To the delight of many party members, Mark Pack recently announced his decision to decline invitations to sit on all-male panels at Liberal Democrat fringes, urging other men to take the same course of action. A few of us, however, feel uncomfortable with the suggestion that women should be invited to speak for their contribution to the diversity of the panel, rather than for what they can bring to the debate.
Currently, anybody who is invited to speak at a fringe can be confident that they have been asked – obvious choice or not – because somebody thought they had something to say that was worth listening to. Women deserve the right to feel as strong a sense of pride as men when they stand up with something to say. We are concerned that second-guessing the reason for an invitation will not encourage women to participate confidently.
A woman might very well be the most qualified person to speak on a subject, so it is unfair to cause audience members or female speakers to ask themselves which male might have been sitting in their chair. We have to ensure that women can be confident that they are regarded equally as panellists. Any well-meaning man signing up to this agenda risks both corroding that confidence and fostering resentment in overlooked males. By treating men and women as different groups, we promote separation and conflict, not equality.
And what about the fringe organisers? It is unfair to ask them to start viewing their potential panellists as check boxes. If fringe organisers are made to feel pressured into looking for an extra woman to appease the audience and male panellists, how do we expect them to answer the inevitable question, “Am I a token woman?” It is not unimaginable that women who share our concerns will feel patronised and refuse to attend conference fringes if they receive an honest answer or see through a lie.
The idea that a panel should look a certain way reduces women to what we’ve spent decades fighting against. It goes beyond just women, to viewing us all as categories to be ticked off a list – gender, race, disability. We are more than that. We want you to see past that and to judge us on the content of our character, our experience and our skills. We want you to listen to the valuable input we have. We need to stop assuming that there’s a one-size-fits all approach to women. Quotas and token panel seats might encourage some women to put themselves forward and put off others entirely. Until we address the root of the problem of why women are not invited to participate as often as men, we aren’t dealing with it at all. We’re just window dressing our fringes and our party.
It is our view that the problem will fester if we treat only the symptom. We should be striving to create a society where gender is not important, where all unwanted barriers to participation are removed and people are judged by what they bring to the table and not by which box they tick. By pitting woman against man, this initiative risks creating lasting barriers to equality that will be hard to break back down when we realise that they were erected in error in the first place. We should aspire to a society in which everybody is gender-blind, and in which anybody brave enough to participate in public discussion is celebrated for more than just their identifiers.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
The Joy of Six 1383
A quartet of Lib Dem wins in council by-elections
Corso Street event tomorrow! #dundeewestend
Details needed on Welsh rail investment
The 'elevator pitch' for solo consultants
Simon McGrath
Lin Macmillan
Richard Dickson
Nigel Quinton
Chris Lewcock
60 Comments
I have found myself far too many times in the audience at events where all 4 or 5 people on the panel (including the chair) are men. I am sure there is the odd occasion when the 5 best people to discuss the issue are men but I strongly suspect that the vast majority of the time it is just that the first few people who the organiser contacted or who came to mind when arranging were male.
I reckon there is a kind of unconscious bias going on which is perpetuated when so many panels are dominated by men. This campaign is an attempt to give a gentle nudge in the direction of getting those who are organising such things to at least try and get a woman on the panel. The membership of our party is roughly 50%/50% but you would not know this from some of our events.
I do appreciate where you’re coming from but nobody is forcing anyone to do anything. If people have a strong objection to this (as you clearly do) then they are free to organise their events as they wish. But those of us who are tired of the male dominance are also free to apply this pressure.
I am for example not in favour of all women shortlists as I really do fear that that could lead to tokenism but there is no reason that the campaign me and Mark have started should lead to that. in a party like ours there is a very wide breadth of experience and expertise and I am sure for all subjects there are good and authoritative women who could contribute but they are too often overlooked.
I have expanded on my thoughts and reasons for supporting this campaign here:
http://markreckons.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/im-backing-no-all-male-panel-pledge-are.html
While I agree that token women would be a bad thing, I don’t think it’s a likely consequence of male potential panelists opting in to this convention.
When I’ve criticised all-male, all-white etc. panels before, it’s not taken me – or the panel organisers – long to think of alternatives who would be just as competent and add diversity. The trouble is that panel organizers usually are rushed and go for the first names they think of, who tend to be male and pale due to the self-perpetuating nature of these diversity problems!
What this convention will likely do is encourage panel organizers to reach out to a more diverse range of the top talent, not shoehorn less competent women into a man’s rightful place at the top table.
But the fact is that it’s been demonstrated many times that, when it comes to discrimination, tackling the visible symptoms of the problem often significantly improve the underlying problem – where as leaving the symptoms untreated just creates a self-reinforcing cycle where people seem the results of discrimination, subconsciously register it as being acceptable and then go on to subconsciously discriminate themselves.
The only way to effectively break the cycle is to tackle the symptoms. That’s why Mark Pack’s pledge and others doing the same thing is a good idea.
Additionally, panels are incredibly weak, regardless of the expertise of the panellists, if they all come from the same background. Different perspectives come from having different types of people with different experiences and different experiences enrich panel discussions and are much more informative than having a bunch of highly similar people with the same perspectives all broadly agreeing with each other – or, for that matter, arguing with each other yet completely missing perspectives that can frame debates in an entirely different light.
