GenderAvenger At Work: 3-Month Report!
Genderavenger.com is three months old. Time to report on what we – and you – have been up to. What a three months it has been! Our email subscriptions grow by 10–15% after each newsletter. We started with zero twitter followers and now have 271 (please follow us at @genderavenger). You have opened alerts and clicked through our actions at a rate that is over twice the average of non-profits. Your enthusiasm continues to inspire us. Here are some highlights from our opening months:
Bravo, Avenger Alina Salganicoff
Most recently, Avenger Alina Salganicoff confronted The Atlantic about a health care conference with success. When Alina received an invitation from The Atlantic for its upcoming conference, Future of Medicine: A Conversation on Cost and Value in Washington, D.C., she was surprised to see that the conference organizers apparently didn’t think women were a part of that future. After all, women are the primary health care decision-makers for their families! Yet, no women were listed among the five speakers on the invitation. Alina leapt into action, contacting the sender:
Thank you for the invitation. A very important issue. I was wondering, is there a reason that there are no women listed on speakers list?
I would think that in the fields of health and medicine, that there would be many women to include in this important discussion on cost and value.
Alina received a swift response indicating two women had just been added to the program, adding:
As we are early in the planning stages of our event, we are still finalizing speakers. However, I completely understand your concern and will forward this note along to our editorial team – as they control the content at our programs.
This is an excuse we often hear.
The good news is that The Atlantic keeps adding women. When The Atlantic added a third woman, it made sure Alina knew with yet another personal email. Three out of 12 is not great, but it's a lot better than zero out of five, and Alina has received the latest conference marketing email, which now includes women on the short list of speakers.
GenderAvenger wants visibility for women from the start of any event in marketing materials and on stage, and Alina was part of making that happen. We bet/hope the folks at The Atlantic won’t forget her the next time they create a health care event.
GenderAvenger Persistence Counts
The GenderAvenger community responded to action alerts about the upcoming New York Times Thomas L. Friedman's Next New World Forum on technology and jobs. When Friedman and the New York Times didn’t respond, you kept up the initiative with tweets and Facebook postings to the Professionals In Human Resources Association (PIHRA), a sponsor of the New York Times' Friedman's Forum. PIHRA did more than just tweet back. Via Facebook, PIHRA told us, “I discussed with our NYTimes contact last week. We will carefully review future sponsorship opportunities.” And, we want to note that the PIHRA staff and Board Executive Committee are majority women. GenderAvenger is definitely happy to know PIHRA.
Unfortunately, the New York Times Friedman's Forum organizers seem unmoved. We have one more move up our sleeves, which we will tell you about next week. Stay tuned.
Thank you for promoting GenderAvengers.
The blog written by Amy Pritchard and the blog featuring journalist Avital Andrews attracted attention, resulting in hundreds of shares on Facebook and Twitter. It turns out that blog sharing is a big part of GA’s reach.
So, please, if you have taken action or know someone who has, be sure to let us know with an email to gina@genderavenger.com.
Thank you!
Challenge it. Change it.