The problem with your ‘challenge’ is that it dodges the real reason we have so many all-male panels. In many areas of public policy there are very few women AS A PERCENTAGE who are experts. There will always be one or two but not many.

As someone who has put panels together, I can tell you what happens. You start off with a desire to get a woman. You try the obvious ones. For whatever reason, they aren’t available. Shit. So you consider a lesser known woman, but that might look odd and unbalanced – and also risks confirming stereotypes if she’s not as good as the blokes you’ve invited. So you go back to the obvious women and try to bribe them to make themselves available – “we’ll send a car”, “we can put you up in Claridges”, ‘Of course we can pay for you to fly in” – sometimes without effect.

The BBC, for example, simply will not permit all-male panels as a matter of liberal principle – and you should ask any producer what a nightmare that can cause.

Personally, I prefer to have a woman, just as I prefer other forms of diversity, because I think it adds texture and makes it more attractive for an audience but it doesn’t make for a higher calibre of discussion, per se. And don’t give me nonsense about ‘adding a woman’s perspective’ because there are plenty of elite women who are no different in terms of their opinions to the men they sit alongside.

We do have positive discrimination in favour of women a lot of the time and I’m fine with that for the reasons I’ve outlined but don’t try and tell me there would be more if we put panels together on merit. There would be many fewer.

As mentioned above, there are in some areas of industry/policy simply a dearth of female experts – for whatever reason.

Another reason the “same people” get chosen is that they are not just experts in their field, but they are also good at articulating themselves in public.

To foist on the attendees of the panel debate a second-rate panel simply to comply with political requirements is to insult the intelligence of the people who have travelled (and often paid) to listen to the debate.

As someone who attends lectures/debates etc fairly often, I do look at the list of speakers and if I see one panel debate with a number of high quality experts, and another with some experts and a couple of nobodies, I know which one I will attend.

I’ve sat in rather too many soporific debates where people were chosen because they provide political balance, but they were utterly incapable of explaining their point of view in a coherent and interesting manner.

You would be better off working to fix the source of the problem – a lack of articulate female experts – than trying to force attendees of debates to listen to second-rate speakers.

Colin makes some good points above. It’s a bit of a tricky issue. Obviously it’s a good general principle to ensure diversity on a panel. On the other hand, what if you’ve been tasked to form a panel of experts in the field, and the most relevant available experts are all the same gender?

Removing some of these experts and replacing them with less qualified people of the other gender is only going to hurt your effectiveness – and smack of postive discrimination into the bargain. There’s nothing sexist in the organiser’s desire to have the most qualfied panel possible.

On the other hand, if this happens a lot, which I imagine it does, that suggests a deeper problem regarding who gets into positions of authority in the country. That can’t be addressed at the level of panel selection. Although no doubt there are some people who do think men are more authoratative (or whatever) and discriminate in their favour for that reason. It’s tricky, and you certainly can’t tell much by pointing at a single small panel and saying that it’s weighted in favour of one gender or another.

When I wrote about this last time, I was (yawn, of course) accused of tokenism.

I suspect I will be again.

I look forward to lots of women on panels, as long as there’s a recognition that some of those women will hold views that either the author or myself would vehemently disagree with. I mean, why bother having Gillian Tett or Stephanie Flanders on an economics debate when you can have a female hedge fund trader or ex-Institute of Directors head Ruth Lea? Sure, the panel will look balanced, but not necessarily in terms of ideology.

@Iain

“there are in some areas of industry/policy simply a dearth of female experts – for whatever reason.”

Emma’s already covered this:

“In fact, I am so confident that it’s twaddle, I challenge my challengers. Find me an all male panel – in fact, find me any topic on which you could reasonably hold an informed public debate – and I’ll give you the names of five women who could hold their own on the panel.”

Rather than talking about ‘some areas’ where there is this supposed dearth, let’s see some examples.

Excellent article, btw.

…who understand the true value of diversity in voices and thought…

Hrrmmmm. There is no inherent value in the diversity of voices and thought. Women should be included but they shouldn’t be included because they’re woman any more than they should be excluded because they’re women. (That would mean they’re still being essentialised as women, which, I think, is to be avoided.) They should be included if they, personally, have the relevant experience n’ expertise for whatever panel’s goin’ awn.

Find me an all male panel – in fact, find me any topic on which you could reasonably hold an informed public debate – and I’ll give you the names of five women who could hold their own on the panel…

Fishing. I’ve seen women take part in just about everything commonly held to be a man’s pursuit. But, and maybe I’m alone in this, I’ve never seen a woman fish.

