A growing area of interest and concern is the representation of female speakers at events, on panels etc. This applies to the annual Bird Fair at Rutland Water just as it does to other events. The Bird Fair took place over three days the weekend before last.
If there is to be a better, more equal, gender balance in the ‘main’ events on the Events stage at Bird Fair then some men will have to make way each year for more women. So, I asked you whether that is what you want, and which males you’d be happy to see less often. I also asked you some questions about yourself (gender, age, Bird Fair attendance record etc).
There were 290 responses to the questionnaire – that’s quite a lot. I don’t remember ever being asked what I think of the Bird Fair in the past so this blog may be breaking new ground. The respondents are presumably regular readers of this blog or my social media posts – to what extent they are a wholly representative sample of actual and potential Bird Fair attendees is difficult to tell. But if you asked me to guess, I woud say it was a lot closer to ‘not bad’ than either ‘hopeless’ or ‘perfect’. 61% of respondents attended the last Bird Fair and 57% have attended between 3 and ten Bird Fairs in the last decade (at least that’s what they say).
I gave you two ways of telling me which male celebrities you would be happy to see make way for female speakers – first, you could have ticked the response ‘Please keep them all’. I would tend to take that to mean that those respondents were happy with the status quo.
So, how many people chose ‘Please keep them all’?
How many do you think?
The answer is that 37% of people selected the ‘Please keep them all’ option (which of course means that nearly two in three people did not. Is that what you would have predicted?
And we can look at that in more detail. Is it, perhaps men who were keener on the male presenters than women? No, 36% of men said ‘Please keep them all’ whereas 38% of women did – there’s hardly any difference, certainly nothing to get excited about, but women were very slightly more happy than men about the status quo.
OK, let’s stick with this question just a little longer.
People who attended the latest Bird Fair are just a little more likely to say ‘Please keep them all’, and people who have attended lots of Bird Fairs over the last decade are also slightly more likely to say ‘Please keep them all’. This might be because those people who are happy with the status quo are most likely to keep coming to Bird Fairs over the years (that seems quite likely) but it might also mean that some who are interested in gender equality issues, but not very interested in the Bird Fair, also responded to the questionnaire.
Young (<30 years) respondents are less likely to say ‘Please keep them all’ than older respondents.
Just playing around with the data, there is a big difference between young, male, infrequent attendees who rarely say ‘Please keep them all’ compared with older, female, frequent attendees.
But, standing back, 37% of respondents (and there is no real difference between men and women) are happy with the status quo whereas 63% are perfectly happy to identify which male presenters they could live without at least at some Bird Fairs. So who are they?
I’m not going to disclose the ranking of male presenters except to say that Chris Packham was the male presenter (out of Chris Packham, David Lindo, Nick Baker, Mike Dilger and Simon King) who was most popular ie he was selected least often as a male presenter who you could live without seeing quite so much.
I think the interesting thing was that there was a very clear ranking of the five male presenters in terms of, shall we call it popularity, which were consistent across gender, age and attendances at the Bird Fair. I’ll give these results to the Bird Fair organisers and it will be up to them whether or not they take any notice of them.
Yesterday I wrote a post about what were people’s favourite moments in last week’s Bird Fair.
This evening I will tell you which would be the most popular female presenters to take the place of any males who were given a bit of a smaller role in the Bird Fair.
Iolo Williams is also an excellent speaker & is an expert in his field of expertise.
Female speakers would be welcome but they Must have an acknowledged area of specialism otherwise they are being set up to fail just to maintain gender equality.
I seem to have missed the questionnaire, sorry but two penniworth as they say.
Absolutely agree with Mary about Iolo, I still have his State of Nature address (2016) ringing in my ears, it’s just a shame that the NGOs have let him down by failing to really push advocacy and motivate their memberships (see them as revenue generators rather than ‘voters’ (political or spend) ….
I returned to the Birdfair after a decade or so absence (same old etc. holiday companies & optics) three years back. The recent ones which have tried to tackle potentially controversial topics – great and I’ll keep coming back if they continue to deliver on these issues. Just wish we could get some female presenters like Amanda Anderson on a panel …. Countryside Alliance and or perhaps another female even – Princess Anne? Simon Lester was well treated when he attended, or should I say in my opinion.
