It's the 21st century ... how is the #allmalepanel still even possible?

All-male panels are a particularly emotive subject for me. I’ve written about them and I follow the #allmalepanel hashtag for updates on the topic. But recently I’ve noticed three developments that add more nuances to the debate on gender and panel diversity – and more broadly on how we meet and talk. I’ve also noticed that three new academic articles have been published in the International Feminist Journal of Politics.

Why so many men/people on a single panel?

Even though this requires a bit more research, it really seems that seven has become some kind of magic number.

Katri Bertram (@KatriBertram) Look forward to this panel on #G20 #globalhealth, despite the #allmalepanel fail. pic.twitter.com/O98mL7CMXa

Maybe people only share panels with a particularly large number of men, but in general I have a gut feeling that panels seem to grow in different surroundings such as academia, policy and other public events. So even if we assume that these panels could be more diverse, that does not answer the more strategic question: “What do you expect from a six, seven or eight-person panel? Even if everybody only speaks for five minutes and you add a little time for transitions or Q&A that automatically turns a seven-person panel into an hour-long affair. So you may well have invited seven people to get five-10 minutes out of them. Even if they do other things at the conference or speak on a second panel it still looks like showing off and dropping names for the sake of it.

Tobias Denskus (@aidnography) "Let's put the female expert in the centre, so it doesn't look like an #AllMalePanel with 7 guys in suits" https://t.co/6uMLn8pztt

‘Ethnographic’ representations of power and policy-making

In addition to actual panels, a lot of roundtables are also shared under #allmalepanel. Often in connection with EU policy-making, these images come with a context of how policy-making “takes place” in poorly-lit conference rooms, or traditional, masculine rooms with flags and wood-panelling.



Sara Johansson (@SaraJohansson) #AllMalePanel on sustainable agriculture at #EU_AgriOutlook pic.twitter.com/qosOtFYiu3

Chair next to chair, men sit around big tables, no breathing space in their suits, nothing that provides inspiration in the room – it is hard to imagine how this provides a space for “thinking outside the box” or finding innovative solutions to the complex worldwide problems.

Foreign Office (FCO) (@foreignoffice) Foreign Secretary @BorisJohnson joins international call for humanitarian access in Aleppo, Syria: https://t.co/lG0YxeEN0T pic.twitter.com/pkBK0UIztV

Here they sit on a stage...



Petra Stienen (@petra_stienen) Reflections on 25 years European Union... why ask women? #AllMalePanel #EuropeCalling pic.twitter.com/sCDnLnRjdR

And here they are in different kinds of suits...

The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) Laureate in Economic Sciences, Bengt Holmström, receives his #NobelPrize "for their contributions to contract theory". pic.twitter.com/6bdOFGEaaj

Defending #allmalepanel

The German sustainability award spent quite a lot of time on Twitter to convince critics that a picture with 17 men was not all that bad – “It’s not the men who were awarded prices – they are just representatives for 17 amazing projects”. Be that as it may, 17 men representing projects from the private and public sectors are still quite telling. As long as the bosses, supervisors or project leaders are all male we need to discuss structural issues, and not just responding with the “maybe more women can apply next year” line.

Nachhaltigkeitspreis (@_DNP_) Auf Wiedersehen 2017 - Am Freitag wurde zum neunten Mal der Deutsche Nachhaltigkeitspreis verliehen: https://t.co/KIgdUEKOjm pic.twitter.com/nYJ8gD78iQ

And even though this hardly warrants a reply any more, there is the “I’d rather see qualified people on the panel even if it makes them less diverse” line. I do not doubt that many of the men on the panels are qualified, but as I point out regularly, the question is not about some artificial quota, but about diversity of opinions and the visible gender binaries are only one aspect of many others.

A woman’s place is in the audience: the joy of all-male panels Read more

So what’s next for 2017 (and beyond)?

In most cases, the organisations, forums and organisers that are pointed out via the #allmalepanel hashtag do not respond, let alone engage in a discussion on how to avoid #allmalepanel in the future. Some conference organisers make promises, but the mega-conferencing industry is already such a flawed enterprise that simply adding more women will hardly change produce better annual meetings of some association or other.

Awesome w/o Borders (@AF_WB) "Make sure to include women in the decision process, plain and simple." - @GenderAvenger

How can we create more diverse and creative spaces for exchanges that can break at least some of the rituals of how we get together? As with most behaviour, change initiatives it starts with us. Owen Barder’s pledge to never appear on an all-male panel is important, but maybe we need to go further and pledge to attend fewer panels in general, fewer conferences in global chain hotels, fewer meetings in traditional spaces and more meetings that are family or pet-friendly and that generally are organised in a more thoughtful way other than giving business to the conference facility and schedule three coffee breaks.

Harnisch Foundation (@harnischfound) "Diversity and balanced representation doesn't happen by accident. It happens by careful and intentional design." - @GenderAvenger