{"id":32154,"date":"2019-11-21T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-21T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cupblog.bluefusesystems.com\/?p=32154"},"modified":"2019-11-22T19:26:53","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T19:26:53","slug":"academics-at-the-forum-yes-it-still-matters-no-its-not-any-better-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/2019\/11\/21\/academics-at-the-forum-yes-it-still-matters-no-its-not-any-better-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Academics at the Forum: Yes, it Still Matters; No, it\u2019s Not Any Better, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I was asked by someone associated with the\u00a0UN Forum on Business and Human Rights<\/a>\u2019 organization if I would again do my count of academics and women academics because they thought it was interesting and important. So I agreed to do this back in August.<\/p>\n

I now wish I hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

This is my third annual count of the number of academics \u2013 and in particular the number of women academics \u2013 included in the Forum (2017 is here<\/a>; 2018 is here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>). To do this count, I go through the lists on the Forum\u2019s official schedule. At this point in the month, it\u2019s always a bit of an inaccurate count because many of the side events organized by people other than the UN Working Group (\u201cUNWG\u201d) are still not up. This is not the fault of the UNWG or the Secretariat. It\u2019s the fault of the side event organizers, and as one of those whose concept note and speakers\u2019 list<\/a> only came online recently, I take responsibility for adding to the inaccuracy of the count. (And I do want to acknowledge the hard work of the Secretariat\u2019s staff \u2013 particularly MGT \u2013 who had everything updated quickly!)<\/p>\n

For those who are new to this issue \/ annual count (or need a refresher because it\u2019s been a year!), I have a few rules. First, I do not include academics serving as moderators; academics serving in other roles (i.e., WG members) that mean they are not serving in their academic capacity; and the academics placed on our ghettoized \u2018snapshots\u2019 or \u2018academics get to speak to each other session.\u2019 While I appreciate<\/a> that we have snapshot panels and a panel on BHR academia, let me be clear that it is, in truth, denigrating academics. The Forum is supposed to be about fostering multi-stakeholder engagement. When you take one of those multi-stakeholder groups and give them either a single session in which they get to speak to one another \u2013 and mostly only to one another \u2013 or a 15-minute slot to present a short notion of their work without a sustained interaction, then you\u2019re not actually including them in the multi-stakeholder discussions. So, while last year I made a huge effort to engage with statistics over the snapshot sessions, etc., I just don\u2019t have time for that this year, and since I think it\u2019s inappropriate to do to us, I\u2019m not giving the Forum \u00bd-credit for including us in sessions that intentionally segregate us from the larger discussion. The other two limitations are because moderation is not speaking, and I\u2019m concerned about how academics are integrated into discussion specifically for their academic insights, not because they\u2019re also playing some other role in life.<\/p>\n

Second, I also don\u2019t read every persons\u2019 profile but I do look for search terms: University; Universidad; School; Institute; Academy; Department; Professor; Lecturer; Dean. I usually then scan for non-English identifiers that might mean I\u2019m missing someone.<\/p>\n

With that methodology, as of 11 November at 7:30pm, there were 60 panels (not including snapshots, and including the plenary plenary as a single session, even though the Sched \u2013 for valid reasons \u2013 treats it as two). There are 194 speakers and moderators listed in total. Taking away the 5 from the academic panel, that\u2019s 189 speakers. It appears there are only 8 academic speakers, or 4.2328% (according to Siri). Of those, 6\/8 academic speakers are women. Only 2 are speaking on panels organized by the UN Working Group.<\/p>\n

There are an additional 4 academics on the \u2018academic panel,\u2019 with an even split between women and men. If we include them, there are 12 academic speakers out of 194, meaning 6.1855%.<\/p>\n

Now, let\u2019s briefly recap the numbers from the first two years:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. As of 8 November 2017<\/a>, there were 75 panels, but I didn\u2019t count total number of speakers. There were 7 academic speakers placed on 5 panels. There were only 3 women academics featured in the Forum. Two of those women were to appear on a single panel.<\/li>\n
  2. Last year<\/a>, as of 24 November 2018, there were 100 panels, of which 27 were \u2018snapshots\u2019 and 311 known speakers. There were 20 speaking in their academic capacity, making up 6.4% of the known and identified speakers. 12 were speaking only on \u2018snapshot\u2019 panels, reducing this total to 8 academic speakers on \u2018traditional\u2019 panels aimed at sustained multi-stakeholder dialogue, with only 4% of the panels covered.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So\u2026 literally no improvement. At all. None. Zilch. In the second part<\/a>, I will explain why this matters.<\/p>\n

    Tara Van Ho is a member of the\u00a0Business and Human Rights Journal\u00a0<\/em>editorial board. Learn more about the journal here<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I was asked by someone associated with the\u00a0UN Forum on Business and Human Rights\u2019 organization if I would again do my count of academics and women academics because they thought it was interesting and important. So I agreed to do this back in August. I now wish I hadn\u2019t. This is my third annual count […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":583,"featured_media":32155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,7],"tags":[218,1598,5103,2087,1262],"coauthors":[3735],"class_list":["post-32154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-law","category-social-sciences","tag-academia","tag-business","tag-business-and-human-rights","tag-business-and-human-rights-journal","tag-human-rights"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/583"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32154"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=32154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}