Men invaded women’s job fair after ‘lying’ about being non-binary

Scores of men invaded a tech job fair billed as the largest gathering of women seeking careers in STEM fields after allegedly lying about being non-binary.

Videos across social media showed men racing to meet with potential recruiters at the annual Grace Hopper Celebration event held in Orlando between Sept. 26 to 29 — a job fair specifically aimed at helping women and nonbinary technologists.

The female attendees, some of whom paid about $1,300 per ticket for a chance to network with recruiters, have blasted the cisgender men for skipping all the panels and seminars in order to beat the women to the recruiting lines.

While cisgendered men are not prohibited from attending the event, as they have done so in previous years, AnitaB, the company that organized the seminar, said the men came out in higher numbers this year by skirting the rules.

“Yesterday, it became clear that there are a far greater number of cisgender men attending than we anticipated,” AnitaB Chief Impact Officer Cullen White said in a statement.

“Simply put, some of you lied when you registered. And as evidenced by the stacks and stacks of resumes you’re passing out, you did so because you thought you could come here and take space to try and get a job,” he added.

White noted that the cisgendered men also took discounted academic tickets for the event, as well as interview slots that were supposed to go to women and actual non-binary attendees, who remain minorities in STEM fields.

“So, let me be perfectly clear: Stop,” White told the men.

Lily Li, a product designer who attended the seminar, blasted the state of the annual conference, noting that some of the cisgendered men shoved and “physically hurt” other attendees in their rush to the job booths.

Li ultimately said the organizers failed to provide a safe space for women to try and further their careers without men trying to take advantage of it for themselves.

“The problem is competition is not fair for everyone, that’s why a women’s conference exists to level the playing field because women are highly discriminated against in tech,” she said.

“If they had a career fair for military veterans, but civilians who have never served in the military crashed it, would you be okay with that,” she added, reading a comment from another woman who attended the event.

Ran An, a recent University of Southern California grad who also attended the event did not accept AnitaB’s apology, saying that by the time she got to the job booths, many of them were closed due to the flood of male applicants.

“It’s disheartening to express that my trust in your organization to aid us attendees has been nearly exhausted,” An wrote in LinkedIn.

“The unfolding scenario this morning is a glaring testament to an unfair and disorganized entry system, where attendees were allowed entry in an unequal and arbitrary manner.”