The Inspiration behind Say No To Manels

Our origin story...

The Seed (in Aarti’s words)

A long, long time ago (actually, it was just in November 2019 but you know how 2020 seems to have gone on for several years!!), I attended a HR conference organized by a national industry body. Looking forward to what sounded like three really progressive and important topics of technology, talent and transformation, I settled in for the 2-day conference. Barring a few interesting speakers, the first morning was largely a bore, so after lunch I decided to amuse myself by doing some tracking of how gendered the event was. I decided to start counting things that were overtly gendered, sexist – even misogynistic – and clearly biased. Here is what I counted over the course of the next 4 hours or so…

Gendered Language

The use of the generic “he” (i.e. used to refer to a generic employee, person etc. – not to a specific person): 20 times

• Versus “He/She” – 6

• Versus “She/He” – 0

• Versus “They” – 0 (“they” is now accepted and preferred as the generic singular pronoun, to include non-binary persons as well as women and men)

The use of gendered terms :

• "Countrymen”, “Salesman”, “Draftsman”, “Workman” – 19 (Versus “Worker” – 4)

• “Chairman” – 3 (Versus "Chairperson"/"Chair" - 0)

• “Mankind” – 1 (Versus “Human Race” – 1)

• “Fraternity” – 18 (9 of which were by a single person!) (Versus “Community” – 1)

• “Guys” – 17 (Versus “Ladies and Gentlemen” – 12; Versus “Friends” – 1)

Gendered Notions of Expertise

• The number of men that were quoted – 24 (majority of these were non-Indian men for a national conclave of an Indian industry body!) (Versus the number of women who were quoted – 2)

• “Manels” everywhere: On stage panelists or speakers who were men – 25 (Versus women panelists or speakers – 5)

Other ways in which the conference made me and many women cringe:

• A male speaker made jokes about “incentivising” his wife with a foreign trip, just like he “incentivizes” his “maid servant” and driver – all in an effort to talk about pay for performance or some such HR concept.

• A few speakers made comments about “diversity candidates” while referring to women

• A speaker, talking about nepotism, referred to a hypothetical “son” or “son-in-law” even in that example!

And all this was at an HR conference!! HR, a field that is supposedly more gender balanced – some would even argue that HR, if anything, has more women in the profession than men – still has this very stark problem of the ‘man as default human’ thinking that Caroline Criado-Perez describes brilliantly in her book “Invisible Women – Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men”

It has been painful for me to even go back to my notepad from this conference and type this up. Even now, what I wish I’d tracked but didn’t are things like manterruptions and mansplaining – of which there were plenty of examples. A lot of research shows that women speak less, are interrupted more and have their ideas more harshly judged or worse – robbed of credit (see “bropriation”) by men. While this sounds like a litany of complaints against men, it really is a reflection of gendered roles and socialization and is thus a complaint against patriarchy and systems that perpetuate these biases, not just specific women or men.

The absolute in-your-face evidence of how gendered our ‘professional’ language and events are, was never clearer to me, than when I walked out of that conference that evening. It made me resolve to do something about it, and that is one of the reasons I got a few like-minded others together a few months ago, to work on this effort.

Germination Stage (in our collective words)

As like-minded individuals who had had very similar experiences, we started to think of ways in which we could address this more proactively - a campaign of some kind, maybe!

Through many Google Meets and Zoom calls during the pandemic, we decided to test out our idea of a campaign with a number of men across levels and industries. Based on these conversations, we decided to work towards launching "Say No to Manels”.

“Say No to Manels” is our attempt at putting a speedbump in the decision-making involved in organizing professional events and inviting speakers and ‘experts’ to them. It has the mission of expanding speaking opportunities for women, transgender and non-binary experts and eventually, for other underrepresented groups as well (e.g. people with disabilities, Dalits, religious minorities etc.) For this diverse and inclusive vision to come alive, the current status quo must be questioned and challenged. If men start refusing to speak on ‘manels’ (i.e. male-dominated panels) unless the organizers make some efforts to include women on them, and if organizers themselves pledge to stop organizing ‘manels’, imagine the changes we could see!

Growth Stage

Well, this stage is up to you! Please take this pledge and proactively do your part in making our societies more inclusive.

We look forward to the day when we can attend a conference where we aren’t tempted to start counting the number of gendered terms being used because the speakers themselves are so engaging and relatable and interesting – because they reflect the workforce and all of us!

Remember, we can’t be what we can’t see – and unless we “Say No to Manels”, we can’t see a more vibrant and balanced vision of expertise and leadership!