<h1>Gender-based exclusion at a diplomatic press event challenges press access and invokes diplomatic privilege scrutiny, prompting calls for government response.</h1> Female journalists were excluded from a foreign minister's embassy press conference, prompting media bodies to label the act as gender-based exclusion and demand that the host government raise the matter with the embassy. Organisers' reliance on diplomatic privilege under the Vienna Convention and appeals to foreign customs were rejected by critics as inadequate justification for discriminatory press-access practices on host territory.