Personally, this policy confuses me. As a man, I think I should sign up. But, as I’m also gay – should I make an exemption to be the only non-heterosexual person on a panel, if the chance arises? What about other labels – I’m white, middle-class and cisgendered, but also state-educated, dyspraxic and non-Oxbridge. Does this mean I should be on more, or fewer panels? These policies only ever serve to baffle some, make others feel resentful because they perceive exclusion and others feel like they’re being foisted onto panels to make numbers add up.
I completely agree with the authors of this article. I’m glad women are speaking out against the patronising practice of “positive discrimination”. Equality means treating people equally and I believe if I was a woman I would not want special treatment. I would want to believe I got somewhere on my own merit.
It is this sort of thing that lead Diane James to leave the Conservative Party for UKIP.
Incidentally, if there was any evidence that visible of symptoms of discrimination had no impact on how likely people were to discriminate then I really wouldn’t be concerned with the symptoms. But the fact is that symptoms are also a cause of the underlying problem which is why they need tackling. Evidence based policy and all that.
I meant led.
My reasons for signing up to this are entirely selfish. After a long career with too many meetings, I am of the opinion that all male panels are usually boring. My experience is that the more diversity you have, the more you get interesting ideas that you had probably not thought of otherwise.
I am against token anything, but I see this as a small step towards getting the best people available. I am not mandating mixed panels, just saying that I don’t want to be on all male ones.
I remember listening to a debate on the Today programme between John Humphries and two men about abortion. I think that illustrates the problem.
As Tim Oliver says, how far do we take this, do we say people should refuse to sit on all white panels too? Or have taken state education panelists? The list goes on.
Don’t you ever ask yourself whether participants in all-male panels got selected because they are men? Maybe you should. You seem to assume that a woman has to be assumed to a ‘token’ unless she can prove otherwise. But no man is ever asked to prove that he’s qualified in spite of his sex. Yet the problem wouldn’t even exist if it were not the case that, time after time, weak male participants were chosen over stronger women simply because they were male.
What is meant by “token”? Is its definition gender-biassed?
It’s important to have speakers and panelists from all sources of difference, certainly all the major ones anyway, because otherwise the discussion risks bias and risks being ignored.
I am imagining a panel that is mainly male, and an audience who is mainly male, and a panellist who is judged to be “token” partly because the things she says or the way she says them aren’t understood or considered useful by those males, and partly because those males don’t let her in to the conversation and won’t listen anyway.
In such circumstances, ANY woman could be a useful addition to the panel, and the more outspoken the better!
I’m against positive discrimination. making a decision to put someone on a panel based on their gender is ridiculous. It should be experts in the field whatever their gender. And if we do go down that root, what about transgender? Won’t we be discriminating against them if we don’t have one on a panel. What about colour and background?
Sorry, but this is a slippery slope. Same with all women training groups etc. For years women have been fighting for equality, but then end up segregating themselves off. Why? Why should such a big deal be made out of being a woman. if you can’t do a training session with men then how are you going to deal with them in a work situation?
I think it wrong to boycott being on a panel just because of the other panelists gender.
@Tracey. That presupposes that all the times that events are organised that only contain panels with men that there are no women good enough to sit on the panel. Do you think that is true?
There are more than enough expert, talented and fascinating female experts in the party on all sorts of issues that there’s no need to tokenism. There’s always a woman who could be invited on to a panel and justify their presence through their own expertise and contributions. They need never be a ‘token’ in that sense. But the problem is they often never get asked.
That’s what the idea is trying to help fix.
Ironically Ewan demonstrated the issue when debating the idea elsewhere and coming up with an example of a hypothetical fringe meeting on drug policy, naming only men as the logical people to invite. Yet the party has in its ranks women who have served on police authorities where drugs are a big issue, women who have served on the European Parliament committee that deals with the international angles of the issue and women who have done amazing work with gangs in communities hit hard by drug related crime. None of those would be a token presence at such a meeting. They’d all add significantly to it. As long as they get asked. I think Ewan’s hypothetical meeting would be much the better for inviting one of those women to take part.
I applaud Mark for his stance. I don’t think it is about having ‘token’ women on panels, it’s about making meeting organisers think a little more widely about who they could invite.
I noticed that the meetings organised by an organisation I am involved with was heavily male dominated in its panels at conference and we are going to make a concerted effort to do something about it.
The authors of the article say this: “A woman might very well be the most qualified person to speak on a subject, so it is unfair to cause audience members or female speakers to ask themselves which male might have been sitting in their chair.”
So, why do the men on an all-male panel deserve it that the audience may well ask what better qualified woman should be sitting in their place?
But this isn’t just about men and women on the panel – it is what this says more generally about the organiser’s care in inviting people, or their clout as measured by their ability to convince the very best people to attend. I’d suggest that an all-male panel almost always suggests that the organisers haven’t been trying hard enough to get the best people (male or female, so some of the best men might also not be there). If you really think hard of the best people in a field, you are highly unlikely only to end up with men on that list – not if you do it properly. So an all-male panel reflects badly on the organiser, and might put the panelists into an awkward position quite like the one described in the quoted passage.
