There’s a conference in Bergen in a couple of weeks time (commercial, not academic) called “Digital hverdag”, which means digital everyday life – there are exhibitions, and presentations, you know, but the striking thing is they’ve managed to set up a program with ONLY MEN in the plenary sessions. Not ONE woman. There are, admittedly three women squeezed into the parallel sessions on the final afternoon. But for goodness sake, look at that front page: all those mens’ faces. Lovely men, no doubt, but honestly, 11 of 11 plenary speakers are men, and 13 of 16 speakers in the parallel sessions are men. And Norway is supposedly one of the countries with the best gender balance in the world. It’s depressing.
It also seems extremely stupid, given that women surpassed men as gadget- and electronic-purchasers more than three years ago. Whose digital everyday life are we talking about, anyway?
?sne Hagen
En relatert diskusjon: (bla ned til 8-9-12 oktober)
Jill
Ah, I’ve seen a few versions of the “where are the women at your conference” discussion now, yes… If we discuss it often enough, maybe things will change?
From the discussion you posted, ?sne, I also found this great List of Women Speakers for your Conference. Mostly in art and design. Very nice.
gamma sync
I was recently asked to serve on the organizing committee for a prestigious conference. The main conference organizer had set a goal of having equal representation of women and men on the conference committee. I was unable to help out, but I easily found 2 other women who were delighted to be given the opportunity to help.
If gender equality isn’t a priority at the top, it just doesn’t happen. The little extra push to make it happen, and it happens pretty easily.
The conference is in a topic area that is easily 95% men, and has a reputation of being distincly unfriendly to women.
The question is, do they have any women speakers featured?