How interesting. I rarely do the sort of accounting you describe, and I think that is because I've always been drawn to women-dominant spaces professionally: women's magazines, a doctoral program in Victorian literature (with a woman--and a mother--for my dissertation advisor), now high school English teaching and romance novel writing. It is true, however, that in many of these spaces male voices take on outsize authority or importance when they do appear. I've also been pondering the narrative of the Brilliant, Iconoclastic Teacher Who Changed My Life and how he's almost always a dude, while the types for good women teachers are either Cranky Witch Who Nonetheless Taught Me Grammar or Lady I Wish Were My Mom.
Very interesting topic and discussion. Thanks Leah!
I don't document my counts but I count constantly. I count conference line-ups, panel discussions, book award lists, award list winners, short lists that people of folks they recommend others follow on Twitter, podcast guests, sources quoted in articles (and if they're interviewed as anecotes v. experts) and so on and so forth. (I also note when they're spouses of another speaker.) Truthfully, though, I give very little credit to seeing women's names if they're all white women. Because white women often run in the same social circles as white men, I don't actually give too much credit to places that may achieve gender equity but are still overwhelmingly white. Inviting WOC and ensuring they're not tokenized takes real work but it also shows me how much institutions truly care and aren't just trying to do the least/give lip service.
This something I should definitely be more mindful of. I did a paper back in the day on women's representation in sports media, which was at the time terrible (I assume stats wise it still is, even more coverage of things such as women's soccer and tennis).
Geena Davis's work comes to mind, too — on Title IX and the Women's Sports Foundation
Absolutely - I do this for books I read, conferences/panels I attend and the main cast of shows I (or my kiddo) watch. Like Casselman I also track race which tends to be more depressing.
I tend to lean heavily on social media to find content and spaces that align, and I've curated my feed so it tends to be fairly representative.
I use a lot of different metrics in different places. When watching TV or movies, I do like the Bechdel test (recently while watching a new show with a primarily male cast I commented to my husband, "Hey, they passed in episode 3! That's sooner than I expected!") As a woman in a male-dominated STEM field I look within companies (my own and others) at where women are shown and featured - are they managers? Technical experts? Board members? Executives? This doesn't tell the whole story, but it can be illuminating. Finally, I watch where my alma maters hire from, and who they hire. There wasn't a single female faculty member in my undergraduate department when I graduated, and in my grad program (at a much larger university) my advisor and department chair were both women. When my undergraduate department hired its first tenure-track female in 2012 I was delighted!
I keep track of women writers in film and culture - Angelica Bastien and Hunter Harris come to mind. Jessica Heidt at Pixar also keeps track of the number of lines female characters have in Pixar movies. Episode 4 of the series Inside Pixar on Disney+ goes into a little more detail about her work.
I definitely count women in the context of the academic papers I read and cite (mostly computer science). The process I use to read papers is usually some form of "start with a paper I'm interested, move on to papers it cites that seem most relevant, recurse on those papers until I stop turning up new work, and then check Google Scholar to fill in any gaps." It's not a great system in that it is definitely biased by who is known (and thus cited by) the authors I started with, but...... well, I also don't know of anything much better. I don't know of a way to filter out low-quality or irrelevant papers other than by trusting the recommendations of those who are influential in my field.
This approach is likely biased against citing women, since some research suggests that work by women is under-cited. Then again, knowing that women are under-cited doesn't really illuminate much by way of how you might fix this problem. Are women under-cited because of blatant sexism? because they produce lower quality work? because they send their work to lesser known conferences than a male author would? Ultimately, I'm pessimistic that this problem can be fixed by direct means--it feels like more of a problem that can only be fixed indirectly by society/academia becoming less sexist. But as always, would love it if other commenters had slightly less pessimistic takes!
How interesting. I rarely do the sort of accounting you describe, and I think that is because I've always been drawn to women-dominant spaces professionally: women's magazines, a doctoral program in Victorian literature (with a woman--and a mother--for my dissertation advisor), now high school English teaching and romance novel writing. It is true, however, that in many of these spaces male voices take on outsize authority or importance when they do appear. I've also been pondering the narrative of the Brilliant, Iconoclastic Teacher Who Changed My Life and how he's almost always a dude, while the types for good women teachers are either Cranky Witch Who Nonetheless Taught Me Grammar or Lady I Wish Were My Mom.
Very interesting topic and discussion. Thanks Leah!
I don't document my counts but I count constantly. I count conference line-ups, panel discussions, book award lists, award list winners, short lists that people of folks they recommend others follow on Twitter, podcast guests, sources quoted in articles (and if they're interviewed as anecotes v. experts) and so on and so forth. (I also note when they're spouses of another speaker.) Truthfully, though, I give very little credit to seeing women's names if they're all white women. Because white women often run in the same social circles as white men, I don't actually give too much credit to places that may achieve gender equity but are still overwhelmingly white. Inviting WOC and ensuring they're not tokenized takes real work but it also shows me how much institutions truly care and aren't just trying to do the least/give lip service.
This something I should definitely be more mindful of. I did a paper back in the day on women's representation in sports media, which was at the time terrible (I assume stats wise it still is, even more coverage of things such as women's soccer and tennis).
Geena Davis's work comes to mind, too — on Title IX and the Women's Sports Foundation
and media (see link): https://seejane.org/
Absolutely - I do this for books I read, conferences/panels I attend and the main cast of shows I (or my kiddo) watch. Like Casselman I also track race which tends to be more depressing.
I tend to lean heavily on social media to find content and spaces that align, and I've curated my feed so it tends to be fairly representative.
I use a lot of different metrics in different places. When watching TV or movies, I do like the Bechdel test (recently while watching a new show with a primarily male cast I commented to my husband, "Hey, they passed in episode 3! That's sooner than I expected!") As a woman in a male-dominated STEM field I look within companies (my own and others) at where women are shown and featured - are they managers? Technical experts? Board members? Executives? This doesn't tell the whole story, but it can be illuminating. Finally, I watch where my alma maters hire from, and who they hire. There wasn't a single female faculty member in my undergraduate department when I graduated, and in my grad program (at a much larger university) my advisor and department chair were both women. When my undergraduate department hired its first tenure-track female in 2012 I was delighted!
I keep track of women writers in film and culture - Angelica Bastien and Hunter Harris come to mind. Jessica Heidt at Pixar also keeps track of the number of lines female characters have in Pixar movies. Episode 4 of the series Inside Pixar on Disney+ goes into a little more detail about her work.
I definitely count women in the context of the academic papers I read and cite (mostly computer science). The process I use to read papers is usually some form of "start with a paper I'm interested, move on to papers it cites that seem most relevant, recurse on those papers until I stop turning up new work, and then check Google Scholar to fill in any gaps." It's not a great system in that it is definitely biased by who is known (and thus cited by) the authors I started with, but...... well, I also don't know of anything much better. I don't know of a way to filter out low-quality or irrelevant papers other than by trusting the recommendations of those who are influential in my field.
This approach is likely biased against citing women, since some research suggests that work by women is under-cited. Then again, knowing that women are under-cited doesn't really illuminate much by way of how you might fix this problem. Are women under-cited because of blatant sexism? because they produce lower quality work? because they send their work to lesser known conferences than a male author would? Ultimately, I'm pessimistic that this problem can be fixed by direct means--it feels like more of a problem that can only be fixed indirectly by society/academia becoming less sexist. But as always, would love it if other commenters had slightly less pessimistic takes!