No panel member should have to put up with the suspicion that he is only there because he is a chum of the organiser who happens to know a little bit about the subject, instead of some of the real experts who have obviously not been invited.
These arguments always work both ways.
It’s certainly worth raising the point to highlight the issue and ensure that we’re not blind to overlooking potential female participants – but the trouble with a ‘policy’ like this is that it makes a big deal out of participants’ gender and as a consequence undervalues all the other potential differences between participants, for example their ethnicity, religion, social background etc. And taken to its logical conclusion it would be possible to put together a truly ‘representative’ panel since it would be impossible with such a small number of people to ensure that all the various differences within our population were accurately reflected.
I think it’s worth a stab, and we’ll see what happens. It’s voluntary, it’s about something quite small (conference fringes), and the risk of ‘tokenism’ is pretty small imho.
My worry that as a party, we are very small-c conservative and, in objecting to ‘positive action’ in even its more limited forms, we completely fail to solve our very real problem of gender imbalance. There’s a very real chance that we might end up with an all-male parliamentary party at the next election, something which would be an absolute scandal. The current system plainly isn’t gender-blind. We need to try *something*, and I think this is a very good starting point.
I agree with Anthony Hawkes that greater gender, racial, social etc. diversity often leads to a wider range of views. The number of conference fringes I’ve been to – filled with very intelligent men, no doubt – that just basically all agree with one another (and usually the conventional wisdom) after five minutes is too many for my taste.
“I agree with Anthony Hawkes that greater gender, racial, social etc. diversity often leads to a wider range of views.”. I think this is dangerously prejudice. Is there any evidence to say women have different political opinions than men? I want to see politicians as politicians, not as male or female politicians.
I would be rather more concerned about the preponderence of people who get selected because they are “known” in the Westminster bubble. It would be interesting to know how many men and women (other than MPs) were selected who live outside the South East region, the M25, or maybe even London itself.
“What about other labels – I’m white, middle-class and cisgendered, but also state-educated, dyspraxic and non-Oxbridge. Does this mean I should be on more, or fewer panels? ”
A view I am sympathetic with, Tim. Thank you.
Well, I’m a young female, and I’m not supporting the no all-male panel pledge at all. It’s positive discrimination, essentially, and however “positive” it may be, it’s still discrimination. Would anyone complain about an ‘all female panel’? Let’s be honest, it would be seen as ‘fantastic’. I, as a girl, don’t want any sort of special treatment or a ‘leg-up’ into the political world. I, in fact, don’t want my gender to come into it at all.
And of course… what next? All white panel ban? All heterosexual panel ban?
A politician is a politician, regardless of their gender.
“Gender blindness or… why we don’t want token women”
Quite agree with the second bit, but disagree strongly with the first bit. The Lib Dems have evidently NOT been gender blind, otherwise they would have a much more equal ratio of women to men in councils throughout the country and in Parliament. Therefore I would welcome women only shortlists, with capable non-token women.
I write as a male voter, who happens to think a lot of the noise from feminist quarters is often silly and equally often gender chauvinist. However, I do also accept the evidence of my own eyes and life experience. Women are discriminated against in the workplace and in selection for positions of political leadership, often in subtle ways, and usually in ways in which no harm is meant.
I think that it is high time that Britain’s main liberal political party got serious about this issue. I think it not unreasonable an ambition, for instance, that by 2025, say, 50% of Lib Dem MPs should be women. And that requires tough corrective policies in the short term.
It is absurd to say that shortlisted women MPs are “token”. They got there and will stay there by electoral choice and through their own merits.
I’m against positive discrimination, and would object strongly to (for example) All Women Shortlists.
This voluntary action by the two Marks is not positive discrimination, it is COUNTERING the positive discrimination that men have benefited from for a very long time, therefore I fully support it.
Let women say whether they want positive discrimination or not, but what I will say as a man is that men have rights too and I’m not too cowardly to stick up for them.
Yes exactly right! If all this means is that organisers are just going to invite all the usual suspects + a woman then it is an utterly pointless exercise. I’m sure there are many qualified women AND men who are forever overlooked because they don’t necessarily have the confidence or stamina to push themselves to the front of the queue.
The sad truth is that in both business and politics the selection of participants on boards, for a job or on an expert panel are chosen because the person choosing has in their mind a view (often unconscious) of what the person they are choosing will look like. It’s almost always a pale male. Unless a conscious decision is taken to open up choice to include non-male and non-pale people for the party’s expert speakers at conference fringes, then this problem will persist.
Incidentally, the overwhelming evidence is that without positive action, including all-women shortlists, it has never been possible anywhere in the world to achieve gender balance in any lawmaking body. Our party has talked about the problem for the last 20 years. It is no nearer achieving it now than then, precisely because with one notable exception – in 1999 when zipping was used for European selections allowing for a gender balanced European Parliamentary Party – the party has always rejected the one thing that would achieve its objective.