Giving women a platform to share their thoughts isn’t just good for those individual women, but for all of us – male and female – who understand the true value of diversity in voices and thought.

Sorry, but there is a logical disconnect in this argument.

On the one hand, you are saying that women deserve an equal platform because their views on a particular subject cannot be inferior to those of men by reason of their gender- that women are as naturally interested in studying the same subjects as men and in developing the same high levels of expertise in the same proportions.

On the other hand, you are saying that the value of having women on panels is because they have diverse voices and thought, clearly implying that there are differences of view and interest that are gender related.

Which is it?

And if there really is a such wide pool of insightful, politically expert women panellists eager to burst onto the political scene, why do we keep getting Polly Toynbee again and again?

When I wrote about this last time, I was (yawn, of course) accused of tokenism.

Agreed (Yawn)

I think the gender binary division is easy to focus on because it is so obvious and simplistic.

what about people from ethnic minorities/trans people/non-heterosexual people/people with disabilities/people from working class backgrounds. Do they deserve a platform or is it just ‘women’?

BenSix:

[Burnell} Find me an all male panel – in fact, find me any topic on which you could reasonably hold an informed public debate – and I’ll give you the names of five women who could hold their own on the panel…

Fishing. I’ve seen women take part in just about everything commonly held to be a man’s pursuit. But, and maybe I’m alone in this, I’ve never seen a woman fish.

Congratulations for (ahem) rising to the bait. You do realise that the author’s contacts book will have at least a dozen women who can talk carp (as it were), so you’ll lose.

Agree 100%. Its part of a wider problem that people get chosen from the same small pool of contacts.

QRG @ 10 raises another good point.

Gender isn’t the only line along which we divide people. How on earth would you go about ensuring that a panel had the “correct” balance in terms of not only gender but also race, religion, class, ability, sexuality…? Again, it seems the only sensible (not to mention reasonable) decision is to choose people for a panel with a mind to ensuring that a range of views are included, not based on the demographic boxes they happen to tick.

7. Can’t imagine a very stimulating debate on angling at a political panel. For angling straight you could try Lucy Bowden from http://www.fishingforeveryone.com/index.asp

For sustainable fishing discussion there are several women working at the Marine Stewardship Council who could be invited. As too could the current Secretary of State for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs as well as her Shadow.

Burnel (in the OP)l:

Giving women a platform to share their thoughts isn’t just good for those individual women, but for all of us – male and female – who understand the true value of diversity in voices and thought.

Burnell (in the comments):

For sustainable fishing discussion there are several women working at the Marine Stewardship Council who could be invited. As too could the current Secretary of State for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs as well as her Shadow.

So that’s a woman espousing Tory ideology and a woman espousing Labour ideology. If we add George Monbiot and Rick Stein* we’d have a balance in terms of gender, but I’m not so sure about the diversity of thought, at least as far as the politicians are concerned.

*Of course we could have Ainsley Harriott instead, but this thread is about women (and fish), not ethnicity, and Lorraine Pascale might not be available on this occasion.

One last thought:

In fact, I am so confident that it’s twaddle, I challenge my challengers. Find me an all male panel – in fact, find me any topic on which you could reasonably hold an informed public debate – and I’ll give you the names of five women who could hold their own on the panel. It’s not tokenism you see, it’s research.

Abortion: Nadine Dorries, Ruth Kelly, Victoria Gillick, Melanie Phillips and Anne Widdecombe.

I don’t rate any of them on this topic (and wouldn’t trust them on many others), but I’m assuming they all qualify.

“In fact, I am so confident that it’s twaddle, I challenge my challengers. Find me an all male panel – in fact, find me any topic on which you could reasonably hold an informed public debate – and I’ll give you the names of five women who could hold their own on the panel. It’s not tokenism you see, it’s research.”

Whilst I agree with your issue, a challenge is a challenge.

So how about Prostrate Cancer?

Hm, my comment seems to have gone astray.

Anyway, in the search for subjects where you’d have real difficulty finding good female panellists for a robust public debate, I offer up:

Prostrate Cancer.

Though I do agree with the general point that female voices are not heard as much in the political sphere as they should be.

17.

1. Ruth Holdaway, Director of Operations, The Prostate Cancer Charity
2. Dr Helen Rippon, Head of Research, The Prostate Cancer Charity
3. Dr Sarah Cant, Head of Policy and Campaigns, The Prostate Cancer Charity
4. Anne Bishop, Chief Executive, British Association of Uruological surgeons.
5. Patricia Hagen, Deputy Chief Executve, British Association of Uruological surgeons.

