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Home Bot CategoriesPeopleMen Speak DO YOU SUPPORT BOYCOTTING OF MANELS’: ALL-MALE-PANELS?

DO YOU SUPPORT BOYCOTTING OF MANELS’: ALL-MALE-PANELS?

by wowmagazine

Kavi Raj Joshi
Founder & Managing Director
Next Venture Corp

No, I do not support boycotting all-male panels. However, I would encourage female participation in all the panels as far as it’s possible. I encourage the organisers to approach, invite female panelists and women to be proactive and participate. Sometimes, it may not be practical to have female panelists everywhere due to the need of the subject matter or availability of relevant expertise. And that’s completely fine. It’s more about having the right person and content than concerns on gender. Also, it’s fine to have panels with all males or any other gender, minors or children. What matters most is the relevance of that panel for the subject matter and solid content among the panelists.  

Sixit Bhatta
Co- founder & CEO, Tootle

We live in a world that is designed by men for men, one doesn’t need to look into the policy; just by walking in the street, one can find that it lacks toilets and sanitation facilities, very important for women. The streets are unfriendly to people living with disability. Or just by having street lamps would have made it safer for women to walk safely and alone during late evenings. This is a result of only men deciding not only how the policies are designed but also how infrastructure is made. Hence there is a historical inconsistency that needs to be corrected and which requires correction which can only happen through larger representation of women on key decision making processes. Therefore, every panel that constitutes to creating knowledge and opinions should make necessary efforts on correcting historical prejudices in our policy making and infrastructure design. Boycotting manels is symbolic. We need to go beyond that. How many protagonists in the textbooks are women? Do we have equal representation of ‘heroes’? It goes beyond all male panels and the one need to make representations in every aspect of our society.

Narottam Aryal
President, King’s College

I support boycotting of Manels. We should consciously promote gender balanced panels. A lot of times, we try to reverse engineer the logic behind “why we could not be gender inclusive” in an attempt to defend ourselves. Rather than doing that, we should try to hack any opportunity to be more inclusive. For example, if my organisation holds programs around entrepreneurship and education, I should deliberately develop processes and strategies to scout experts from diverse backgrounds, map the ecosystem to identify those experts, develop relationships while engaging with them to cut across discriminatory practices, within my institution and beyond. Expanding beyond manels and panels, it is an issue of culture, systemic biases and unwillingness to change. Developing the story of inclusion will need a lot of unlearning, learning and relearning as it is an evolutionary process. It has to start from ‘yesterday’!

Arvindra Ranjit
CEO, Business Advantage

I am against any discrimination or bias against women either consciously or unconsciously. If someone is doing it unconsciously we have to make them realise and make sure they don’t repeat that. And if someone is doing it consciously that’s a bigger problem for me. Having said that, when it comes to a panel or inclusion of women in any major events and platforms, I don’t support the idea of including females just for the sake of having them and to present yourself as someone who is inclusive. The participation in any panel, event or platforms has to be based on the capability of the individual and the value s/he can add to it and not by the gender of that individual. I believe that there are enough females in every sector these days who are capable enough to represent any industry and contribute in panels and events that they are part of.

Having a mix of different genders (including the third gender) will bring a good balance to the thoughts, experiences and contributions in any panel, events or platforms. I think one of major steps we have to take is to stop comparing individuals based on their genders and rather compare them based on their merits. 

Ujaya Shakya
Founder & Managing Director, Outreach Nepal

Let me start with a fact: the women population of the world is almost 50%. I agree that similar representation is also required on the dais. There are areas where women are still underrepresented in some parts of the world but it is changing for better. In the advertising sector, even in some of the South Asian countries, women are leading the business and they are equally visible in such forums.

Besides criticising, I think the growing awareness of the need to ensure diversity and equality among speakers at conferences will be a small step to ensure a big change for tomorrow. Especially in panel sessions at conferences that aim to debate issues from different perspectives, it is crucial that the viewpoints extend beyond gender partiality.

I think we must free women from the discrimination that is so profoundly engraved in our part of the societies. A ceiling – sometimes invisible, often obvious – denies women the opportunity to rise up the ladder. When the society comes out and enables women, empower them to obtain equality and the right to pursue their aspirations, hear their voice in full equality with men, then only we will have true dialogues in these seminars which will eventually make sense.

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