Getting it wrong...again.

Here we are again, back in extended lockdown across the UK, and no end in sight.

With so much time to kill, I had a look at the RSGB's website this morning.  I know better than to hope for improved representation but, still, I had hoped for something to encourage newcomers, at least.

The RSGB certainly has a long-standing and unresolved problem with age and gender equality, and also minority representation.  I don't know how many members of the RSGB are women, but it's not very many.  

A typical 'woman needs man' computer promotion from the 1970s.

 

My own survey, conducted on several occasions, of the RSGB's magazine, Radcom, shows consistently that only a maximum of 13.5% of images within its pages feature females.  Or, inverted, 86.5% of images are of males (a very small number feature pets!)

Now, the RSGB, to its credit, has acknowledged these problems for some time.  It has also expressed a wish to do something about them.  So, years after I first started writing about this, has the RSGB changed?

Sadly, no!

Here's a screengrab of the home page for the RSGB's website.  Of the single female depicted (there is one other, but her head is cut off, and is merely incidentally in the background), she is stood over by a 'helpful male' in the manner of a 1970s advertisement for anything technical.  

The message here, of course, is that women can only manage to operate anything technical if a man helps them along, standing in a dominant position over her.  

How terribly sad.  What part of attention to detail and the modern world does the PR officer of the RSGB and, indeed, the whole RSGB management, not understand? 

2020s bad presentation.  RSGB home page (accessed 10UT, 2021 January 08).