Manels alert! We don’t want to hear from too many women do we? Not when there are so many men to choose from in the transport sector?

The image below reflects the proportion of women to men on a series of transport/mobility sessions at a forthcoming conference – 20/80.

I was due to speak on a panel in one of these sessions but with only one woman on the panel I have respectfully declined to take part.

I checked the conference website this morning. There are six sessions under the transport/mobility theme. From the website it would appear that the breakdown of the six session is as follows:

– one woman, four men
– two men
– one woman, four men
– one woman, five men
– one woman, three men
– one woman, three men

That’s 21 men and five women.

Once is unlucky, twice would be careless but six times is surely a systemic failure of the conference in question to recognise the importance of EDI?

No doubt some of you are shaking your heads at this wokeness. Well, our sector is the worse off for such an attitude.

Each to their own in terms of choices made but I hope more people will consider whether or not to be engaged in sessions and events when asked to in future where they spot a Manel in the making or a panel with only one woman on it.

What are your experiences?

P.S. And yes, nearly all the speakers are white in this case study example.