A friend of mine recently mentioned having concerns about the imbalance in presenters at atheist conventions in the region. It lead to a conversation about what the ideal ratio should be and how far we have to go. Today’s chart is an attempt to address the second question in a single graphic:
Number of women presenters are on the horizontal axis, men on the vertical axis. Overall, women rated 36% of the speaking slots when excluding the Women in Secularism event, which by itself drives the overall figure up to 39%. The only two general-interest atheist conferences to feature more women than men were the 2013 Carolinas Secular Conference and the 2013 Kentucky Freethought Convention. Out of 25 conferences included here, nine fell in the 20%-30% range, which seems to me a bit low. Such a heavy imbalance creates the unfortunate impression that public speaking is more of a guy thing.
I’m not here to rage about this imbalance or call anyone out, and I would ask that you don’t take these data and start hammering on individual conference organizers. Better far to suggest useful solutions, and I do have at least one to suggest. Something I noticed while putting this together was that the same handful of names kept cropping up time and again, so much so that I’ve seen most of them in person once or twice or thrice already. We need to buck that trend by cultivating local talent from the grassroots up, giving non-professional speakers a chance to make a name for themselves. By expanding the pool of potential speakers, we can diversify future lineups in terms of gender, ethnicity, expertise, and content.
Your thoughts?
