Comment by LesZedCB

Encouraging and incentivizing a female employee to speak at a conference is not reverse sexism or sexism. It's simply providing a pathway to level the playing field. The cultural meme of reverse racism or reverse sexism is simply used to continue in our racist or sexist behaviors unapologetically. These are still cultural issues to deal with, despite the progress we have made on them, and therefore there is a real power dynamic that needs to be accounted for, which manifests itself in people deliberately righting wrongs such as by giving extra encouragement to female developers.