Hold a political informed public debate on prostate cancer, and I’m willing to say that any one of these five women could hold their own on the panel.

@ 19

So what you’re doing is Googling subjects and finding names of women who are experienced in them. Fine. But that’s not the issue. If someone made an honest effort to find a panel full of the most qualified people in the field, and the resulting panel happened to be comprised of one gender, would you consider that to be a problem?

I should clarify: to my mind, the question isn’t whether female experts can be found for any given field, because the answer to that question is an obvious “yes”. The question is whether panels comprised of only one gender are automatically a bad thing.

@21, that’s not really the question though is it? The response to that is also an obvious “no.” The point of the article is that there are too many panels comprising one gender only – men – therefore organisers need to do better research. How do you *know* whether someone is the best and most knowledgable person? What are your criteria? How do you know someone else, namely a woman, wouldn’t come with a different perspective and a different kind of knowledge? The argument about whether people are picked because of their gender despite their knowledge and authority is a distraction from the actual problem: women, *despite their expertise* are routinely ignored and excluded from political panels. Therefore the question is: what are we going to do about that?

@ 22 Hari Kane

“that’s not really the question though is it? The response to that is also an obvious “no.” The point of the article is that there are too many panels comprising one gender only – men – therefore organisers need to do better research.”

No, that’s not the point of the article, and the response “no” is evidently not obvious to the OP. The title and second paragraph openly call for the end of all-male panels, full stop. Which, given the number of panels around, is effectively a call for gender discrimination.

The OP also claims that she can name women who could “hold their own” on any presently all-male panel. Note the criteria there: not people who would necessarily be better choices for the panel, merely those who can hold their own. This really is tokenism, no matter how much the OP may yawn when people point out that fact.

“How do you *know* whether someone is the best and most knowledgable person? What are your criteria? How do you know someone else, namely a woman, wouldn’t come with a different perspective and a different kind of knowledge?”

Well, it depends on the topic, and it’ll inevitably be subjective to a degree. But, if suitability for the panel is what you’re after, I’d prefer the organiser to think “who is the most suitable person for the panel?”, as opposed to “who is the most suitable person for this panel who is also of the correct gender?”

Basically, if you can do your best to make an honest assessment of who would be best for a panel, and all the people on your list happen to be of one gender, you shouldn’t then artifically change the list – lowering your estimated overall suitability in the process – just to tick demographic boxes. Unless, of course, the whole point of the panel is to compare attitudes across demographics. Or unless you’re aware that you personally tend to be biased in one gender’s favour.

“The argument about whether people are picked because of their gender despite their knowledge and authority is a distraction from the actual problem: women, *despite their expertise* are routinely ignored and excluded from political panels. Therefore the question is: what are we going to do about that?”

That seems to translate as “the argument over whether people are picked because of their gender ignores the fact that people are picked because of their gender”. I’m not just going to accept your answer to the question as fact. However:

If women ARE routinely exluded from panels because of their gender, more so than men, then we have a problem with panel organisers. However, the existence of this problem isn’t proved, as the OP seems to think, by the existence of all-male panels: even in a perfectly fair world, that could just be how the dice fell.

If women AREN’T more likely to be excluded from panels based on gender than men, but are still found on panels less frequently, then what we have is a situation where fewer women than men get into positions of authority. This may or may not be a problem (my guess is that it is), depending on whether this is due to glass ceilings and the like, or personal preferences.

It could also be a mix of the two, obviously – in fact, that seems most likely. Both are difficult problems to solve, because you can almost always mount a reasonable defence for who’s been chosen for a specific panel, and because the other problem is a society-wide issue affected by things like individual prejudice and underlying assumptions about gender norms. But the solution to these problems is not to find a different, non-existent problem (i.e., the fact that male-only panels exist) and try to solve that instead.

Chaise Guevara:

@ 19

So what you’re doing is Googling subjects and finding names of women who are experienced in them. Fine. But that’s not the issue. If someone made an honest effort to find a panel full of the most qualified people in the field, and the resulting panel happened to be comprised of one gender, would you consider that to be a problem?

We’ve established that it’s only a problem if the gender is male. That’s how the argument works. A ‘balanced’ panel is a non-issue and an all-female one is not open to challenge, even if it consisted of a bunch of right-wingers (who can equally be found via Google). The confusion between a headcount and an ideology is a problem with the OP..

@ redpesto

“We’ve established that it’s only a problem if the gender is male.”

Have we? Don’t get me wrong, I’m very much getting that vibe too, but has the OP made it clear that she thinks this way?

