No Chicks, No Excuses

BACK

We recently ran a piece that mentioned, among other things, the under-representation of women in literary journals. The imbalance is replicated in other areas of public life. Popular comic and public speaker Catherine Deveny has announced an initiative intended to reverse the trend. Dubbed ‘No chicks, no excuses - expert women for every event’, it’s “the brainchild of Leslie Cannold, Jane Caro and Catherine Deveny, three women in public life who got tired of event organisers saying they couldn’t find good women speakers.” Deveny’s website claims the inspiration for the initiative lies in a column she wrote on corporate exclusion of women at public events.

While we’re on the subject of feminism, we thought the Gender Genie might be of interest. It’s a website that invites users to paste 500 words or more of their prose into a field that then scans it and assesses whether the writing is ‘male’ or ‘female’. We’re not suggesting that there is such a thing as ‘male’ writing or ‘female’ writing, but the website is the result of an article on the subject, as well as a ‘sexed text test’ (try saying that 10 times in a row) originally published in the New York Times.

Leslie Cannold, author, commentator, ethicist, researcher and social activist, will present a Lunchbox/Soapbox on April 7 on the topic, ‘The Problem with Feminists’.