Why After Dinner Speakers are Men

If you’ve been to an event with a professional after dinner speaker recently, the chances are it was a male speaker. Whilst you may not have thought it significant at the time, most after dinner speakers are men. Take any speakers’ bureau in the UK and look through their roster of business and politics after dinner speakers: the majority will be male.

In our modern society where equality of the sexes and political correctness are central to the daily running of businesses, looking into the facts behind why after dinner speakers should be so overwhelmingly male is interesting. There’s a lot of backing for the argument that it’s not the after dinner speaking industry that’s sexist, but rather the male dominated industries from which speakers are sourced. This makes sense: most after dinner speakers are previous Prime Ministers, politicians and business leaders. All of these industries are very male dominated. It is also the case that most of the audience members that after dinner speakers address are men. For example, the business speaker will mostly work at business conferences which are attended by more men than women, although women are increasingly moving into the business sphere.

However, as time goes on, the after dinner speakers you can see in the rosters of the leading speaking agencies are beginning to change. There are more and more female speakers. Female after dinner speakers are increasingly being given the respect and recognition they deserve and are getting more work. But still there are claims of a significant gender pay gap in the speaking business. Even in the glossy world of after dinner speaking, equality is a long way off.