10
I think you’ll find that the category ‘woman’ envelops all of the categories you mention.
13
Ditto

@ 26 steveb

What are you on about? The category “women” does not envelop sexualities, religions, disabilities etc. You could ensure all panels were 50% women and still not have a single gay, disabled or Hindu panelist anywhere. I’m honestly not sure what point you’re trying to make.

27
Similarly, you could have all of those categories you mention and it does not include a woman. We have an approximate 50/50 male/female population split, and within those gender groups we have the categories you mention.
Surely, we need to address problems with the major groupings first, which, in this instance, appears to be male/female. We can make no assumptions from the OP about the deficit in any of the categories you mention, there may be appropriate representation of each category in the existing male panels.

@ 28 steveb

“Similarly, you could have all of those categories you mention and it does not include a woman. ”

Well, yes. Same thing, which is kinda my point. You can’t handwave away every other demographic split by saying “oh, but they’re all men or women anyway!”, or vice versa. Which means I still don’t get what you’re trying to say in your previous post.

“We have an approximate 50/50 male/female population split, and within those gender groups we have the categories you mention.
Surely, we need to address problems with the major groupings first, which, in this instance, appears to be male/female.”

I realise that I could be accused of whataboutery here, so I’ll clarify. The point I was trying to make was that, regardless of the makeup of your panel, someone will always be able to point to some perceived deficiency. E.G. you get a panel perfectly balanced in terms of gender, sexuality, race, religion, income… and then someone says “but 90% of these people live in the North! Why are you discriminating against the South?!”

This doesn’t prove that the critic in question is wrong to complain about the panel’s makeup. But it does show that complaints about makeup can be misplaced or opportunistic.

“We can make no assumptions from the OP about the deficit in any of the categories you mention, there may be appropriate representation of each category in the existing male panels.”

We can’t make any assumptions from the OP about a problem with gender representation in panels either. The OP seems to be claiming that ANY all-male panel, anywhere, is wrong. This is ridiculous. If panels were picked by gender-blind organisers, you would still end up with some all-male and some all-female panels.

Even if you take a more reasonable complaint, that most panels are skewed towards men in terms of representation, that doesn’t show that there’s a problem with the way panels are organised. It might just mean that men are more likely than women to be in a role that would justify their inclusion on a panel, or that men are more likely to accept an invitation to a panel. Either of these might very well indicate problems elsewhere, but that doesn’t mean the solution is to start using “positive” discrimination.

Steveb @ 28:

“Surely, we need to address problems with the major groupings first, which, in this instance, appears to be male/female.”

Surely the real issue is that the panel reflects a diversity of relevant opinion and experience. Having more women might be helpful in achieving this, but it’s not enough on its own. If you were convening a panel to discuss the question “Does God exist?”, then a panel consisting of three female atheists and three male atheists would be less representative of the spectrum of opinion than one consisting of three male atheists and three male Christians.

30
But this is whataboutary isn’t it, the only information the OP gives is that most panels are all male, I have responded to that position.
As far as I can ascertain, the attributes for a panel don’t particularly require anything that requires it to be all male.
As@29 states, you can always point to some deficiency but the example you give appears to acknowledge my point, that depending on the situation, panels should be more representative, ie atheists debating if God exists. I am merely stating the same, and that is both genders are equally affected by political decisions so representation such reflect a more equal balance.

@ 31 steveb

“But this is whataboutary isn’t it, the only information the OP gives is that most panels are all male, I have responded to that position.”

The OP doesn’t so much “give” that information as claim it. And while I’m prepared to accept it as true, the OP certainly hasn’t demonstrated that this trend is down to sexist panel selection. That appears to be an assumption on the OP’s part.

“As far as I can ascertain, the attributes for a panel don’t particularly require anything that requires it to be all male.”

Who says it does? You’re arguing with a position that I haven’t taken, and nor has anyone else on this thread that I’ve seen. It’s a straw man.

“As@29 states, you can always point to some deficiency but the example you give appears to acknowledge my point, that depending on the situation, panels should be more representative, ie atheists debating if God exists. I am merely stating the same, and that is both genders are equally affected by political decisions so representation such reflect a more equal balance.”

But surely your first priority should be that the panel is balanced in a way directly relevant to the topic? So making sure that a panel on religion includes both atheists and believers, as a priority over ensuring that it includes both northerners and southerners?

Say you’re convening a three-person panel to debate the teaching of creationism in schools. You decide that the best people to invite would be the country’s foremost creationist, its foremost anti-creationist, and the member of government whose job is most closely linked to the issue. You could use other criteria: the point is that you choose the people based on their jobs, not knowing who they are.

