Sick of seeing panels at conventions and conferences made up entirely of white men? So are the people at online gender discrimination watchdog Gender Avenger, and they’ve created an app for SXSW that will let you name and shame the panels that didn’t bother to give women a voice.
If you’re at SXSW, all you have to do is use the app to input data on how many women are on the panel you’re currently watching. Gender Avenger puts all this data together into an easily-digestible pie chart, which makes the anomalies in representation startlingly obvious.
At #SXSW? See a panel w/ few or no women? Track gender ratios of panels and events w/ the GA Tally: http://t.co/bK50BGmExJ #genderavenger
— GenderAvenger (@GenderAvenger) March 16, 2015
We know SXSW has panels like “Diversity in STEM: Nurture or Nature” and “Decoding Gender Diversity in Tech,” but the question is whether or not “regular” panels like “Battling Tradition to Reinvent Youth Sports” and “The Newest Mega-Trend in Healthcare” also have a diverse roster of speakers. After all, Gender Avenger is “dedicated to ensuring women are always part of the public dialogue,” and that means in more than just issues directly pertaining to diversification or “women in tech.”
Gender Avenger makes similar charts for all sorts of events in media and tech—like, for example, the Oscars:
And hey, if you’re a dude in media or tech and you’re interested in moving conferences forward, consider signing your name to Plz Diversify Your Panel, “a list of people who will not be on panels which do not also include diverse representation of marginalized voices.”
(via Daily Dot)
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