Women and ethnic minorities at Skeptics in the Pub (London): Follow up

Good morning all,

As promised, I wrote an email to Sid Rodrigues, who currently runs the London Skeptics In The Pub:

Did you know that of all the speakers at SITP, nine have been women, and only two speakers have been non-white (yourself included)? How are speakers chosen? Is this something you are aware of, and has it ever been addressed before? I only ask because the audience is extremely diverse, so I found it surprising that the speakers didn’t reflect this as well. Do people get in touch with SITP and request to do a talk, or do you actively look for speakers?

He sent me an absolutely brilliant response:

Hi Carmen,

 Thanks for the email. I’ll try to give you a comprehensive reply, so please bear with me if I go too far in depth, but I think it’s important that I do.

 I’ve been the main organiser of London SitP since we moved to the Penderel’s Oak in September 2007. We had a sort of Kabal [sic] of thirteen people who offered to help out with organising SitP after Nick Pullar moved to Hungary in May 2007, but for practical reasons it was easier to have one main organiser and have anyone volunteer to help out where they could and put in suggestions for speakers I could invite to SitP. On the 12^th February 2008, at an official meeting, the remaining Kabal officially voted to disband themselves and leave all the organising to me, with Norman Hansen being the main volunteer in setting up the room for each event – which he still does as well as being the sound engineer. More recently Tracy King, Tessa Kendall, Shalinee Singh, Phil McKerracher and Mark Duwe have volunteered to the door duties to keep the pub (and us) from breaking the fire regulations of the cellar bar.

The speakers come from several sources, suggestions from people (which are fairly rare), from me and some legacy speakers which were suggested by the Kabal a while back. I know that the list of speakers is heavily biased towards white males, and I do make an effort to try and invite speakers who are not the stereotype. Unfortunately, for several reasons, it’s not always easy to arrange them. Mainly being down to schedule conflicts and distance, but also it seems like scepticism is dominated by white males.

 Here’s the list of speakers and who suggested and/or invited them while I’ve been involved.

 Start of Kabal

May 17^th 2007 – Mike Heap (invited by Sid Rodrigues)

June 21^st 2007 – Julian Baggini (invited by Sid Rodrigues)

July 19^th 2007 – Timothy Good (invited by David Allen Green)

August 30^th 2007 – Victor J. Stenger (invited by Sid Rodrigues)

September 18^th 2007 – Richard Wiseman (replacement speaker for a last minute cancellation, Richard volunteered himself at the last minute)

October 16^th 2007 – Emma Louise Rhodes (invited by Chris French)

November 20^th 2007 – Chris French (replacement speaker for a last minute cancellation, Chris volunteered himself at the last minute)

December 11^th 2007 – Mark Vernon (invited by Chris French)

January 15^th 2008 – Nick Pope (invited by Chris French)

Official end of Kabal

February 19^th 2008 – Matt Smith (replacement speaker for a last minute cancellation, Chris French invited Matt)

March 18^th 2008 – Andy Lewis and David Colquhoun (suggested by “Mojo” form the UK Skeptics forums.)

April 1^st 2008 – Simon Singh (invited by Sid Rodrigues)

April 15^th 2008 – David Allen Green (David volunteered himself)

April 21^st 2008 – Phil Plait (invited by Sid Rodrigues)

May 6^th 2008 – Mahlon Wagner (Mahlon suggested himself))

May 20^th 2008 – Richard J. Evans (suggested by David Allen Green)

June 17^th 2008 – Ciaran O’Keeffe and Steve Parsons (suggested themselves)

June 24^th 2008 – S. Fred Singer (invited by Mike Hutchinson)

July 21^st 2008 – Terry Sanderson (suggested by Muriel Fraser)

August 11^th 2008 – Doug Ellison (suggested by Simon Perry)

September 15^th 2008 – Ben Goldacre (multiple suggestions from various people)

October 13^th 2008 – Paul Taylor (invited by Norman Hansen)

October 20^th 2008 – Jon Ronson (invited by Sid Rodrigues)

November 17^th 2008 – Neil Arnold (suggested themselves)

December 8^th 2008 – Chris French & Nick Pope (suggested themselves)

January 19^th 2009 – Rebecca Watson (invited by Sid Rodrigues)

February 16^th 2009 – Nick Davies (first suggested by “Mojo” form the UK Skeptics forums, but had multiple requests)

March 16^th 2009 – Matt Parker (suggested by Duncan Casey)

April 27^th 2009 – Richard Wilson (multiple suggestions)

May 20^th 2009 – Edzard Ernst (multiple suggestions)

June 22^nd 2009 – Bruce Hood (multiple suggestions)

July 27^th 2009 – Paul Sims & Caspar Melville (invited by Sid Rodrigues)

August 17^th 2009 – Aubrey de Grey (invited by Sid Rodrigues)

September 21^st 2009 – David Aaronovich (invited by Neil Denny)

 One speaker (who was a woman) asked to be removed from the list of past speakers.

