Ivanka Trump was the keynote speaker at the recent CES 2020 in Las Vegas. But rather than being commended for getting a White House official as its guest, organizers received criticisms for its choice on the keynote speaker role.
Critics already voiced their opposition to having Ivanka Trump as the speaker back in December. There were talks of boycotting the tech conference on social media with the Twitter hashtag #boycottCES becoming popular, according to Refinery29.
A lot expressed disappointment over CES organizers’ choice. “It's incredibly disappointing CES hasn't taken keynote speakers from its exceptional pool of women in tech, who fully understand the future of work within the industry,” Gallium Ventures Heather Delaney told Engadget. Delaney was one of the many women who submitted speaker proposals was were rejected by the CTA, the event’s organizer.
The main issue was that there are many women who are deemed more qualified than Ivanka to be the CES 2020 speaker. “There are a lot of women who are doing a lot of work to help women in tech and build products that help women and help children and families,” Winnie CEO Sara Mauskopf told the Washington Post. “Ivanka Trump is not one of them.”
Critics were particularly vocal on social media. “There are thousands of qualified women working at major companies that could deliver a keynote,” video game developer Brianna Wu wrote on Twitter, according to InStyle. “There are thousands of women engineering the products at CES that could deliver a keynote. There are dozens of important women journalists that could deliver a keynote. Ivanka is not one of us.”
Many felt that CES organizers simply wasted the chance to invite the right person who represents women working in tech. “CES finally invites a female keynote speaker and they choose Ivanka f***ing Trump,” Twitter user Cristina del Mar wrote. “Insulting, to say the least, to call on an unqualified bigot to speak.”
Indeed, women are poorly represented in the tech industry that having the right woman speaking at the CES would have been a way to redress the situation. In 2018, CES chose an all-male roster of speakers but it had to add two female panelists at the last minute after facing backlash from leaders in the tech industry.