Then you look these people up, and discover that they’re all the same gender. Do you therefore remove one of them and pick someone else to balance out the sexes? If you do, you’re displaying tokenism at best and sexism at worst – and this is EXACTLY what the OP is calling for.

I don’t think people ought to be given headroom simply on the basis of their gender. I think we should try to be gender-blind.

32
I did not assert that there was any sexism involved, I would imagine that it may be part of it but I would suggest that it is far more complex than pure sexism.
@29 you state ‘It might just mean that men are more likely than women to be in a role that would justify their inclusion on the panel’
I wrote ‘ As far as I can ascertain, the attributes for a panel don’t particularly require anything that requires it to be all male’
Have I missed something, why is that a strawman?
‘But surely your priority should be that a panel is balanced in a way that is relevant to the topic’
I thought that I had made it clear that I agree with this – there is a 50/50 male/female gender split in the population, and all of that population is affected by political decisions, so the gender split should be more representative.
I take your point about matching people to particular areas but is this realistic, there are approx 650 seats in parliament you could go on infinitum through every job category, area of the country, age, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, there are simply not enough seats. Moreover, there is no prerequisite qualification needed to stand for parliament other than an age limit and citizen status.

@chaise guevara and steveb – I thought it was clear: the panel has to look ‘balanced’ in terms of gender, and that (apparently) is more important than whether it is ‘balanced’ in terms of the range of opinion. Burnell’s Google-fu is such that she can find a woman who may fit both categories. If not, it doesn’t matter: the mere presence of a woman will produce (as implied by the group letter) better policy outcomes. All-female panels are exempt. Right-wing women don’t appear to be accounted for. As I said: ‘The confusion between a headcount and an ideology is a problem with the OP.’ We really need Burnell back here to clarify – is she still following the thread?

@ 33 steveb

“I did not assert that there was any sexism involved, I would imagine that it may be part of it but I would suggest that it is far more complex than pure sexism.”

Fair enough, and agreed.

“Have I missed something, why is that a strawman?”

It’s possible I missed something. I took your comment as suggesting that I or others think that panels SHOULD be all male. Not the case – I just don’t think that they should be artificially changed to ensure balanced genders (with some exceptions, see below).

“I thought that I had made it clear that I agree with this – there is a 50/50 male/female gender split in the population, and all of that population is affected by political decisions, so the gender split should be more representative.”

No, I mean that the people should be relevant to the topic, not vice versa. Everyone’s affected by tax, but I’d rather see a panel about taxation comprised of a pro-tax advocate, an anti-tax advocate and an expert on tax policy, than just of three randomers whose qualification is “we all pay tax!”.

And gender doesn’t make you representative. A randomly selected man “represents” me (male) no more than a randomly selected woman.

I should also point out that sometimes ensuring a gender balance would be a good idea, specifically for issues that affect men and women differently (such as whether we should give men the right to paternity leave), or perhaps for issues where men and women tend to feel very differently (if such an issue exists). But that’s a special case.

“I take your point about matching people to particular areas but is this realistic, there are approx 650 seats in parliament you could go on infinitum through every job category, area of the country, age, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, there are simply not enough seats.”

Agreed, which is why it’s a pointless exercise. Gender doesn’t suffer from that, as there are only two categories (ignoring for the moment transexuals and so on). My point was simply that you could always be accused of bias. As such, it’s worth checking that allegations of bias on the part of others are actually justified.

“Moreover, there is no prerequisite qualification needed to stand for parliament other than an age limit and citizen status.”

It’s not doable with parliament, but parliament’s a special case due to being democratically selected. It raises a good example, though. Imagine that a prime minister decides that their cabinet should be 50:50 male and female. However, a large majority of MPs are male. The result would be a) enforcing prejudice against male MPs, making them automatically less likely to be selected for the cabinet, and b) unless you were very lucky, having a less competent cabinet, as the odds are you’d end up passing over a talented man for a less talented woman to make up the numbers. Please note that this is because of the numbers involved, NOT because I think men are more likely to be talented. If most MPs were women it’d be vice versa.

@ 34 redpesto

Agreed. I too find it a tad suspicious that this article complains against all-male panels specifically, instead of single-gender panels in general. Accepting for sake of argument both the OP’s assertion that all male panels are more common, and the OP’s opinion that this is a bad thing, I can see why you’d focus on all-male panels. But I don’t know why you’d go out of your way to present a one-sided article that suggests that all-male panels are bad while all-female panels are fine.