I asked you on this blog just over a week ago, who would be your preferred female celebrity speakers at the Bird Fair if some male speakers were to make way in the interest of gender balance. 290 of you responded (although there were some ‘don’t knows’ and some ‘don’t cares’). Some of you responded with a single name, some with a long list – I have treated each suggested name equally. I can’t be sure whether the repondents to this questionnaire are a reasonably good representative sample of actual and potential Bird Fair attendees but I do know that 61% of respondents attended the last Bird Fair and 57% have attended between three and 10 Bird Fairs in the last decade (at least that’s what they say).
What I did was simply to extract all the names suggested, separately for male and female respondents, and add them up. I then tabulated them in two columns – the suggestions from women and those from men. I tabulated all the suggested names that scored two or more suggestions by respondents of a particular gender (so not those with just one suggestion to save myself work (almost half of the names were suggested either by just one man, or just one woman, or a very few by just one man and just one woman – none of those appear in the table).
Of the 290 responses, 131 were from women, and 159 from men. That means that the male column of suggestions is likely to be longer than the female one, because more names will have been suggested by two men out of a larger sample of respondents. If you really wanted to, you could divide the numbers in the women’s column by 131 to get the % of women respondents who named that woman, and the numbers in the male column by 159 to get the equivalent.
Here is the table:
| Name | Women | Men |
| Michaela Strachan | 30 | 24 |
| Liz Bonnin | 22 | 25 |
| Kate Humble | 22 | 20 |
| Miranda Krestovnikoff | 15 | 15 |
| Lucy Cooke | 9 | 8 |
| Ruth Peacey | 7 | 10 |
| Jess French | 7 | 10 |
| Caroline Lucas | 6 | 7 |
| Mya-Rose Craig | 6 | 2 |
| Jane Goodall | 5 | 7 |
| Helen MacDonald | 5 | 6 |
| Charlotte Uhlenbroek | 5 | 5 |
| Ellie Harrison | 5 | 9 |
| Maya Plas | 4 | 2 |
| Kate Bradbury | 4 | 2 |
| Alice Roberts | 4 | 8 |
| Ruth Tingay | 4 | 8 |
| Jenny Gill | 4 | 3 |
| Helen Scales | 3 | |
| Lizzy Daly | 3 | 5 |
| Anneka Svenska | 2 | |
| Katrina von Grouw | 2 | |
| Gillian Burke | 2 | 6 |
| Sacha Dench | 2 | |
| Melissa Harrison | 2 | |
| Debbie Pain | 2 | 4 |
| Mary Colwell | 2 | 2 |
| Lucy McRobert | 2 | 6 |
| Brigit Strawbridge | 2 | |
| Georgia Locock | 6 | |
| Dawn Balmer | 6 | |
| Patricia Zurita | 2 | |
| Erica McAlistair | 2 | |
| Megan McCubbin | 2 | |
| Barbara Young | 3 | |
| Stephanie Hilborne | 2 | |
| Maddie Moate | 2 | |
| Therese Coffey | 2 | |
| Amanda Anderson | 2 | |
| Lindsey Chapman | 3 | |
| Helen Czersli | 2 | |
| Ruth Miller | 5 | |
| Natalie Bennett | 2 | |
What do these columns of names and numbers suggest?
First, the top four names in both columns are the same names – men and women appear to favour the same celebrity names. That’s handy, although I have no idea whether any of the women in this table would be the least bit interested in appearing at the Bird Fair, or would be able to (remember for one thing – all these celebrities are ‘volunteers’ – they don’t get paid for attending Bird Fair).
And once you get past the top four names there is still a lot of overlap between the two columns of numbers.
Where I think there is a difference, but you may not, is that quite a few of the names suggested more strongly by men are known to be active in birding or strongly bird-related areas (eg Ruth Tingay, Ruth Miller, Ruth Peacey, Lucy McRobert, Debbie Pain, Georgia Locock, Dawn Balmer and more).
It’s clear that there are lots of names out there. It’s also clear that some names appear more popular than others.
It’s also clear from the responses to questions about the regular male celebrities at the Bird Fair, that there is a mood for some change, and some agreement as to which are the most popular male regulars.
So, we know which men are liked the most (and the least) and we know which women are suggested the most. Over to you, Bird Fair.
Sorry Mark but this is rather like the stats served up by the shooting industry – unscientific and unhelpful. The vast majority of talks at BirdFair are presented by “ordinary” people, not celebrities (whatever your definition of them is). You also appear to think that those that run BirdFair just do the same thing every year; “Oh! it’s early August. We’d better put a few marquees up and ask the same folk to say a few words.” Of course, I know you know better than that, and I do too. There’s a huge amount of thought put in each and every year as to how to improve on the core business of BirdFair. And that is to raise as much money as humanely possible in three days, for conservation. Having debates with the “other side” would be neither necessary not productive as the audience are already convinced. Changing the speakers on the opinion of a fraction of the audience is equally pointless, isn’t it? Overall I think your recent posts on how BirdFair should change and intimating that it’s not as well attended (any evidence?) as previously is rather an insult to the people who do run the Fair.
