We've had the Speaker Pledge, what about the Attendee Pledge?
Lately there has been a lot of discussion around conferences in the tech world and the amount of female representation on the panels. Whilst this has been an issue for years (check out this post by Sara Williams on our site from 2011 and make some time to read the great comments as well ).
The issue really came into the public domain recently when Rebecca Rosen wrote this piece on the Panel Pledge in The Atlantic.
The simple premise of the pledge is that male speakers at tech and science conferences should refuse to participate unless there are women on stage with them.
It received a lot of attention as Rebecca details in this follow up piece.
So much so that Radio 4's Women's Hour ran a segment under the title 'Male Geeks Rise Up for Women' (make of that what you will) a couple of weeks ago. You can listen again here (about 20 minutes in) to Dr Tom Crick and Aral Balkan discuss the pledge. It also has a lovely short segment about Amy from Manchester who takes part in Girl Geek events at Mad Lab.
I don't speak at conferences and my participation of them is always as an attendee and most of the discussion going on seems to be around what speakers can do. Which got me thinking about my role as an attendee and what I can do to help change the ratio. Is there an Attendee Pledge equivalent of the Speaker Pledge perhaps? We as attendees can vote with our feet by not attending a conference or event that doesn't have an accurate representation of women.
It's a pretty volatile topic and I want to take the time to stress that it's not about Men v Women…at all, I think that Faruk Ateş describes this best when he writes
think of it all not as “quotas” (or tokenization) but as a passion for seeing diverse viewpoints fairly represented on a stage.
Which is spot on, as an attendee I want to experience the most diverse, challenging and inspiring viewpoints on topics. As Sara wrote on our blog a couple of years ago
I don't want to sit at an all-female table any more than I want to listen to an all-male panel. So to those of you who plan events, host conferences and generally play a part in shaping the future of this industry: enough of the force-fed monoculture. We're a diverse lot – represent us accordingly.
What do you think about an attendee pledge? The challenge is a mix of different factors and I think that an open discussion on the matter might lead to some helpful insights on how we might improve the situation.
If you want to read up on this from people who are a lot more eloquent, experienced and informed than I am I would recommend the following pieces.
Aral Balkan's excellent post - On false dichotomies and diversity
Lauren Bacon's - Women in Tech and Empathy at Work
Jess Gartner's - Unpacking Male Privilege
Faruk Ateş - The Problem with a Slate of White, Male Speakers
Matt Andrews - Diversity in tech: still an issue in 2013?
3 comments
Love the grassroots activist approach to this.
Watching the way the speaker pledge thing evolved though, I can’t help feel that this sort of thing could suffer from a similar case of slacktivism.
The most powerful way of enacting change with this sort of thing is to get right in the faces of people organising real, current events, via real attendees of said events.
Putting your name on a list which is going to be seen by like minded individuals, to whom you are practically anonymous is nice at giving cohesion to the movement, but it isn’t going to change things.
How about a little EventBrite API hack which allows people to find events they’re attending, “pledge” (either to cancel their ticket if the ratio’s not fixed, or to just not attend), then open it up and invite other attendees to do the same?
(You could use the social mediaj interwebnet for this).
Power to da peoples.
Yo Mr Sprinz, I couldn’t agree more about the slacktavism and the gap between intentions and action.
Awesome idea on the EventBrite hack, well up for trying a more creative solution out.
As a conference organizer, I can tell you what would most definitely get my attention: folks refusing to attend based upon the make-up of my speakers. So, too, would potential sponsors refusing to sponsor an event with a homogenous speaker lineup. Conferences make (or lose) money based upon these 2 audiences. Hit ’em where it hurts.
And I love Will’s point that the issue here is one of putting the most comprehensive expression of viewpoints on the stage. That’s the mark of a quality conference.