Thursday, March 01, 2007

Institutional Responsibility: Yes YOU!

Paddy Johnson, feminist art critic, wrote a great blog post today on her blog Art Fag City nailing The New Yorker for the gross under representation of women in the New Ideas conference. Of 24 speakers, 3 are women. Apparently, women just have nothing of value to contribute, right?

I wanted to link to this post because it looks at a very specific example of the sexism that goes on in these elite educational/intellectual institutions (ahem, nothing new there) and also because it picks up on a thread that Basha and I addressed in our editorial. The thread being that its incumbent on the institution, thats right, YOU the organizer/leader/dictator to find those people who can offer well-considered, diverse opinions, because you are in charge of your organization and its in your interest to diversify. Stop blaming it on other people.*

* The conference organizers are refusing to take responsibility for the lack of women because apparently they invited a lot of women, though they must not have made it a priority.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Who's "they" in the last clause - the conference organizers or the women?