At first, it sounded like something straight out The Onion or some other satire piece: All the panel members af the recent Denver Comic Con, “Women in Comics,” were all men.

However, it wasn’t fiction, it was true. While commentators pointed out that a lot of women read comics and work in the industry as artists and writers, you would have never known that by looking at the panel.

When one female attendee asked why there were no women on the panel, she was told “It was a last month’s addition and they couldn’t find any [women participants].”

While that may be the truth, women are noticeably absent from many panels. Indeed, these all-male panels or “manels” are even getting shamed on a blog called: “Congrats, you have an all-male panel!” Despite the fact it was only started three months ago, the blog already has about 200 pictures sent in by people from 10 different countries. (One of the most jarring is the manel from The Global Summit of Women.) The blog uses wit and sarcasm to make its point that we still have a long way to go before women are fairly represented at various conferences and summits.

As a woman who lives in a university town that frequently holds conferences, I can count on one hand the number of times that I have attended one of these and saw more than one woman on a panel. More often than not, all the participants are male.

This needs to change as soon as possible. Hopefully it will, but until then we should call out panels that exclude women. While generally I am not in favor of shaming, i.e., fat shaming, slut shaming, etc., this is one type of shaming I can and will get behind until various panels reflect the true diversity of the population at large.

 

Relephant: 

What Do Comic Con & Yoga have In Common? {Video}

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Author: Kimberly Lo

Editor: Travis May

Images: Flickr/Dave Taylor