No more all-male event panels, says public transport body

The Diverse Panels Charter from public transport trade association UITP calls for an end to all-male panels, also known as ‘manels’, at events in the public transport sector.

“You cannot be what you cannot see,” says Lindsey Mancini, Senior Director of Events and Academy Services at UITP, noting that only around one in five employees in public transport are women.

“There are more and more women in the sector, but we need to see them and we need to make them more visible because when they’re visible, other women feel that this is a sector that could be for them.”

At this year’s UITP Global Summit in Barcelona this week, 44 percent of speakers and panellists were women, up from 42 percent in 2019.

Staff at UITP, led by Secretary General Mohamed Mezghani, also strive to set their own example by insisting that any panels they take part in at external events are diverse, Mancini says.

The charter follows and interlinks with UITP’s Diversity and Inclusion Statement which launched in October 2022, turning internal policy into a public commitment. The document outlines how UITP runs its activities, bearing diversity and particularly gender in mind.

Mancini stresses that diversity also goes beyond gender: “It’s clear that any company which has a diverse board or diverse voices at the top tends to perform much better.”

New approach

Curating more diverse panels at events requires a different approach but is worth it, says Mancini.

“In terms of gender, I must admit that it hasn’t been that easy, but it’s not impossible,” she comments.

For instance, while men may be more likely to put themselves forward for speaking slots, women sometimes need to be sought out. The strategy is paying off, though.

“When we do this, we’ve noticed that at the next event, the rate of women that respond to the call for papers has gone through the roof,” comments Mancini.

While she is optimistic about progress on public transport’s stubborn gender gap, she says more needs to be done at the grassroots level, such as encouraging girls to take up science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) education and changing stereotypes about public transport careers.

“It’s going to be generations before we naturally have balance,” she adds.

Individuals and organisations can sign the Diverse Panels Charter and UITP is urging men as well as women to come forward.

“Sometimes I wonder if men are a bit anxious about what’s expected of them – they don’t want to take up space when we’re talking about gender,” says Mancini. “But we want them to support the charter: we want the male voices and the female voices together – it’s about balance.”