“The Lib Dems have evidently NOT been gender blind, otherwise they would have a much more equal ratio of women to men in councils throughout the country and in Parliament. ”
That statement has no basis in reality.
The principal reason for low numbers of Lib Dem women in Parliament is mainly because most women are far too sensible to chronically exploit themself (and others) shamelessly in the manner required for Lib Dem candidates to ‘break through’ against superior numerical and financial odds in particular constituencies. ‘Nutters’ in Farronese. We have too few ‘succession seats’ where the Party feels comfortable/safe enough to pick the ‘best potential MP’ rather than the ‘best candidate’.
“The principal reason for low numbers of Lib Dem women in Parliament is mainly because most women are far too sensible to chronically exploit themself (and others) shamelessly in the manner required for Lib Dem candidates to ‘break through’ against superior numerical and financial odds in particular constituencies.”
Babelfish:- “politics is a difficult business, nice women aren’t up to it”
I’m an older woman. I once thought that women didn’t need positive discrimination; if we were good enough, we would make it to the top, whether in employment, income or politics. I’ve been a Parliamentary candidate and I’m currently group leader of my council group – in fact all three groups on my council are currently led by women.
In spite of that, I now think that we do need positive discrimination. It was all women lists that improved the gender balance in the Labour party in Westminster, it was zipping that improved the gender balance in the Liberal Democrat European group.
We need to make people think that all male panels look odd, that something – or someone – is missing. When that happens, we can go back to making sure that we’ve got the best people available.
Sheesh.
People getting their undies in a bunch about positive discrimination please note: thoughtlessly picking a woman out of a list of all the women working in that domain in order to add a token female to your panel is indeed bad behaviour. So is lazily phoning up four of your best mates every time you decide to set up a conference panel. Both of these are reprehensible for the same reason: both imply that you’re just treating the whole thing as an excuse to hang out with a few of your mates, both demonstrate that you are lazy as heck and both demonstrate that you’re not exactly trying to push the boundaries.
To event organisers: action like that Mark describes is intended to make you put in a bare minimum of effort, to get you to think a little bit about whether you are just lazily propagating the status quo. Which, if you regularly return to the same old same old every time you decide to put on a panel, you are. I know how it is, conferences become an excuse to meet your old mates, you go every year and you submit something because, hey, you usually do. You work with the same people because, hey, you know them. You know you can have a great discussion. They’re fun, they’re safe – and they’re comfortable. Do you ever think: am I acknowledging the breadth of opinion in this room? Am I really doing everything that I can to broaden my own thinking here? If not, here’s the thing: you should be asking yourself that on a regular basis because if you are not doing so you are failing yourself and the organisation with which you are involved, whatever it is.
This isn’t just about gender. Certainly it isn’t about token women – in the domain in which I worked until fairly recently this discussion was about whether it was okay to have so many all-female panels or whether we wanted token men. It’s really about whether we are inclined to peek out of our little fishpond of our own disciplines or preoccupations and pay attention to the world outside – or whether we’d rather sit there and wallow in our comfortable , familiar mud.
Miranda
I remember a younger Jo Swinson saying exactly the same thing and helping to kill off zipping. Sure enough the European parliamentary Group is slowly but surely going male. Liz Lynne was replaced by a man (not his fault he was second on the list) and Elspeth Atwool stepped down and was replaced by a man. When Rebecca Taylor steps down in 2014, top of the list will be another man. If we retain two seats in the SE one of them will be a man. So the number of women in the EU parliamentary group will be DOWN by four since 2009. Not a single man has been succeeded by a woman, except when MEPs stepped down mid-term and the next on the list was a woman. You still believe that women succeed on their own efforts? Do you seriously believe that we will get more women parliamentarians under the present system?
Jo can of course speak for herself, but I think she and many of the other young women who supported her then have changed their minds.
I don’t really see where Mick above is coming from – both Liz and Elspeth were elected as female MEPs and voluntarily gave up their seats. You can’t really generalise from two cases but their being replaced by the next person down on the list was a consequence of their individual decisions not to serve out their terms, not any failing by the party in putting women forward for election.
@Ian
“both Liz and Elspeth were elected as female MEPs …”
One presumes that both Liz and Elspeth were elected as MEPs. Male, female or neuter, an MEP is an MEP; unless I’ve been misreading the ballot form I am not sure what the word ‘female’ brings to that sentence — or do I get to vote for a female MEP and a male MEP?
I think Mick’s point is probably that ‘the list’ from which replacements are drawn is blatantly full of male candidates, which suggests that the list compilers are exhibiting a selection bias since that result is unlikely to happen by pure chance. Either women aren’t able or willing to get on this infamous list, or they are – but the compiler(s) aren’t very good at picking female candidates. HTH.
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
I’m fed up of being patronised this way. I don’t care whether panellists are female, LGBT, purple, Welsh or Martian, as long as they’re knowledgeable and interesting.
Likewise a woman MP wouldn’t represent me or understand my “needs” any more than she would the bloke next door.
I frankly think it’s puerile to think we’re achieving something just because we achieve “x” number of breasts in a given group. It’s what’s inside the head that matters.
I agree, when you are a woman you expect to be treated the same as your male colleagues.
