We just came across The Women’s Room, and loved the concept so much we just had to share the website with you. In their words:
For two days in a row, in October 2012, the Today program ran a segment on a female issue. On both days, the issue was discussed exclusively by men. The BBC claimed that they had been unable to find female experts despite their best efforts. But within minutes of sending out a request on Twitter, we had found a wealth of female expertise on both topics – teenage girls and their contraception and breast cancer.
The BBC’s second defence for this gender imbalance was that they had to reflect the world as it was. This throws up two questions. First, when discussing, rather than reporting news, why should the BBC have to perpetuate supposed gender imbalances? And second, it throws up the question of what the BBC and traditional media mean when they say “expert”. Who do they consider to be voices of authority? Going by their dominance of the airwaves and the press pages, it would seem that it is white, middle and upper-class men who are deemed most worthy of listening to.
Except they don’t. And this is something we want to challenge at The Women’s Room.
We know that intelligent, talented, and experienced women are often overlooked in favour of their male colleagues. The Women’s Room is challenging this state of play, and providing a resource that helps women to promote themselves as leaders in their field.
The website is currently active primarily in the United Kingdom, however we can see a need for such a resource here in Australia as well!