A little bit of inside knowledge here! 3 of the top 4 have been asked and declined. Miranda did visit Birdfair when first RSPB President. Ruth Peacey, Jess French, Dawn Balmer and Ruth Miller are involved every year now. Lizzie Daly Mary Colwell, Patricia Zurutuza and Anneka Svenska spoke this year, Lucy McRobert stayed in the background because of her pregnancy. Natalie Bennett was involved last year. I’m not sure what engagement with birding or wildlife brings Alice Roberts or Helen Czerski on to the list, eminent scientists but not in wildlife. It will be interesting to see the list of men you don’t want to hear!
Therese Coffey and Amanda Anderson. Is that so they can be put in the stocks and have wet sponges thrown at them?
Peter – it has been suggested, but I’m sure that the Bird Fair would give them a polite, challenging reception. A discussion with Therese Coffey, Caroline Lucas, Sue Hayman and Tim Farron would be quite a coup for the Bird Fair.
Not sure if this sample of stats (from how many visitors to the Birdfair) is meaningful? On a personal note, I believe the organisers do an incredible job of bringing so many folk together over a 3 day event. Testimony to the continuing success of the event is witnessed by the annual attendance and participation. Your recent blogs seem very negative as it presupposes a lack of foresight by the fair organisers, which of course is total nonsense.
Peter – they weren’t meant to be like that, in fact some of the organisers are showing quite a lot of interest in the results. This started really with a lot of discussion about gender balance on the Events stage – I thought that it would be interesting to ask people what they thought. The sample was 290 people – which is quite a few. The interesting thing, I think, is that of the questions asked, and despite what I was told by some, there appears to be little difference at all in what male and female Bird Fair visitors want. I’m not aware of anyone else who has any data on the subject.
Mark, “Quite a few”? It’s approximately 1% of the total number of visitors to BirdFair each year, so hardly representative – and you don’t know how many of your respondents actually attended. You will have guessed that I’m rather annoyed at your seemingly negative attitude to BirdFair in recent blog posts! Friendly fire is never a good look and you have plenty of other targets, surely? Finally, some questions: What has been the gender balance of speakers at Hen Harrier days? Have you invited Therese Coffey, Caroline Lucas, Sue Hayman and Tim Farron to debate at Hen Harrier days? How many members of the shooting lobby have been invited to speak/debate at Hen Harrier days?
Andy – you are fired up!
This post, on which you are commenting, is simply a list of which female speakers people say they would like to see at the Bird Fair. Anyone can take it or leave it. It is difficult to see a survey of what people think as being very unhelpful. And the striking thing, to me anyway, is that there is quite a lot of agreement. This was done in the context of a discussion on social media about the lack of female celebrities at the Bird Fair (and this discussion happens every year).
The % of the total is not a measure of representativeness. It’s a measure of power to detect an effect. And that power also depends on how variable the actual population is – difficult to assess. And, as far as I know, this is the largest ever survey of Bird Fair attendees so I’ll not apologise for that.
Is the sample representative? Difficult to say. You’ll notice that I referred to this in the blogs and on the very post to which you are responding. I’ll point out again that there is no larger survey – as far as I am aware.
I do know how many respondents actually attended – go back and read the blogs including this one on which you are commenting. But 61% of respondents attended this year’s Bird Fair (at least they say they did – I can’t assess how many lied about this question, their age, their gender or anything else). And, for interest, 24% say they attended 7-10 of the last 10 Bird Fairs, 33% attended 3-6 of the last 10 Bird Fairs and 43% attended 0-2 of the last 10 Bird Fairs. If you take out those who say they attended this year’s Bird Fair from those who only attended 0-2 of the last 10 then only 26% of respondents had attended as few as 0-1 Bird Fair in the last 10 years. I’m guessing, but maybe 15% of those responding haven’t been to a Bird Fair ever – but they may well be people who would if it appealed to them more.
I don’t organise Hen Harrier Days – I organised one in 2014 where the gender balance was me and Chris Packham!
I’m a bit puzzled about why this is all seen as a slight on the organisers of Bird Fair. It is a commercial event (in the sense that it aims to raise a substantial sum of money, even if that money is then used for non commercial purposes). As far as I am aware commercial organisations generally welcome feedback from customers/potential customers as it helps them to ensure that they continue to offer what the market wants. I am pretty sure that the organisers would not wish to inadvertently exclude any demographic group as that will reduce their potential takings so the issue of diversity of speakers is likely to be of interest to them as something that might have an effect on this.
As to whether or not there is any value in inviting speakers who might offer a contrary or non mainstream view, why is there a problem with asking if people are interested in this? A red-blooded debate with strongly asserted views on each side can be entertaining and informative. Asserting that the audience is ‘already convinced’ is just supposition (especially if under this heading we are not talking about inviting the cartoon villains of YFTB ilk but more thoughtful/reasonable representatives of shooting, farming etc) and it is surely better to ask the question. Whatever answer comes back you have useful information about the kind of speakers and debates people wish to see.
No doubt Bird Fair organisers think long and carefully about what they will put on each year but feedback on what customers/potential customers would like to see can only be helpful to that process, surely? It’s completely up to them how much weight they give to Mark’s survey alongside any other feedback they may have and all the other factors that they may use to come up with their line up.
Jonathan – thanks