Forgive me but, THREAD: At @AJStream we've been working on something just for ourselves for the last couple of years but we're going public now to show that it's possible. It's about gender balance and representation. 
@AJStream In 2017, @EllieMSennett took the initiative to start tracking the gender balance of our panels. The news wasn't great: We were hosting more men as guests than women.
@AJStream @EllieMSennett We knew that we weren't doing *that* bad compared to other shows on international news TV. We were somewhere in the mid-late 50s with the percentage of men on the show. But we are a diverse team, and most of our staff are women. The figures niggled at us. We weren't happy.
@AJStream @EllieMSennett 2017 was hectic at the show with high staff turnover so we fell behind with keeping on top of the data. We assumed, though, that we were *probably* doing better. I feel like we're improving, I would say. I was wrong. Our stats at year end were: 56.5% men / 44.5% women. Ouch.
@AJStream @EllieMSennett So, in 2018 I set a challenge. Could we end the year with at least a 50:50 gender balance for our panels? We felt like a full year would be a good period to prove our consistency. We knew, though, that it would be tough due to the sheer churn of shows.
@AJStream @EllieMSennett We are live four days a week. About 600 - 700 guests appear on our show every year. We move so quickly from one to another that by the end of the week we've often forgotten what show we did on Monday. We react fast and that often means we have limited time to find guests.
@AJStream @EllieMSennett Our topics run the gamut also. We cover stories bubbling up on social, under-reported stuff, and anything we feel will interest an AJE audience. A typical week could see us cover protests in Chile, entrepreneurship in East Africa and the history of slave rebellions in the US.
@AJStream @EllieMSennett Our topics run the gamut also. We cover stories bubbling up on social, under-reported stuff, and anything we feel will interest an AJE audience. A typical week could see us cover protests in Chile, entrepreneurship in East Africa and the history of slave rebellions in the US.
@AJStream @EllieMSennett All of those shows - 208 per year - are usually guested with 3 to 4 people, who we literally scour the world for. So, yeah, not easy. But the data was key. And keeping on top of it was important. @karinasaidi took over tracking the figures and we started to dig deeper.
@AJStream @EllieMSennett @karinasaidi Karina worked backwards to see how The Stream had done with gender balance in previous years. She created an accessible and comprehensive database and we began to share that information with the wider team.
@AJStream @EllieMSennett @karinasaidi When you see that data in black and white every day it becomes difficult to ignore. You *want* to improve, you become competitive. It got us thinking about gender balance more, talking about it more. After that, it seeps into your everyday DNA. And that is the secret.
@AJStream @EllieMSennett @karinasaidi We found that the usual arguments people make against initiatives like this were, well, nonsense. Let's take one of those: "The most important thing is quality voices, expert voices, and often those are men." Nope. We never felt we had to compromise on the quality of our show.
@AJStream @EllieMSennett @karinasaidi We always went after the strongest voices. Yes sometimes, say, a particular government might have mostly male ministers. But that doesn't mean there isn't a woman who can speak just as well, if not better, on the topic at hand. They are there. And we find them.
@AJStream @EllieMSennett @karinasaidi We were never interested in tokenism or in fixing the stats by producing shows on "women's" issues so that all-female panels would bump up the numbers. Editorial quality was always our priority. But, once you start booking great women guests, you find more. Your pool increases.
@AJStream @EllieMSennett @karinasaidi So sometimes we did end up with all-female panels because, well, they were the best voices we found. But they were on anything and everything from Blockchain [] to US-Iran relations [].
@AJStream @EllieMSennett @karinasaidi @NegarMortazavi This all paid off. The Stream ended 2018 with almost exactly a 50:50 ratio: 346 men and 347 women. And this year, we hosted approximately 54% women to 46% men. So now, we're making a pledge: We will *never* go another year with less than 50% female guests.
@AJStream @EllieMSennett @karinasaidi @NegarMortazavi This is just a start. We would like to get more granular with the data to discern patterns. Perhaps we're doing well with science topics, but not so well with politics or vice versa. The data will tell us. We'd also like to host more transgender and non-binary guests.
@AJStream @EllieMSennett @karinasaidi @NegarMortazavi There are others in the media doing great work on this. Massive shoutout to @BBCRosAtkins for starting his 50:50 project [bit.ly/2PEC4mZ]. We'd be delighted at The Stream if other productions in the Al Jazeera network followed our lead and stand ready to help.
@AJStream @EllieMSennett @karinasaidi @NegarMortazavi @BBCRosAtkins And respect to all of the men taking @owenbarder's pledge, signing up at manpanels.org or taking part in similar initiatives.
@AJStream @EllieMSennett @karinasaidi @NegarMortazavi @BBCRosAtkins @owenbarder Because men - grouchy ageing white men like me - need to be allies in this. We still occupy the overwhelming majority [bit.ly/34Df7ET] of newsroom management positions. It's time for us to get out of the way.
@AJStream @EllieMSennett @karinasaidi @NegarMortazavi @BBCRosAtkins @owenbarder Lastly, we don't ever brag about it because it's just who we are but the fact that The Stream is hosted by two amazing women has made this all so much easier.
@AJStream @EllieMSennett @karinasaidi @NegarMortazavi @BBCRosAtkins @owenbarder I've written a short piece on our project and why it's important. aljazeera.com/blogs/editors-…
@AJStream @EllieMSennett @karinasaidi @NegarMortazavi @BBCRosAtkins @owenbarder And our amazing interview producers - @zuleqa, @SoniaAnanti, @Anade_Situma and @acsarabia - who do all the heavy lifting, appeared on our show to talk about how they do it. You can watch that here:
