invited was about 1 in 3, yet for women it was 1 in 19. I'd love to see a comparison of Mike's invitation/acceptance experience vs. an all or mostly women conference such as BlogHer.

UPDATE - Elisa Camahort of BlogHer responds:

"Well, it's pretty apples and oranges. Far as I can tell this was a very small event where it was invite-only to attend and everyone who attended spoke? I'm actually not sure on that, but surfing around his site that's my interpretation of how the event worked. Looks like he invited twice as many men as women.

BlogHer is not invite-only to attend, obviously, it's just open. So there's no relevant comparison there. We had about 90 speakers this year (not including three who had to withdraw at the last minute due to various personal emergencies.) I don't have a specific tally, but I think I could count on one hand the number of invited speakers who declined outright. Lots of folks submitted ideas to us, so obviously they were pre-disposed to attend once we scheduled their sessions. But we probably went out and recruited just as many.

In other cases, however, I guess the scenario might go something like this: you get an invite to an event. You go check out the program. You see a speaking roster that is 95% male (most white.) You sigh and feel overcome with ennui at the idea of being talked at by such a homogenous group and never get inspired to go. Or if you're more militant you actually consciously refuse to go to such a homogenous event. Whether overcome with ennui or making your own personal economic boycott, though, you might not take the time to actually let the organizer know the true reason...presto, left in the dark!

Then again, the times that I have shared such a reason for not attending with organizers I have received exactly ZERO response. So, there you go."