With gender inequality still rife within the marketing industry, Affiliate Summit Europe has made the extreme decision to make their ASEURO20 line-up 100% female. The move, that has received some criticism from industry professionals, was made to highlight the existing issues within the sector and draw attention to events that are often male dominated. Alongside this move, from 2021, our events will always feature a speaker lineup that is 50/50 male and female.

Affiliate Summit'is 17 years old this year and ASEURO20 is its 51st event. Having operated in the marketing events industry for so long, we are aware of the disparities between the number of male and female speakers on the agendas of other conferences.

To encourage more applications from female speakers, as well as to highlight the ongoing issue of equality and lack of representation in the sector, Affiliate Summit wanted to make a bold, courageous move with one of their events. We've already seen an uplift in female submissions for speaker slots YoY as a result of this decision and hope other performance marketing companies have similar experiences as an upshot.

There are many events that have a 100% male speaker roster, perhaps accidentally so, and the team wanted to flip this to the extreme, to get those within the industry talking about the lack of diversity.

Any women interested in speaking at the event, who have perhaps felt previously unrepresented, can check out the topics up for discussion here'and submit their application by February 28th.

Hannah Wharrier, spokesperson for www.AffiliateSummit.com commented:

'We decided to make the speaker line-up at our 51st event with ASEURO20 100% female, because we want to inspire women within the industry that may not have felt heard previously. There are many events out there in our sector that often, even accidentally, have an all-male speaker roster with little to no backlash.

It sometimes takes extreme measures for people to sit up and take notice and start thinking seriously about issues that can still be brushed under the carpet. Sometimes a few feathers have to be ruffled in the pursuit of change.

More companies need to be brave and make seemingly radical moves or we will likely stay stagnant, with little representation of diversity at speaker events. We have many events throughout the year, where we have always have a good mix of male and female speakers, but we took this opportunity to make a statement.'

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EDITOR NOTES:
Affiliate Summit was founded in 2003 by Shawn Collins and Missy Ward to inform and educate those within the industry on pressing sector issues, providing a productive environment for affiliate marketers globally to
grow within their profession. The Affiliate Summit brand includes Affiliate Summit Social Events, Performance Marketing Summit, FeedFront Magazine, GeekCast.fm, AffStat.com and ReveNews.com.