#GAReads | Still Missing: The Women Wonks
“Still Missing: The Women Wonks”:
Manels are just as bad for audiences as for the excluded female scholars. Different voices bring different perspectives and new ideas. And by this, I don’t just mean a “woman’s perspective” on “women’s issues.” Nobody invites a man to speak in order to get a “man’s perspective” on national security or labor economics. Expertise is expertise, and there is no reason to believe that talent, intelligence, and scholarly rigor aren’t evenly distributed among men and women.
The good news is that women are fighting back. Chantal de Jonge Oudraat, president of Women in International Security, coauthored a 2018 “gender scorecard” of the top D.C. think tanks working in national security and international affairs to highlight the gender disparities in the leadership, governing boards, and staff at these institutions. There’s also GenderAvenger, an organization solely dedicated to bringing more gender equity to panels and conferences. Since its launch in 2013 by veteran Democratic organizer and feminist Gina Glantz, GenderAvenger has spearheaded social media and email campaigns—let’s call it “manel shaming”—against high-profile conferences that are particularly imbalanced.