 I’ve left off “An Evening with James Randi & Friends”, as it was not in a pub and was not solely organised by myself, but it did feature: James Randi, Simon Singh, Ben Goldacre, Chris French, Susan Blackmore and was hosted by Richard Wiseman. I’ve also left off Simon Singh’s Rally as it was organised by David Allen Green and The World Conference of Science Journalists – Troublemakers Fringe, as it was put together by Ben Goldacre, Petra and Vaughan.

 I recently put together a survey for speaker suggestions and these where what the audience at SitP suggested. I’ve removed duplicates.

 Evan Harris

Simon Singh

Petra Boynton

Jon Ronson

James Randi

Brian Cox

Stephen Fry

Tim Minchin

Richard Dawkins

Novella brothers

PZ Myers

Simon Hoggart

Ian Rowland

Anyone on the line-up for TamLondon who hasn’t spoken at SiTP before + Derren Brown

Christopher Hitchens

Robin Ince

Robert Rankin

Marcus Brigstocke

Salman Rushdie

Nick Clegg

Terry Pratchett

Lionel Milgrom

Sam Harris

Daniel Dennett

Dr Karl

Neil Shubin

Donald Prothero

Adam Savage

Michael Shermer

AC Grayling

Francis Wheen

Marcus Chown

Richard Wiseman

Paul Davies

Miichio Kaku

Steven Pinker

Brian Dunning

Lewis Wolpert

Steve Jones

Stewart Lee

Penn & Teller

Bill Bryson

David Attenbrough

Oliver James

Stephen Law

Muslim preachers

Charlie Brooker

 So, as you can see, there is only one woman on that list (and with the exception of “Muslim preachers”), Salman Rushdie, Simon Singh and Miicho Kaku are the only ethnic minorities there and none of them are black.

 Here are my suggestions for future speakers who are not white males. I can’t guarantee that all of them will be available, but I’ll give them a go. Tell me what you think?

 Susan Blackmore

Jenny Rohn – LabLit

Tracey Brown (or anyone from SaS)

Kenan Malik

Iszi Lawrence

Christina Martin

Ophelia Benson

Heather Couper

Claire Fox

Natalie Haynes

Susan Jacoby

Josie Long

Ziyad Marar

Kathryn Olmsted

Anne Quesney

Mary Roach

Rose Shapiro

Arianne Sherine

Tracy King

Rosie Waterhouse

Donna Dickenson

Fern Elsdon-Baker

Manjit Kumar

 Also, I changed the format of SitP after I was given the reins. I wanted it to be more friendly and open, so I followed a friends advice which can be found here:

http://www.nycskeptics.org/node/111

 Best,

 Sid

How lovely is that? I took the liberty of linking each speaker in with their websites (or wiki pages, or reviews if there was no home page available). A great list, thanks very much Sid!

He also sent me two more emails straight away – one with details of the Boston Skeptics in the Pub (run by Rebecca Watson):

I forgot to add that Rebecca does run the Boston SitP and even though they’re still in early days they have a bit of a skew on the gender of their speakers too. I think they’ve had two out of 14? So, it seems like sex of the organiser doesn’t have a major effect on the speakers gender or ethnicity.

Mike the Mad Biologist
Marc Abrahams
Patty Pieniadz – F
Blake Stacey
Sid Rodrigues
Samuel Moulton
Andreas Mershin
Tim Farley
William Lobdell
Bruce Hood (-ish)
Jon Rosenberg and Jeffrey Rowland
Shulamit Moed – F
Jonathan McDowell

Quickly followed by demographics from a recent survey emailed to a few members of SITP:

Almost forgot.
I’ve got some demographics from the survey too. They’re a bit straw-polly and may be a bit out, but it gives a good indication. I hope.
Male: 72.6%
Female: 27.4%

18-29 years old	27.4%
30-39 years old	23.6%
40-49 years old	20.8%
50-64 years old	25.5%
65 years and over	2.8%

some high school	0.9%
high school graduate	1.9%
some college	6.6%
trade/technical/vocational training	5.7%
college/University graduate	40.6%
some postgraduate work	9.4%
post graduate degree	34.9%

Protestant	1.0%	1
Roman Catholic	0.0%	0
Jewish	4.2%	4
Muslim	0.0%	0
Atheist	85.4%	82
Agnostic	8.3%	8

Most were non-theists or other.

White	98.0%	97
Black	0.0%	0
Asian	2.0%	2

Hope that’s helpful too.

Sid

I’d like to point out that I am one of the two Asians, and the basement of The Penderel’s Oak pub is fully booked for every London SITP, with a maximum of 250 people, and I know of a few people who cannot always get on the list because it is full. So my verdict is that of the 99 people who may have added themselves to the mailing list, 97 of these are White, and 2 of them (possibly Sid and myself?) are Asian. So there is still a gap between the number of people in attendance and the number of people willing to fill in a form.

It would make me happy if a survey was done more often, perhaps if more people were to fill it in, we would get a clearer idea of the demographics? If you have ever been to London SITP, I am fairly sure it’s not 97% white (unless, of course, some ethnic minorities are lying about their ethnicity)!

Sid’s suggestions for female and BME speakers is brilliant, so all that is left is to get them to give us a talk!

See you tonight

Carmen x x x