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No Willy No Woman's Hour

mulqueeny.wordpress.com

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Re: No Willy No Woman's Hour

#11

Post by raldi »

josephlord wrote: post #4

Background for those not in the UK. BBC Radio 4 - National speech radio channel with news current affairs, comedy and drama. Distinctly middle class. News is serious high quality and it is a serious debate platform for politics. Women's Hour - Week day mid morning daily 45 minute (if you don't count book of the week) with a weekend highlight version. It is focussed on a wide range of issues of concern to women. This…

Thanks, but I'm still having a great deal of trouble following the post. Could you explain it like I'm five?

Re: No Willy No Woman's Hour

#12

Post by josephlord »

raldi wrote: post #11
josephlord wrote: post #4

Background for those not in the UK. BBC Radio 4 - National speech radio channel with news current affairs, comedy and drama. Distinctly middle class. News is serious high quality and it is a serious debate platform for politics. Women's Hour - Week day mid morning daily 45 minute (if you don't count book of the week) with a weekend highlight version. It is focussed on a wide range of issues of concern to women. This…

Thanks, but I'm still having a great deal of trouble following the post. Could you explain it like I'm five?

I'll have a go but refer to original for definitive version.

Emma Mulqueeny (http://mulqueeny.wordpress.com/about/) works on encouraging children to code in particular girls.

Women's Hour was planning a section about activities to encourage girls to code and invited Emma to contribute. She was later uninvited.

She then discovered:

1) That both participants would be men, both involved in programming for kids but only one with particular emphasis in supporting women/girls.

2) The reason she was dropped was that they wanted men.

3) This is Women's Hour and she was dropped for being a woman.

Being turned down for being the wrong gender is not good in any scenario, being turned down by the Equal Opportunities committed BBC especially on Women's Hour for being a women has the potential to be quite gutting.

Edit: My speculation:

From the perspective of the Producers every story needs an 'angle' and they seem to have gone for one about how some men are working to help women into tech. This may have been decided after the initial invite to Emma Mulqueeny and led to the invite being withdrawn. I don't know the process for finding guests but it probably involves junior researchers ringing round lots of potentially relevant people. At the very least the invite should have been more tentative and the dropping better handled.

My feeling is that not having a woman both as an example of a woman in tech and to vouch that there are men helping girls and women into tech would have strengthened the section but I'm not a radio producer or in the main target demographic for Women's Hour so offer the view very tentatively. In my first post I just provided background for those less familiar with Radio 4 but no comment on the story itself but you have drawn me into expressing a view.

Edit2:

Women on TV and Radio was the topic of BBC Radio 4's Media Show this week: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00dv9hq

Re: No Willy No Woman's Hour

#14

Post by [deleted] »

raldi wrote: post #11
josephlord wrote: post #4

Background for those not in the UK. BBC Radio 4 - National speech radio channel with news current affairs, comedy and drama. Distinctly middle class. News is serious high quality and it is a serious debate platform for politics. Women's Hour - Week day mid morning daily 45 minute (if you don't count book of the week) with a weekend highlight version. It is focussed on a wide range of issues of concern to women. This…

Thanks, but I'm still having a great deal of trouble following the post. Could you explain it like I'm five?

[deleted]

Re: No Willy No Woman's Hour

#15

Post by DanBC »

raldi wrote: post #11
josephlord wrote: post #4

Background for those not in the UK. BBC Radio 4 - National speech radio channel with news current affairs, comedy and drama. Distinctly middle class. News is serious high quality and it is a serious debate platform for politics. Women's Hour - Week day mid morning daily 45 minute (if you don't count book of the week) with a weekend highlight version. It is focussed on a wide range of issues of concern to women. This…

Thanks, but I'm still having a great deal of trouble following the post. Could you explain it like I'm five?

No Willy, No Women's Hour

Willy is juvenile slang for penis. "Women's Hour" is a long running programme on BBC Radio 4 covering a variety of issues from a women's perspective.

> I also like Capital sometimes,

Capital is some other commercial radio network.

> satire is our bag, right?

We enjoy satire.

> the same bit of me that loves Boris being the Mayor of London.

Boris Johnson, the current mayor of London, is a loveable buffoon who is immensely popular even though he's a politician. He's a bit of a guilty pleasure among some people.

> It is not always helpful to be stabby and cross about things,

Stabby - an informal colloquialism from "to stab", expressive of anger and violence.

> who was a GP

GP is "General Practitioner" - this is a family doctor.

> was so totally gutted

Totally disappointed; disheartened; dispirited.

etc etc.

Other people have covered the rest of it - a radio programme aimed at women wants to cover the lack of women in tech conferences and invited a woman to speak about it, but then called to cancel her because they actually wanted men to talk about the lack of women in tech conferences.

Re: No Willy No Woman's Hour

#16

Post by zarify »

Speaking as a willy-enabled educator, getting male viewpoints on getting more girls into tech would actually be pretty valuable. I just spent a couple of weeks in another state talking to women who were involved with evangelising tech to girls, but I feel that their approach wouldn't be as successful for me. This is one of the things that I want to focus on in the future; we have so many smart girls coming through in the math and science areas that tech could be really good for, even if it wasn't their main focus.

Also, "pink data" - jebus.

Re: No Willy No Woman's Hour

#17

Post by joesb »

So she was pissed that the organizer wants to make room for two men for the talk.

Should a male speaker be pissed too if he were the one that got kicked out because organizer wanted to make room for a women?

Seems like the author wants organizer to consider her gender only when it means that she will benefit from it.

Re: No Willy No Woman's Hour

#18

Post by vickytnz »

zarify wrote: post #16

Speaking as a willy-enabled educator, getting male viewpoints on getting more girls into tech would actually be pretty valuable. I just spent a couple of weeks in another state talking to women who were involved with evangelising tech to girls, but I feel that their approach wouldn't be as successful for me. This is one of the things that I want to focus on in the future; we have so many smart girls coming through in…

If you look at who was speaking, the man who was trying to evangelise tech was a good example of that. In that respect, having a woman who was evangelising would be a good counterpoint. I'm not entirely sure of the point of the angle of a guy who didn't believe it was a problem was though, given there's an obvious gap still there. Concession: I haven't listened to the interview as of yet. I know they did have a young girl programmer who spoke too, but it was a pre-recorded bit, so didn't have any interaction.
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