THE OXFORD UNION has been criticised by students for producing a Hilary termcard with 64 per cent white male speakers.
The Union, who had promised an “incredibly diverse” termcard have come under fire after promising to challenge “the view that the Union is a ‘boys’ club’’, but presenting an overwhelmingly male line up.
The termcard, which includes notable figures such as Marine Le Pen, Al Sharpton, and Sarah Palin, includes three separate weeks in which there are no individual female speakers. Of the entire eight week term, the lineup includes only 15 women speaking in total, four of whom are invited for a feminism debate.
Opinion is divided as to whether the Union should have ensured a more equal gender and ethnicity balance for this term’s events, since 21 of the 31 individual speakers are white males. On the debates panel for Oxbridge admissions quotas, all of the speakers are white, and only one is female.
On the debate on institutional racism in the US, all of the panel are male. Three out of seven of the debates contain an all-male and all-white panel.
Annie Teriba, former member of the Secretary’s Commitee, said, ‘‘I’m saddened to see that yet again the Union has prioritised so many men over having decent representation.
‘‘I gather from certain well placed likes on Cuntry Living that some in the Union think that I’m supposed to celebrate the most talked about speakers: a woman who hates my right to choose, a woman who profits from feeding my insecurities and a fascist. The Union certainly knows how to make a girl feel special.”
Tim Squirrell, former President of the Cambridge Union and a speaker at the Oxford Union in 7th Week of Hilary, told Cherwell that the Union still has much work to do.
He commented, “The Oxford (and Cambridge) Unions have long-standing and
lingering problems with diversity. There are a lot of different causes: it’s partly to do with lack of women and other groups in positions of power and partly to do with those who are in those positions not accepting invitations as readily.
“At the Cambridge Union, quite a lot is being done to rectify our diversity problems, for example inviting only female speakers for a large amount of the time, or deliberately filling any remaining debate slots with female speakers.
‘‘Whilst we’re making some headway, there’s still a long way to go, and I’m not sure that I would go so far as to celebrate the diversity of our termcard just yet.’’
Helena Dollimore, former OULC chair, said, “When I pledged a gender balanced termcard in my hust to co-chair a political society in Oxford, members said it would be impossible. We did it, with less effort than I expected, despite the domination of politics and that party by men.
“Apologists will always say gender balancing is impossible and will lead to poorer quality speakers. It’s not only quite easy if you actually try, but can lead you to invite speakers who end up being even more interesting.”
However, not everyone agreed. Lewis Hedges, a PPEist at Univ, said, “I think the problem here is twofold: yes the Union aren’t getting enough women to come and speak, but there also aren’t enough women high enough up in
their fields to invite.
“This system of patriarchy is both excluding existing women from speaking and preventing many such young women from rising to a place of prominence in the first place”.
The Union did not respond to our requests
for comment.
