I've been asked this question before. I've seen organisers ask this question about their events and meet ups. I've seen (many) photos of meet ups where it's entirely men, usually middle aged, usually white.
The organiser doesn't consider themselves as sexist (or racist), and they've tried, they've reached out, but none of the women invited were available.
Here's a thought.
Look, I'm fallible. I'm not a big thinker and I don't particularly come up with original and new ideas (I'm quite average in fact). That's to say, I've made these mistakes myself and I hope that this short post offers some help for those wanting to make, and continue to make, more inclusive environments.
There's always going to be many factors why some people won't have availability, but one that springs to mind, particularly when it's men and women, is that "usually" the default care giver in a family is the women. It's not fair, it's not right, but it's not false either.
If you find that your event or meetup is poorly attended by women, consider, firstly, what if you had kids to pick up from nursery or school, dinner/tea to cook for said kids, bedtimes, and more. Perhaps a weekend would make better sense.
Though an even simpler way to diversify your attendees is to diversify your organisation team (even if that means going from a solo organiser to just one other person, who doesn't look like you).
I know that most technology sectors are populated mostly by men (to some degree or another), and I know, first hand, that it's extremely easy (and tempting) to fill an event - both speakers and organisers - with names that spring immediately to mind. But those names (certainly in my case) are usually men, so I have to ask myself why is that? Can I change where I'm looking, how I'm thinking.
Looking at web community events (both indie and big-ish) before the pandemic in 2020, it felt like we were seeing a real positive change to the make up of our speaker diversity.
I've long believed that if you have someone on stage that you can relate to (and it is usually "do they look like me"), then it can inspire you, the attendee, to want to do the same (not particularly speak, but to grow, elevate, teach, create a better web). To change our attendees we have to represent them in the speakers.
Since post-pandemic, since events have returned, we - the web community - seemed to have regressed our progress of diversity in speakers. I'd like to be wrong, and I certainly only see a fraction of all the events going on, but there's a sense that the efforts were a little forgotten.
Diversity serves us all in the end. It does make us better at what we do, and honestly, it makes life a little more interesting too. This diversity is the flavour of the web, but we really do need to make intentional effort to create it.
I should add that I'm arbitrarily saying "more women" but this applied across the board to the wealth of minorities that can offer rich experiences to our communities.
Good luck my fellow organisers. I do, in fact, have some hope that we can get much more of a mix of people together for our events.