Gender and SF

This is an excellent post about gender representation in SF.

Money quote:

I am not suggesting that the participants are consciously sexist or intend to suppress or erase the existence of women writers. I am saying that this conversation follows a typical social pattern in which (a) men talk more than women in mixed company; (b) men promote male writers significantly more than they promote women writers; (c) the criteria which determine value or worth inherently favor men's contributions over women's, which are deemed trivial or inapplicable; (d) women's contributions to the critical or cultural canon are systematically devalued, forgotten, or erased.

One thought about people speaking at con panels: at a lot of commie events I go to, the moderator often deliberately alternates between male and female speakers when taking questions. Why isn't that more common in fandom?