I read law, and I like family law, it is often said that women have a better understanding of some situations. I think I would agree but I hope I bring something positive into the world other than being simply another pair of breasts.
We’ve often found it challenging in this respect when organising SLF events. We could ask say six men and six women, and chances are maybe four men would accept and one woman. Why? Well, maybe more women have a life outside politics, or more of a work/life balance . They seem more reluctant to give up evenings and weekends, when such events typically happen, and who could blame them? I think this whole issue is fundamentally more to do with the unreasonable demands of a political life, and that culture is what we need to change, by any and every means possible.
Surely you could find enough women to have input on a panel?
This is a fascinating discussion and encouraging in some ways. One of the reasons I left the Lib Dems was the frustration at their gender blindness, or lack rather of an awareness of what might need to happen, at the level of the system, to bring about the true meritocracy that we all want. The authors of the article fall in to the trap of believing that wishing it were a meritocracy makes it so. It does not. We have systemic discrimination against women in public life and systematic discrimination against men in private life. This is not up for debate. This is a well research fact, just go to a gender studies unit in a University as ask for references. The LSE is a good place to start. If you do not believe this it means you are under-educated, not that your opinion is correct, I’m afraid to say. The question really needs to be ‘how do we start to shift the systemic gender discrimination both sexes face?’. Marks panel idea is a start. Until the Lib Dems take this question seriously they are not going to get women elected and they are not going to attract a serious percentage of women’s votes (nor the men that understand systemic gender issue either.)
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE can we move beyond this false argument of merit vs diversity!
Women constitute 52% of the population. There are women experts in every profession.
The problem is a vicious cycle: men are more likely to be seen on panels, so those same men are more likely to be invited on to panels, women are more likely to feel like “imposters” because they don’t see other women on panels and not put themselves forward, and thus the cycle continues…
We need ‘circuit breakers’ to break this lazy and ingrained cycle of behaviour.
If event organisers invite the first woman they can think of, irrespective of merit, then of course it will look and feel tokenistic.
The incentive that this pledge should create however is for event organisers to go out and find women EXPERTS – and they exist, on every subject, in every sphere!
I endorse what Daisy said.. The premise of this piece is an excuse for nothing to change.. there’s not a lot we can do unless we all make an effort, and Mark has set an example. Well done.!
The question for me, and it is addressed to Mark and others who make the pledge, is: What happens if a full search for the best panellists, on whatever subject, is made, and the answer is three, say, or four men? What happens if hard evidence is presented that a number of women were approached, and it transpires that all were either demonstrably less well qualified on the subject than the men, or were as well, or even better, qualified but unavailable?
And what happens if the organiser of the said even was a woman? Or at least one of the organisers was a woman?
Let me immediately say that I absolutely support the bringing on of women in our party, and the creation of the new group that was created a year or so ago, and remain one of the supporting members. I made it clear at the time, though, that we need to encourage and support women so they could be the best and compete on a level playing field, But I am absolutely against so-called “positive discrimination”. Its as bad as negative discrimination.
There has to be a better way to achieve the objective than by making a pledge not to do something. Not only does that potentially eliminate oneself from arenas where one can make a genuinely needed contribution, but it also seems to smack of inflexibility, and I wasn’t aware that LibDems are known for being dogmatic.
My point is simply that in the absence of zipping, when it was a requirement that half the regional lists should be headed up by a man and half by a woman and that the lists should be alternately men and women, the European Parliamentary Party from the UK is becoming less gender diverse than it was in 1999. This is especially marked in Scotland and Yorkshire where the 1999 rules ensured that a woman was elected at the top of the list and now both lists are headed by men. My guess is that when Sarah steps down in London, she will be replaced by a man too.
Of course, we may lose a lot of seats unless we start taking European elections much more seriously and actively seeking out pro europeans to support us in which case it will be a mute point anyway.
Nearly every time I witness an all male (and pale) panel in the Lib Dems I inwardly groan for two main reasons. Firstly, because I can nearly always think of individual women who are equally knowledgable , qualified or worthy to be on that panel. And if mentioned to the organisers , they nearly always agree that there are worthy women who were overlooked. Secondly, because of the messages we transmit to the people we are representing and communicating with when we have a high proportion of all male panels. In the 21st Century all male and pale panels make our Party look dated and old-fashioned. Role models are important and we all get to be where we are by modelling ourselves on the best. Strong women role models in all Parties have massively influenced my political career.
To change the world for the better we need to take small steps. I commend Mark Pack and others who have signed up to this positive step towards representing the diversity within our party. In the Lib Dems men can choose whether they decline a place on a all male panel. The decision is voluntary, so it is unlikely that all male panels will disappear in the immediate future. Even if the women chosen as substitutes aren’t initially the best, they will be ‘good enough’ and everyone has to start somewhere to get the experience needed to be on more panels. To become the best we need lots of practice. I would like to promote this opportunity to be the best, if they aren’t already, to our Lib Dem sisters and daughters.
Discrimination is wrong! So called positive discrimination, I believe, can do more damage than negative as I believe it breeds resentment, it’s patronising and it demeans the status and ability of the person ‘getting’ the discrimination.