The ‘youngsters’ tried their best with plastics but as there was no one from the industry or politics then they offered nothing new to a captive audience? The fact it was all female in my opinion made little difference.
Is there some citizen science (detest the term) which really is adding value to site management somewhere, or are bio-blitzes just a way to engage the public and keep project officers in jobs? Yes, BTO do birds citizen science 😉
Gender, who ever is best individual to deliver the topic. Someone unafraid to be controversial in some situations. As Mary mentions, specialisms are important more so perhaps than a smiling face celebrity presenter? Science over spin any day of the week and that there’s a character behind it, then bring it on.
The bit I pondered was the £15 for the QT session, seemed a bit steep when previous such sessions have been free. It also added to a long day for those who couldn’t stop over and wanted time to get round as much as possible in one day. Yes, I know the funds go to good causes;)
All that said, minor quibbles, and since it’s wider than just birds it’s got better IMHO. But talking success (which is good) seems to push the bad, which we really do need to address, to the back when we need it to be at the fore, but seeking solutions so leave buzzing and determined to act?
Sorry Mark, appreciate it’s not quite what you asked for 😉
I’m a regular Birdfair volunteer. I too missed the survey, can I please suggest that any future surveys are sent to volunteers.
I personally wouldn’t want to see less of any particular male presenters. Steve Backshall was brilliant with the kids last year. Simon King is a good speaker but his talk on Sunday was a little heavy going.
I would suggest that it would be lovely to see more women. The same rules need to be applied equally for male and female presenters ie they both need areas of specialism.
I suspect the turnout was lower this year but the weather wasn’t so good.
I would suggest holding a general survey every year for all attendees with general questions about what people did and didn’t like. Who would they like to see more/less of and sould they prefer a better male/female mix or not. You could make it fun by offering a free Birdfair goodie bag to one lucky person, drawn at random.
While Chris Packham may be the most popular this year, that doesn’t mean he’ll be the most popular next year. It would make sense to monitor year on year trends; they are likely to vary.
I was expecting something special for the thirtieth anniversary too, but it didn’t happen. It may have drawn more people in if something had been arranged…
I personally think it would be a good idea to try to encourage more kids and families in with younger more dynamic and fun presenters.
Lorraine – thank you for your first comment here.
Hi Mark, did you receive the comments I just sent on Birdfair? It was quite long so I don’t want to rewrite if I don’t need to.
Thanks, Barry
barry – no sign of them, sorry
I really enjoyed the Birdfair, just not enough time in the day to see everyone and everything. I love the opportunity to speak to so many international conservationists, be they working for organisations or even promoting holiday regions, they are all so well informed and enthused, there is so much good work going on all over the world. My highlight was a visit to the Hellenic Ornithological Society stand. I spoke to a woman about raptor conservation projects they are undertaking and I mentioned that I donated to an appeal in Greece to sponsor a poison bait hunting dog via Birdwing. She exclaimed “that’s my dog, thank you so much” and gave me a great warm hug and her card to visit, and I will.
https://www.birdwing.eu/home/Birdwingappeal
My best talk was Mark Cocker, so erudite and eloquent, speaking about his book and the important topic – why is nature declining so rapidly in the UK (24th worst in the world) when we have (per capita) by far the greatest number of nature lovers and naturalists of any Country in the world? Our conservation society membership is huge but this doesn’t translate into political weight and we are largely ignored by the political class. Mark postulated some reasons why this disparity exists, such as the history of land ownership here where the rural populace had land taken from them during the enclosures and handed over to the rich elite landowners who continue to hold onto it to this day and drive policy in many ways, eg intensive farming and grouse moors etc… (the last bit is my addition). Mark states that conservation organisations need to get together, supported by their membership, to pool and pull their considerable weight to influence politics much more effectively. We all probably know this but Mark’s talk crammed in a lot historically, it would be interesting to read/hear his further thoughts on how we can effect the future, before it’s too late. The National Trust and RSPB have 6 million members why do we often feel so weak?