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Writer's pictureLeslie Greenwood

Is Your Panel a "Manel"? Improving Diversity in Keynotes and Panels

I’ve been seeing more and more posts recently about "manels", aka all-male speaker panels (Cindy Gallop & Molly George were in my feed about this).


🤷‍♀️ And it got me wondering: are there tools out there that actually quantify and show how diverse (or not) panels (or events/conferences) are? 





Hence, my question earlier in the week about weighting where the speaker is speaking. In my opinion, you can't say you have a diverse event if most of the women are speaking in small side rooms or only on panels. 


What isn’t measured can’t be improved.


In my search, I stumbled across the Speaker Equity Assessor Tool created by The Female Quotient.


So, how does the Speaker Equity Assessor Tool work?


You first input the # of:


- white women


- women of color


- white men


- men of color


- white nonbinary people


- nonbinary people of color.


The tool will then take all of your inputs and spit out a shareable pie chart showing how diverse your panel is.


It’ll also give you recommendations and tips on how your panel can be more diverse and how you can make a concerted effort to find and feature speakers from all walks of life. Another tip is to check out Wednesday Women where there's a treasure trove of experts you can follow every week. 

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