The gender imbalance on stage at MWC Barcelona 2021 was as stark as ever last week. And the excuse for that, according to GSMA, the industry lobbying group that puts on the event, would be laughable if it wasn’t so demoralizing.

Five of the 24 people GSMA selected to give keynotes during the wireless industry’s largest and most important annual event are female.

The first group of keynotes and a panel that followed might have been the worst of all. It was bad enough that GSMA Director General Mats Granryd felt the need to address the issue before introducing a panel of European operator CEOs.

Considering what came next, it would’ve been better to recognize the failure and stop right there. There is no excuse, but this one was as offensive and bewildering as it was unhinged from reality.

“You will have noticed that this is an all-male panel, and let me just say that that is not the norm here this week,” he said. “But with difficulties in traveling, it has been a little bit more complicated than usual to find and achieve an all-inclusive panel.”

Never mind the fact that many of the event’s keynote speakers, including one on that first panel, joined the stage remotely from their home countries. Words matter.

Hey GSMA, Try Harder

About 100,000 people attended MWC Barcelona 2021 virtually, and 20,000 people were there in person, including 1,500 C-suite executives, according to GSMA.

Granryd was on a roll as the event got underway, reinforcing points of absolute importance, calling upon the industry’s leaders to foster equity, diversity in their ranks, and bridge the gap in access to technology and connectivity. He should have stopped there.

“What strikes me the most about our keynote speakers is how closely aligned we are on our values. We all believe that tech innovation is best used to deliver inclusion and prosperity, and that we have a human duty to make our platforms accessible, fair, and safe for all,” Granryd said.

“The mobile industry consistently challenges the present, speaking out when we need to, and right now in 2021 our industry stands firmly for facts, science, and trust in technology, for diversity and inclusion, for interoperability, scale, and security, and for resisting a technological divide.”

Reading between those lines is a discouraging exercise, considering how spectacularly GSMA failed at including more women on its main stage. 

GSMA isn’t the worst or only repeat offender. The technology industry is notorious for its collective failure to represent the global community of people it relies upon, including equitable percentages of women, Black, indigenous, and other people of color on staff or in leadership positions. Female leaders are few and far between, and this was reflected once again ad nauseam on stage at last week’s event.

CEOs running the world’s largest mobile network operators, spanning Europe, China, the U.S., Japan, the Middle East, Africa, and much of the Asia-Pacific region are male. There are a few women running some in-country subsidiaries of multinational operators, but it remains incredibly rare.

The most powerful telecom vendors, technology suppliers, and hyperscalers are also led by men. 

Hey GSMA, Try Again

GSMA represents who’s in charge, its events notwithstanding. GSMA is a quasi-independent body that makes its own decisions, but it would not exist without the financial backing and support of its members, especially the world’s largest mobile network operators, equipment manufacturers, and software vendors.

It’s up to each of them and all of us to demand more — more women on stage, more female attendees, more diversity of all kinds, and a more equitable representation of half of the world’s population.

GSMA didn’t try hard enough, nary much at all it seems, to mirror its message of inclusivity and empowerment last week. We all must strive and remain hopeful for a more inclusive future, and urging GSMA to right this wrong is the least we can do. Industry leaders have the power to make positive changes any time, and we can give them hell until that happens.

Time is of the essence. GSMA’s next events in Los Angeles and Barcelona are coming up.