Doctor Who News

Blog of Paul Cornell - writer of Doctor Who (and other stuff, of course!)

Panel Parity
Okay, so this was something I came up with yesterday, and it's mad, and is, frankly, a rod for my own back, but what the hell, it's going to make this coming year a lot more interesting.

I think there should be gender parity on every panel at every convention.  I'm after 50/50, all the time.  I want that in place as an expectation, as a rule.  Now, to make that happen, what really should be done is a ground-up examination of society, huge changes at the heart of things which would automatically lead to women being equally represented everywhere, not just on convention panels.  Well, we've all wanted that and worked for that for decades, especially those of us in fandom, and it just hasn't happened.  So, this year, I've decided that I'm going to approach this problem via the only moral unit I'm in charge of: me.  I'm going to approach this problem from the other end.  And this approach is going to be very much that of a blunt instrument.

If I'm on, at any convention this year, a panel that doesn't have a 50/50 gender split (I'll settle for two out of five), I'll hop off that panel, and find a woman to take my place.  

If I know of a professionally qualified woman (a fellow creator or critic or someone with specific knowledge of the subject) in the room, I'll start by inviting her up.  If there's nobody like that, I'll ask for hands up, and hope that bravery counts as virtue enough for them to hold their own on the panel.  I will ask such women that they don't spend their time on the panel criticising the convention or the companies I work for.  That would make me a very rude guest.  I will then stay in the room to listen to the panel, and then, due to the small possibility that someone might have come to the panel purely to see me, make myself available outside afterwards, so no audience member is short-changed.

On some occasions, I may be able to make the panel gender-balanced in another way, by asking more women to join in to even up the numbers.  I actually think that's much more invasive than me getting off the panel.  I've got a right, I feel, to replace myself, but not to haul lots of other people on.  (We've all been in panels where someone says 'hey, I know of some people who'd be great on this panel, you guys come on up' and the results are rarely charming.)  But sometimes when it's just a panel of mates, and we're all onboard with it, that might be possible, and I'll try it when it is.

I intend to do this is a very non-confrontational way.  I'm pointing a finger at the world, not at specific convention organisers or fandoms.  And certainly not at my friends on the panel.  I'm hoping for laughter and pleasure when I hop off a panel, a collective sigh.  I want this to be a flag that says 'we can all do better'.

I won't make arrangements with specific women beforehand.  This isn't about me picking and choosing who I think is worthy.

There are a couple of situations in which this doesn't apply.  If the panel has a very project-specific subject, such as 'meet the creators of Saucer Country' or 'here are the writers of Wild Cards', then as long as every female creator involved with that project who's in the building is on the panel, I don't feel we should pull people out of the audience to even it up.  However, I don't think this rule can be applied so widely as to cover the entire output of a major media company.  You probably won't find enough female DC Comics creators to make the panel 50/50, convention organisers, so how about some women who write about comics?  If it's just me being interviewed, I'll seek a female interviewer.  If it's just me with a microphone... I honestly don't know what would be best to do in that situation.  I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

That last rule has been really hard to decide on, and I feel for the conventions that have got in touch, since I announced this on Twitter, saying 'but the panel is just every DC writer we have'.  I am being hard on you, and I do apologise.  But this is a blunt instrument, and if I started allowing such enormous get-outs this plan would all soon be wittled away to nothing.  I anticipate hopping off panels at conventions run by close friends, where everyone in the building is in agreement about putting more women on panels.  It's not about me getting at you.

Obviously, me doing this can't solve the problem.  But the first convention that announces they're going for 50/50, across the board, will have started to solve it.  And I'll trumpet their decision far and wide.

I'd also like to hear from other male panelists who are willing to do the same thing I'm doing.  (But I won't be finger-pointing at those who don't.  I understand that this can't be for everyone.)

50/50 will result in some horror stories in the short term.  There will be women put on panels who are obviously there just to fulfill the rule.  There will be brilliant and interesting men left in the audience.  Over time, as the expectation sets in, as the rule becomes just something our communities do, then these problems will go away, as more and more interesting and communicative women are encouraged and allowed to step up.  That virtuous circle has to start somewhere.  And it will take an entirely artificial decision to do it.  Change isn't going to happen naturally.

50/50 will be called, and is, all the following: 'positive discrimination'; 'tokenism'; 'treating the symptom, not the cause'; 'political correctness'.  Those words are just descriptions convention organisers are going to have to get used to, until the point, in a couple of decades, where 50/50 has become 'the way things have always been'.

There are all sorts of arguments I've heard from good people on the other side of this debate.  None of them will change my mind (though I'm sure I'll see some of them re-hashed again in the comments).  I'm going to do this anyway.  And I'd like to hear from a convention that responds to my plan with an announcement that they're going to achieve 50/50.  Not just on my panels: on all of them.

I'll be back on Friday with a vastly packed blog, including my long-delayed SFX Weekender report.  Until then, Cheerio!