Munk Debates would benefit from more women panellists | Mallick

Heather Mallick on the lack of women at the Munk debates. Striking and pointed:

Trick question. The three Fareeds are one guy whose last name is Zakaria and I now wonder if the reason he never lost his job over repeated plagiarism accusations is that he’s the stock non-white panel guy no one can afford to lose.

The men were all participants in the right-leaning Munk Debates, a creepy stage series run by a guy named Rudyard that is now appearing in book form. Nine book covers from the series, with 34 names, appear in a full-page newspaper ad that no one realized would look odd to the new readers that newspapers want to welcome.

Another trick: only one woman, the wonderful Anne-Marie Slaughter, who is famous for having downsized her U.S. political job because it crushed family life, debated with men. Munk held one debate on women’s rights and, naturally, it was about whether they should have them (had it made men obsolete?). Four women were hired for cat fight purposes. The women’s panel was clearly intended as the Bearded Ladies show at the carnival, and I’m not falling for it.

The debates were on loaded questions about weighty subjects — Obama (is he malign?), state spying (is it making us safer?), the EU (has it failed?) — which were too important to include women debaters. When women speak, it’s usually on “female” subjects, subjective and lightweight.

The classic Munk audience has never heard women speak aloud in public, plainly, the way men do with ease. It would freak them out. I’ve had men accuse me of writing columns simply “to provoke.” One talk show host who has blamed women en masse for refusing to appear on his show — “No man will say, ‘Sorry, can’t do your show tonight, my roots are showing,” he wrote — made the provoke remark to me recently. This man had only noticed in 2014 that his guest lineup was unconscionable.

… If the men of Munk think that a newspaper page full of men’s names, like some kind of proactive war memorial, is proof of “great debates” and “great reading,” I’m saying that women also have “great” things to say about taxation, nuclear weapons, European politics, state surveillance and even China. China has women. Some women are Chinese, imagine that.

The men of Munk will be giddy to hear this. Go nuts, Rudyard! Ask a lady to talk. Ask a Chinese lady. Ask several. I know this is crazy stuff but women are loaded now — call it mad money — and they like to talk and be talked to. Pay them at the same rate.

Women. Talking. This is crazy stuff in 2015 but something tells me the audiences might be ready for it.

Munk Debates would benefit from more women panellists | Toronto Star.