Top marks to Ruby Kirkwood for standing up against this at the Conference yesterday – I’m proud of her.
Yes, Nicholas, discrimination is wrong. The problem is that certain people only perceive gender discrimination when it is, as they see it, directed at men. Show them an all-female panel and they cry “positive discrimination! tokenism!” But show them an all-male panel, and they shrug “obviously there were no interested or qualified women speakers.”
I have a difficult time understanding how anyone can be insensitive to that. Discrimination is wrong, and the question here is why and how there is so much self-evident discrimination against women at fringe events, and what we are going to do about it. If your first reaction is to deny that a problem exists, then presumably your answer is “nothing.”
Positive discrimination leads to poeple like Baroness Waris being in government, I feel that argument in itself should be enough to end this debate about whether arbaitory decision pledges and caps and quotas are a good thing.
Positive discrimination leads to poeple like Baroness Waris being in government, I feel that argument in itself should be enough to end this debate about whether arbitrary decision pledges and caps and quotas are a good thing. I also not think that disagreeing with one measure for overcoming this issue means I am against change.
While I do not agree with forcing rules and quotas on parties and organisers, I completely respect Mack’s decision not to go on a panel if he personally feels that those picked for the decision are the best people to represent the debate.
Positive discrimination leads to people like Baroness Waris being in government, I feel that argument in itself should be enough to end any debate about whether arbitrary decision, pledges, caps and quotas are a good thing. I also do not think that disagreeing with one measure for overcoming this issue means that I am against change.
While I do not agree with forcing rules and quotas on parties and organisers, I completely respect Mack’s decision not to go on a panel if he personally feels that those picked for the debate are not the best people to represent the debate.
Sorry, it seems my internet went loopy and my comment got posted three times. I would delete my comments, but there does not appear to be anyway to do that on Lib Dem Voice.
Bravo Jade, Ewan & Eilidh – we need to address the cause not the symptom! At its politest pale male panels are the result of laziness, but if you scratch the surface of our Party there are still some deeply disturbing attitudes. In Sutton we are lucky enough to be a majority group of councillors, but what I am most proud of is the diversity of the group: fairly evenly gender-balanced, and broad spread of ethnicity. This is reflected within the members holding special responsibilities, and our council leader is female, voted in as the obvious choice for the role. This was not achieved by positive discrimination, but by being open and welcoming to diversity, by valuing everyone’s contribution, treating everyone equally and on merit. When women and any other under-represented groups feel welcomed and valued they will appear without the need to be carried across the threshold by their male patrons.
As Daisy Cooper correctly highlights females make up the majority of society, so personally I would like to know why males complain about positive action or positive discrimination, when they as a minority are clearly benefitting the most from this?
In the real world, which has moved on considerably from that within the Liberal Democrat Party, people got over the debate about gender balance, and having a reflective panel on interviews etc, years ago. As the Party that claims to desire to “Build a fairer Britain” I ask when are we internally as well as externally actually going to start to “walk the talk”?
The equality and diversity agenda must move on from being merely a favored topic of the Left of the Party, and manifest itself in all that we say and more importantly do. I would ask the critics whether they genuinely wish the Party to progress beyond being the eccentric cousin in Politics, and have widespread support so that it can not only think up wonderful policies, but actually bring life to them for the benefit of the nation?
If the Party truly wishes to remain the white, male, middleclass, heterosexual, graduate club please have the decency at the next totally exclusive Conference to pass a motion to this effect, and then the rest of us, will formerly know that we should leave. But if the Party wishes to change then allow those of us who can assist it to do so, but this will mean that some people will have to accept that everyone should have a right to ‘sit at the table’ and be able to decide the future, and that they will have to give up their unearned positions of priveledge.
Ruwan Uduwerage-Perera
English Party Diversity Champion
Ps. Apologies for any typo’s as this was bashed out whilst traveling .
Ok. I think I need to explain the practical implications of this movement by giving an example from my fringe organising experience. The fringes I organise are campaigning fringes. I am campaigning within the party to change our drug policy for the better, a campaign I know Mark Thompson is particularly enthusiastic about and would not want to jeopardise. What might have happened to my campaign if I had discriminated based on gender?
Let’s take the fringe I organised for the 2010 Autumn conference: http://ewansliberalmusings.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/its-time-we-talked-about-drug-policy.html
There are two major campaigning drug policy organisations that share my views in the UK: Release and Transform. I invited a speaker from both and got Danny Kushlick from Transform and Niamh Eastwood from Release. I also invited Julian Huppert because I knew drug policy was an area he was interested in. Now please imagine that Niamh was not Niamh but Neil. I would have had an all male panel on my hands, and knowing that all the male MPs had pledged to boycott all male panels (clearly Mark Thompson’s goal on this given his twitter activites), I would have been faced with the option of rejecting one of the speakers from the campaigning charities (and the funding for the fringe event that came with it) or changing my choice of chair to a female whose views on the subject I could be less sure of.
