Can we stop with these all-male "manels" already?
What you need to know:
The article critiques the problem of "manels" or all-male panels at conferences, highlighting an incident where an executive walked out of an event with only male speakers on a topic that disproportionately impacts women. It argues that excluding women's voices, perspectives and lived experiences from important discussions is discriminatory and leads to incomplete, inaccurate discourse. The author calls for actively challenging excuses for lacking gender balance and emphasizes the need to provide platforms for women's substantive knowledge and insights.
When the poster announcing the 2nd Hilary Ng’weno International Conference slated for June 3-5, 2024, at Moi University was circulated, one thing was conspicuous – the chief guest and all the five listed keynote speakers were men. This conference, first held in October 2021, celebrates the legacy of the founder of the Weekly Review magazine.
Keen observers must have wondered whether this was deliberate gender-based discrimination, negligence or that there were simply no women in the media industry who could speak on the theme of sustainability of information generation, dissemination, consumption and preservation in the age of disruptive digital technologies! Of course there are such women. Could it be that they were approached but were not available? Maybe.
The frequency and notoriety of all-male panels has led to coinage of the word “manels”. These formations send out the message of stubborn patriarchy, which contravenes the fact that inclusion is a cardinal principle of democracy. This is not to say that women will contribute a uniform “female” perspective. Rather, it is to underline that their personal experiences, technical knowledge and insights exist and have an intrinsic and practical value that society is not benefitting from when they are excluded.
The issue of manels was dramatised by the Chief Executive of Amref Health Africa, Dr Githinji Gitahi, when he walked out of last year’s World Health Assembly in Switzerland on realising that all the three lined up speakers were men, who were going to talk on “an issue that disproportionately harms women”.
As captured in the May 31, edition of the Mail and Guardian newspaper, Gitahi’s decision highlights a fundamental issue, that such forums cannot be comprehensive, accurate and valid if women’s inputs and viewpoints are neglected. He vacated his seat and asked to be replaced by “any woman qualified to talk on climate change”. When an attempt was made to assuage him with the explanation that “a female expert from the World Health Organisation had been invited but could not attend”, Gitahi dismissed this as a convenient excuse. The issue of women’s reluctance to occupy public spaces was ably discussed by the editor of Daily Nation's publication The Voicelast week.
Back to Gitahi, was this the only woman in the world who was knowledgeable about climate change issues? As he correctly pointed out, why did the organisers not “just get a non-director female who’s just as informed and also brings insights from a woman’s lived experience?”
Gitahi criticised the routine of allocating space to only the most senior people and using the excuse that there are no women in those positions. If that is indeed the case, the critical issue is to unearth and address what has led to this situation.
Contribution in panels is not about positional seniority but substantive knowledge and experience. In most cases, the most memorable presentations in conferences are not those by “experts” with their jargon but common persons.
In last year’s Maisha conference in Mombasa on the triple burden of HIV, adolescent pregnancy and violence, a girl from West Pokot stole the show with narrations of her personal experiences in a presentation that gave a human face to the issues.
Citing the case of his own mother who “had nine children, zero education, got married at 17” but was “tasked with the survival of her offspring”, Gitahi drove home the point that women are already managing complex life issues which should be mainstreamed and formalised in decision making platforms.
He also highlighted the case during the Covid lockdown of “a young woman obstetrician who circumvented the policy by organising a licence for a taxi company to take them to a hospital after hours and (secured) a toll-free line” that enabled the doctors to receive 1,500 calls within the first week only. One can imagine how many lives of expectant women were saved just by this simple ingenious brainwave of a woman who could have easily been blocked out if seniority was allowed to dictate terms.
A very important thing came out of Gitahi’s audacity. Another man in the panel stepped down at the end of the session, eventually creating a semblance of parity in the panel.
If Gitahi had not taken the first step, things would have continued as if all was well and perfect. The power of peer influence here is at the root of mobilisation of men into the crusade for gender equality. This comes with risks of being maligned and insulted, which are mere professional hazards. The lesson is that we must continue to speak out against discrimination, even if we sound like broken records.
Hopefully, Gitahi will make real his threat to quit subsequent all-male panels, regardless of circumstances because “some things are non-negotiable”.
The writer is a lecturer in Gender and Development Studies at South Eastern Kenya University ([email protected]).
