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Manspreading: When a man sits with his legs wide apart,
invading the space of the occupant next to him. |
All-male panels may soon be a thing of the past. Now, feminists are calling out organisers who turn the dais into a manference.
Over a year ago David Hasselhoff, the alpha male once-lifeguard from Baywatch, found himself a new (uninvited) career as the mascot of the 'manel' - the all-male panel. He appeared on a Tumblr called All Male Panels, started in Feb last year by Finnish feminist researcher Dr Saara Sarma. The Tumblr wanted to highlight the gender lopsidedness of discussion panels and other high altars of expertise and experience, like say, state cabinets and boardrooms. Sarma invited people to send in flyers or pictures of all-male events and seminars, which received Hasselhoff's virile stamp of approval: 'Congrats, you have an all male panel!.
The manel is being named and shamed worldwide, with memes, online petitions, boycotts and even spoken word poetry slamming it. 'Group thinking turns into brain shrinking; humans seeking meaning and development, male-only panels are such an embarrassment' raps Sofie Sandell, professional speaker and digital leader on YouTube. In India too, the stew's beginning to simmer.
Last year, Sairee Chahal, founder of Sheroes and Fleximoms — career communities for women — was invited to a top tech conference in Bangalore. "It has typically been a bro affair, but the organisers wanted to do an all-women panel for the first time, alongside their regular all-male sessions, Chahal recalls, "They had no context for the panel - the organisers asked me to identify women panelists and a suitable subject. We didn't do it eventually because the four other women I'd approached from tech felt there was no purpose to the panel."
Companies and conference organisers who are inviting a lone woman to a male-heavy dais simply to avoid the label of sexism are now being called out. Ashwini Asokan, co-founder and CEO of the Artificial Intelligence company, Mad Street Den, has been challenging sexism in the tech industry and got trolled for it. In fact, sexist putdowns are often what hold women back from taking the stage. "Several women started conversations on Twitter saying they lacked the confidence because of bullies and trolls," says Asokan.
She points out that India has more female engineering and computer science graduates than most countries (30- 40% of college seats), giving the lie to the specious claim that suitable women experts simply cannot be found. "It's why I pick up the phone, find them and push them to these panels," Asokan says.
To counter the old boys clubs that conferences and seminars have become, Asokan suggests that women create their own networks. "I was one of the biggest promoters of the Grace Hopper (Celebration of Women in Computing) conferences," she says, "I believe women-only events are a great training field; if you're shy to get up on a mixed gender panel and get bullied, here's where you start. Hopefully, in a few years we won't need women-only conferences at all."
Several women's organisations globally are building databases of women leaders and experts (a woman can nominate herself). Some like the UK-based Her Say and The Women's Room are also shoring up female experts across disciplines who can comment in the media (only 24% of women are heard, seen or read about in traditional media globally, revealed the Global Media Monitoring Project 2015).
ElsaMarie D'Silva, MD and co-founder of Red Dot Foundation, and her colleague, the Kenya-born Esther Ngumbi are assembling a crowd-sourced directory of women experts from around the world; they've got 500 profiles from 45 countries so far. "Filling panel spots with known names (often men) is easy. How can one discuss a topic of any importance without considering the views of 50% of the population?" says D'Silva, a resident of Mumbai. So far two international organisers in Australia and Shanghai have already reached out to them. Phase two will put those profiles on a map with the public listings.
D'Silva and Ngumbi recently wrote a blog post on GoodMenProject.com, appealing to men to also weigh in on the debate. In January, in a domino effect, three leading comics artists withdrew from the lifetime achievement award shortlist of a major comic-books festival in France because it was all-male, prompting several others to bow out as well in protest. In Australia earlier this month five male 'star' speakers pledged to boycott panels that weren't gender-diverse. Quartz also featured Sree Sreenivasan, the chief digital officer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as one of those pledging to give all-male panels a miss.
But a panel is only one Tetris block; it needs to fit in with others to move the bar. An organization that doesn't channel more women into leadership roles would have accomplished nothing more than window dressing by asking a woman to a panel.
"Women don't crave patriarchal pats on the back; they deserve equal participation in public life. Their voices need to be respected and actioned. Women who speak up in public fora are called 'aggressive', 'militant', 'trouble-makers' and worse," says columnist Shobhaa De, who for years has occupied a place at the conference table. "I make sure I am heard loudly and clearly when I sign up for these panels. I turn the 'feeble' questions around when required. If it's an important enough panel discussion, I don't care if I am there as a 'token woman' — I make sure I have my say regardless."