It would be natural to change my choice of chair. Since that fringe event in 2010, I have invited Julian Huppert to chair another in 2011, and he subsequently requested their be a Home Affairs Select Committee enquiry into drug policy. This enquiry reported back late last year, communicating some very encouraging progressive conclusions. Nick Clegg subsequently came out in favour of a Royal Commission on the subject in December.
There has been an incredible amount of progress in the discussion of drug policy in the UK in the last year. A significant amount of that progress might be attributable to Julian Huppert’s attendance at that fringe event in 2010 and his subsequent assistance in drafting the 2011 drug policy motion and bringing about the HASC drug policy enquiry.
I invited the usual suspects to that fringe event in 2010. They were experienced drug policy advocates presenting excellent, reasoned cases for reform. One of those usual suspects happened to be a woman. If we had been living under the undemocratic imposition of gender discrimination in panel members at that time, and if Niamh had been Neil, much of the progress we have made might have been lost.
For the sake of passionate campaigners for unfashionable causes everywhere, I’d like you to drop this misguided campaign.
I was going to avoid commenting on this as I feel I’ve already put my arguments forward in the post with Ewan and Eilidh and I’ve expanded on them on my own blog*.
However, R Uduwerage-Perera’s comments have deeply upset me and it’s these kinds of attacks that lead us to write this post in the first place.
When the three of us got together to discuss the issue, we were all feeling really excluded from the debate because we disagreed with this method of dealing with the diversity problem. We felt more than sympathetic with its aims and I can only speak for myself, but I know I am completely committed to breaking down barriers that exist for women and members of other minority groups but I just don’t believe that this is the best way in which to do that. At first, we wanted to submit the post anonymously to avoid any further attacks but decided against it in the interests of transparency.
Speaking against tokenism (which I wholeheartedly believe is at the core of this agenda) should not result in claims that we are in any way anti-ANYONE!
I don’t know if anybody’s noticed, but 2 of the 3 authors of this post are women so this isn’t a case of males complaining about ‘positive action’ – in fact, it’s my view that the original proposals reek of men asking other men to let women sit with them to make them all look a bit less sexist.
I truly do accept that everybody has a right to ‘sit at the table’ and I don’t consider myself to have an unearned position of privilege. I understand that this is a controversial issue and that it always will be, but surely we can discuss it more calmly than this? You wouldn’t believe the amount of abuse I’ve had privately hurled at me from members of the party who think it’s not right for me to stand up against something that I believe to be wrong.
As I’ve said many times over the course of this debate and as Ewan and Eilidh have also declared, when we look at a group of people we don’t see gender, race, disability, sexuality or anything else. We don’t judge positively or negatively based on anything other than the real person that exists behind these identifiers.
We’ve put our case forward and we still live in hope of a genuinely gender-blind society and I invite you all to disagree with us if you believe your method is better but to be constantly accused of being intolerant or sexist as a result of how we feel is unacceptable and this kind of discussion is far more damaging to engagement within the party than all-male panels ever could be.
* There’s a link to my own blog here if anybody wants to hear more of what I have to say on the issue: https://misinformedmusings.wordpress.com/2013/03/15/i-am-not-a-token/
Personally I wish for nothing more than a truly equal society as Jade suggests, but sadly this does not currently exist, but positive action can assist in dismantling the barriers of intolerance, and will assist the Party in changing the enviroment and culture that still means that members are held back from fulfilling their true potential, merely because they are female, gay, considered as disabled or ethnically diverse, etc.
Although some people do not judge others on grounds of an individuals diversity, unfortunately the majority of society appears to. Whilst this is the case, vigilance, legislation and positive action are required.
@Jade Holden
“I don’t know if anybody’s noticed, but 2 of the 3 authors of this post are women so this isn’t a case of males complaining about ‘positive action’ – in fact, it’s my view that the original proposals reek of men asking other men to let women sit with them to make them all look a bit less sexist.”
It’s my view that, at best, your post ‘reeks’ (sorry, but the fastest way to show you that your language is unacceptable is to use it right back at you) of naivete – people who have not themselves been bitten by this problem and therefore have decided that the issue must therefore not exist. Not the most constructive way of dealing with it.
I am amused that at the suggestion that female gender is a get-out-of-the-patriarchal-mindset-free card, incidentally. The whole POINT is that your gender is totally irrelevant to your contribution and should therefore be disregarded. R Uduwerage-Perera perhaps should not have made the male-complaints point but I don’t think you should be involving the gender of the authors either 🙂
The gender of the authors aside, this opinion post is very annoying indeed because it is so firmly grounded in the idea that everything should be about the (apparently easily wounded) egos of potential conference participants. If potential participants are such fragile flowers that the mere thought that an element of the decision to include them might be their value as token participants is enough to cause them to lose all interest in taking part, then they have no future in the public sphere anyway because if they are even somewhat successful, they can expect far worse attacks on their egos very shortly thereafter.
