By Ila Ananya
We’ve been laughing at manels (all-male panels) for a while now. Like the conference in Saudi Arabia on Women in Society with no women present. Or the lovely manel on gender equality and inclusion in the workplace. And the menz run for women’s safety.
But we found out on Sunday that CNN doesn’t know what it means yet.
I spent my Saturday night and Sunday morning watching videos of the Women’s March on Washington. Every conversation with friends was about how exciting it was that many of the women speaking at the march were non-white women, each of them talking from where they came — just before this, we’d each shared the ‘Guiding Vision and Definition of Principles’ document released by the organisers of the march.
But of course, while all this was happening, it turns out the CNN couldn’t refrain from covering the Women’s March on Washington — with eight men and one woman.
It reminded us of Washington Post’s magazine Express, which ran with their magazine with the oh-so-lovely cover of male symbol instead of the female one — for a story on the women’s march. We had wondered then just how many women were on the team that produced the cover image. Because like for Wa Po Express, CNN evidently feels like the best way to talk about women’s rights is to have men do all the talking.
So when the moderator Don Lemon asked David Swerdlick of the Washington Post about how big a historic moment this was — we got gyaan about how Swerdlick thought it was a big success “as an exercise in free speech and as an exercise in nonviolent dissent.” And once Lemon moved on to the other male panellists, all they could do was bring up male leaders — no women. Big surprise. It’s like even though millions of women joined the march in a protest organised by and for women, they’d certainly have nothing to say about it.
On that note, we thought we should just leave CNN with our old guide to panel discussions. Just so that they’d know how to have more women on the panel.