It's been a long time since I wrote a blog post. I rarely have anything to talk about. However something played on my yesterday and I believe a blog post is the best way to string my thoughts together and hang them out for the world to see.
Yesterday an old friend of mine got in to a heated Twitter exchange with a well known comedian. My friend, Jane Ruffino, is someone I respect and have always find intelligent, articulate and, above all, a right laugh. The comedian, Dara O'Briain, is someone who I'll never know yet I've always found him to be a very likeable and intelligent television personality with a razor sharp wit.
The issue was around some comments Dara O'Briain made in reaction to a new BBC policy that panel shows would never be made up entirely of men. From what I understand O'Briain wants to avoid "tokenism" and if more women are to appear in panel shows it should sorted out behind the scenes. He made a further comment about the under-representation of women in the STEM industries and that this was a more significant and important challenge than the gender imbalance in the UK comedy circuit.
I read this on the bus yesterday morning. Despite being somewhat disheveled and late for work these comments rang a bell in my head. It didn't feel right. The subsequent Twitter exchanges and radio talk show appearances niggled at me further. O'Briain isn't sexist and I imagine abhors sexist or misogynist behaviour. He strikes me as a very likable person who is keen to have amiable relations with most people.
The problem is he presents Mock the Week - which is the biggest showcase for stand-up comedians in the UK. Mock the Week is notoriously male dominated with the occasional woman making an appearance. It can be very funny but it is noticeably competitive. Whenever there is a female comedian I always notice that in the final round "Scenes we'd like to see" they usually are pushed to the back while the regulars hog the microphone.
O'Briain spoke about the fact that there simply isn't enough women in the comedy circuit and therefore it's hard to get them on the show. Perhaps it's his modesty, but Mock the Week could actually change this. It's the biggest showcase for stand-up comedians in the UK. There are six guests - three of them are regulars. The regulars are all men. There's no reason why at least one or two of these regulars could be women. By actively promoting women comedians Mock the Week could, and probably would, encourage more women to try out stand-up comedy - or other comedy media. Maintaining a predominantly male cast perpetuates the myth that women aren't funny. It reinforces the idea that stand-up comedy isn't something suitable to women. Of course this is nonsense. As the presenter of the show Dara O'Briain holds considerable influence over it's direction and content. Sure, he's not the producer, but he's the biggest name on the bill and people respect his opinion. He could make a fuss behind the scenes (or, perhaps more effectively, in public) and insist on more women appearing each week.
According to O'Briain the stand-up comedy circuit in Britain is a small and obscure area which, although it has massive gender inequality, it's too remote a battlefield for the fight to improve the representation of women in the workplace. He brings up the statistic that only 11% of people in "coding", or the IT industry, are women. It's good that he has brought this up - women are generally underrepresented in the STEM industries and there is a desperate need to have greater diversity in this area. It's worth noting that computer coding used to be seen as a woman's job.
Raising awareness of this issue in the IT industry is just avoiding the issue. Dara O'Briain can do something about the gender inequality in the industry he works in. There's little he can do directly to address the gender inequality in technology, engineering and mathematics. But here's something... by getting more women on his show he could actually help get more women in to IT.
I've worked in "coding" for about ten years. Most of the time you work with men. That means you end up talking about cars, computer gaming and, well, cracking jokes. I like the last bit. If you can tell a good anecdote or deliver a good punchline, you'll get on well in any profession. Everyone likes a good laugh. Making people laugh takes confidence. It's always precarious starting out a joke or anecdote - you tiptoe your way in to the story you're telling and, once you start to see smiles on people's faces, you start to run to the punchline. After that, you're on a roll.
The thing is people generally don't tell jokes or stories they've made up themselves. They often re-tell something they heard - often from a stand-up comedian. Dara O'Briain may not be aware of it, but people talk about his show in workplaces all over the UK. They re-tell the jokes they saw on it. Of course these jokes are being told mostly by men. It reinforces the perception that men are funny - and women aren't. Up and down the country we see groups of people in coffee docks, staff restaurants, break out areas - and generally at the centre of these groups is a guy telling jokes. There may be a woman there - probably in the background - realising she doesn't enjoy these coffee breaks and that she might as well just go back to her desk. After a while she's out on her own. She's not part of the gang (and yes, this applies to people in their middle ages). This type of scenario is particularly prevalent in the IT industries.
Being able to tell jokes, being able to make people laugh, gives you confidence. Women often don't feel confident enough to take centre stage in male dominated arenas (like the technology sector). There is an under-representation of women in STEM, and most other industries. It's not about coding either. It's about confidence. Coding is easy - just sign up with Treehouse or some other site and you can learn how to code quickly. It's moving up the ladder where women slip up. There are too few women team leaders, solution architects, programme managers - executives. However, more importantly, there are too few women taking centre stage in the coffee docks and staff restaurants, telling jokes and making their colleagues laugh - in day-to-day reality these people hold significant influence in any industry. If you're that person, or you're on terms with that person, work becomes something you like going to. If you're out of that circle, work becomes an unwelcome place, you become unmotivated and you may end up leaving.
A programme like Mock the Week could influence some change in this. Having more women stand-ups telling jokes to the British public will make everyone more comfortable with the idea that women are funny - and that women can take centre stage. It will make women feel they can take centre stage in their own workplace. Dara O'Briain could do something about that. It might seem like a small gesture - even a token gesture - but it's doing the right thing.