Any attempt to paint ANY large organisation as some kind of fantastic social meritocratic utopia is a complete waste of time because such organisations are invariably full of cliques, bias and the like. Your original post seems to deny this, which is interesting. This bit, “Currently, anybody who is invited to speak at a fringe can be confident that they have been asked – obvious choice or not – because somebody thought they had something to say that was worth listening to” is particularly unrealistic. Why would you assume any such thing? I suggest to you that organisers regularly invite speakers for reasons like: they know the guy well and think they’ll get an acceptance, they want to hang out with them, they need a favour from them, they owe them a favour, they’ve been doing this for years and it’s tradition, the other guy can only get their travel paid for them if they are speaking at the event, etc. Am I wrong? I know this is how it works by default in at least two domains because I have been involved in organising many events, but it’s always possible that political conferences are magically exempt from, er, politics.
Also, do you realise that you are accusing Mark et al of internet white knighting on this subject solely in order to make themselves look better? You cannot see how that could be construed as offensive?
“Speaking against tokenism (which I wholeheartedly believe is at the core of this agenda) should not result in claims that we are in any way anti-ANYONE!”
Don’t you think that your predilection for seeing insincerity in this ‘agenda’ should, though?
@Daft h’a’porth, Of course I’ve been bitten by this problem, particularly in workplaces outside of politics, so I don’t deny that it exists, I do however think that this method of solving it may do more harm than good.
2 of us being female isn’t any sort of get-out at all, but R Uduwerage-Perera suggested that this was men complaining and I wanted to point out to him, and to everybody, that some women are also complaining. If some of the people that you’re trying to stand up for are unhappy about it then I think that’s worth noting.
As far as egos are concerned, I frequently hear the argument that women participate less because they are less likely to have the confidence to put themselves forward – this serves to compound that, in my view.
As far as painting the organisation is concerned, I don’t believe it to be a fantastic social meritocratic utopia at all – I fully accept that the problems exist. Again, I just feel that this isn’t the best way to deal with them in the long-term. People have argued that short-term measures like this, however difficult they may be, cause lasting effects such as with our MEP selections. That, however, has already been shown to be incorrect in above comments as the process slowly reversed itself when selection committees stopped being forced to include extra balance. That’s because the underlying causes were never fully addressed or treated.
Finally, I don’t think Mark et all ought to be seen as ‘anti-anyone’ and I don’t believe they have bad intentions. I think they have admirable aims and I applaud their efforts, but I don’t think they’re going the right way about it and the level of support they’ve had for an agenda that I believe to be damaging is worrying to me. My comments were, again, in response to R Uduwerage-Perera’s suggestion that this was men complaining about addressing the balance when, in fact, it was a handful of men taking action and a handful of women being offended and concerned by it.
Jade, I appreciate and hear your concerns, but whilst intolerance is so obviously a daily experience for so many women, and others in society, and the power and influence remains unjustly within the hands of an elite few, then I am committed in my belief in the benefits of positive action to level the playing field.
As a mixed heritage member of society with a number of other diversity attributes, I do not see myself as a victim, or lesser than anyone else, but frankly at times this is an irrelevance for I am very aware of the unnecessary extra barriers that are, and have been placed in my path, and quite frankly, at the very least these are tiresome. As a male, middle class and educated member of society, I am actually able to counter balance some of these negatives, but others less fortunate cannot.
Along with others, including Nick Clegg himself, I am committed to bringing about changes to our Party and society that will mean that we are more relevtive of society at all levels, and positive action is a tool that I suggest would be beneficial to consider.
Positive action is first and foremost not charity. It does not exclusively benefit the minorities (or in the case of women, the majority) concerned but makes very good business sense, be it in politics, manufacturing, in retailing, in the police or elsewhere, and it positively affects everybody’s working and living conditions.
@Jade Holden
We all agree there is a serious problem and it needs dealing with. Therefore, is it not necessary to come up with some positive – in the sense of not just sitting around going ‘gosh, it’s all a bit messed up, isn’t it, what a shame’ – way of doing something about it?
I would say that the approach that was proposed does some harm and does some good. The harm is that some people will be too lazy to engage with it and will therefore in some cases prefer to seek ‘token women’ on the basis that it’s the path of least effort/most visibly contemptuous approach. The good is that the gender balance of activities will improve, at least in the short term. If the alternatives are a) to do nothing or b) to take the proposed approach, I would suggest that it’s worth going with b) and mitigating the damage by taking other firm positive action, such as reinforcing the message to persistent old-boy network abusers by taking the lazy little sods out for a quiet conversation. One politely but firmly explains that this is not 1975 and that it is no longer acceptable to reduce one’s interaction with half the human race to McCain’s ‘binders full of women’. Sooner or later the message will sink in.
” If some of the people that you’re trying to stand up for are unhappy about it then I think that’s worth noting.”
See, I am not sure that the original proposal is meant to be ‘standing up for women’. Again, that’s the internet white knight interpretation coming out, the ‘poor little women need my help’ interpretation, which I don’t think is the way this should be seen. It isn’t so much that the men need to be standing up for the women. It’s more that anybody of whatever gender who is involved in event organisation and consistently fails to invite anybody other than the usual suspects is letting themselves and their organisation/colleagues down. The organisation/colleagues therefore need to politely but firmly get that point across. If you feel there’s a better way to do that, please make a suggestion… One of the harder lessons for me to accept is that it is not always enough to be able to point out the flaws in a proposed action. It’s the difference between being right and being constructive 🙂