No More Excuses: We Need Women In The Virtual Conversation
Conferences play an essential role in providing networking opportunities and continued education for professionals across every industry. Right now, we are all in the same boat — trying to re-think, re-establish, and re-build the events industry as we know it — but the need to learn and build new skills hasn’t ended.
photo credit: Christina @ wocintechchat.com, via Unsplash
If the goal as conference and event organizers is to create a platform for people to share knowledge and ideas, we all have a responsibility to do so equitably. As we move to digital events at this pivotal time, it’s imperative to keep women in the conversation by giving women equal stage time.
We are already seeing the gendered rhetoric across the daily media cycle — (male-run) big tech companies will come out of this “stronger than ever”, with their CEO’s “leading the way”. Meanwhile recent conversations about women-run and women-owned businesses are using terms like “support from a distance” with regard to your online purchases, but, according to an American Express study, these women’s businesses are already growing at a rate of two-times faster than all businesses nationwide.
Now, more than ever, we need to be sharing strategies on how to keep (or add) women to the conversation. Here are four ways your organization can ensure your digital events support women right now:
1. Partner with like-minded organizations to expand your speaker and audience reach.
Audiences want and need diverse content. If you are a co-ed event organizer, partner with a women-only group to expand your speaker reach and audience gender balance (and vice versa). This is a great way to develop timely and inclusive content.
2. Record your conversations to accommodate parents.
Across social media, parents are talking about the challenges of balancing kids and home-schooling throughout the workday. The beauty of digital is that you aren’t confined to specific time frames, and, right now, people don’t have “normal” schedules, so be flexible. You can work with parents to find windows to record panels and fire-side chats in advance or go live at any time of day or night.
3. Pay women for their time and expertise.
This should go without saying, especially if you are accepting payments to access your content: you can pay women for their time and expertise. You need to ask them what their rates are and be willing to pay it. They have earned their knowledge and expertise, and you should share it.
4. Don’t worry about women-focused content.
Both women and men want and need the same content: case-studies, tools to build hard skills, and equitable speaker line-ups. No more silos. We all have to work together to come through this, and we need to ensure that professionals have the best tools possible to do so.
We have a long road ahead not only to fix the health and economic crises we are facing globally, but also, ideally, to create a new, more sustainable normal.
How is your organization taking things digital? Let us know in the comments.
Brady Hahn is the founder of The Noodle Collective, a holistic strategy firm based in Los Angeles. She is the co-author of The Women's Professional Conference Experience & Impact Study with the Center for the Advancement of Women at Mount Saint Mary’s University and the creator of the Insight Collective, connecting professional women to speaking opportunities and event organizers to a diverse cross-section of over 100 women experts. Follow her on Twitter at @bradyhahn.