The GenderAvenger Audit of Sree's #SMWknd: The Results Are In!
“It became a little thing, but then it became a big thing because of [GenderAvenger].”
Last week, Sree Sreenivasan did something no other conference producer has ever done: he opened up his two-day Social Media Weekend (#SMWknd) conference for a GenderAvenger audit. Our founder, Gina, explained to the audience what GenderAvenger is and why members of the GA team were there. A group of Avengers used the GA Tally app at every opportunity to monitor the gender balance of panels throughout the day and who spoke more, men or women.
Here’s what we found:
The overall breakdown of speakers showed a majority of women speakers, with 25 of the 45 total speakers being women (56%), including 6 women of color.
This is not surprising. As a GA Pledge signer and a vocal advocate for inclusion, Sree and his team were on point.
There were four sessions during the conference that qualified as panels, which GenderAvenger defines as having a minimum of three speakers not including the moderator. Avengers used the GA Tally’s “Who’s Talking” function to time who spoke and for how long. At each of the panels, men did not outtalk the women. GenderAvenger calls it “outtalking” when the percentage of men’s talktime on a panel is larger than the percentage of men on the panel.
Here are a couple of highlights:
During the “Instagramming: $$ For Your Business” panel, men spoke 36% of the time on a panel that had 33% men speakers.
The lone man on the “How Local Does Social” panel only spoke 6% of the time even though he represented 20% of the panel.
Avengers also tallied the audience Q&A portion of each panel separately, and the results were consistent with the balance we found throughout #SMWknd.
GenderAvenger was thrilled to participate in Sree’s Social Media Weekend and do an in-person audit. And thanks goes to our GenderAvenger Fellows Holly, Deena, and Diane who joined us over the two days and made our audit possible!
Sree’s conference was a great opportunity for us at GenderAvenger to use the new “Who’s Talking” function on the GA Tally app, but we’re not the only ones who can do it! If you and friends are at a conference, you can split up and do an audit yourselves. Your findings might not be as positive as the ones we’ve shared, because you won’t have a GA Pledge signer running the conference who invites the founder of GenderAvenger, but that’s why this work is important.
Let us know if you plan to try a GenderAvenger audit of your own, and we’ll send some tips, because that’s what GenderAvenger and our GA Tally app are all about: a grassroots movement to ensure that women’s voices count in public dialog. We were present at #SMWknd, but each of you has the GA Tally app and social media to spread the word and raise the bar everywhere that you are.