Good practice

As an organization

General tips for organizations

• Within your organization, you think and talk about why equal representation of women and men in public spaces is important. You explain this to new colleagues. You set long-term goals for achieving equal gender representation at events you organize and continuously monitor their implementation.
• Within the organization, you agree that employees representing it will not moderate or participate in panel discussions that lack equal representation of men and women, unless there is a good reason for this at the event in question.

When organizing an event

• Ideally, your events should have a 50:50 representation of men and women. And everyone should be given an equal opportunity to speak. 
• If you tried but did not achieve a perfectly balanced number: 
  • reflect on this fact within the team: "What is the cause of the unequal representation of women and men at our event, even though we tried to prevent it? What can we do differently next time?";
  • briefly address this during the event—explain to the audience that gender equality is important to you, but it just didn't work out this time. 
• If your panel is composed exclusively of men or women, there is a specific reason for this (e.g., a debate to share the experiences of women entrepreneurs or a discussion of people in a certain political position, such as foreign ministers of selected countries).
• You know that sufficient representation of women cannot be achieved only by having a female moderator. 
• Female and male experts speak on a variety of topics, regardless of stereotypes (e.g., women on nuclear safety and men on social policy).
• Your staff and moderators are aware of gender equality issues and avoid gender bias and stereotypical behavior (asking women about their families and not men, addressing women by their first names and men by their professional titles, etc.).
• Invitations and promotional materials for your event do not reproduce stereotypical thinking about female and male roles (e.g., depicting men as experts and women as listeners). 
• When organizing an event, you will contact female speakers well in advance. Ideally, you will try to set a date that suits as many of them as possible. Even today, women often take on a larger share of childcare and household responsibilities and are therefore less flexible in terms of time.
• If possible, adjust the time of the discussion, conference, or interview to increase the likelihood that the female experts will be available (e.g., mornings are usually better than evenings).
• Find out from the speaker what would make it easier for her to attend your event (a children's playroom? financial contribution for babysitting? something else?).
• Unless the format and theme of the event require it, do not unnecessarily restrict access to children.
• When inviting specific people to the audience, strive for a balanced representation of men and women and equal opportunities for them to participate in the debate.

As a panelist:

• You do not moderate or participate in debates and panels that lack gender balance without a good reason.
• If you are unable to attend a panel discussion to which you have been invited, you try to nominate a female expert to replace you.
• If there is no female expert in the debate, you point this out.