4 May 2016, 10 am
The Congress Steering Committee meets to do some Congress steering. Whatever that is. We are pleased with ourselves because we are so far ahead with the programme compared to last year: in fact, we have shocked ourselves with our efficiency. We must quit while we’re ahead, I feel. And so, since I am chairing today because the Proper Chair is on holiday again and the Vice Proper Chair has run out of technicolour knitwear, I bring the meeting to an early close. In particular I give short shrift to the idea that perhaps we might organise a little event of some kind the night before Congress. No, no, NO!! We must not organise any more events! We have a perfectly good event already. If people want to have a drink or a pizza as well, they can go steer it for themselves. Our only problem – and it is a namby-pamby one but nevertheless I am getting a bit fierce about it – is that we do not have many female speakers. I think this may be because when you ask a woman to speak on a particular topic she says: but I’m not sure I know enough about that topic, whereas if you ask a bloke to speak, he doesn’t even ask you what the topic is; in fact, he may not bother to find out until after he’s written his presentation. There is a difference in innate confidence levels. I say: the next speaker we choose absolutely must be a patent attorneyette. I know they exist. I know they can speak. Surely it cannot be that difficult? But the others do not like this kind of selection process, because it is biased. And we cannot have that. OK, then, let’s wait and see what happens, shall we? And guess what, we’ll choose a bloke, because we haven’t heard many patent attorneyettes speak on this topic in the seminars we’ve been to before. And so another year will go by when we don’t hear many patent attorneyettes speak on this topic at the seminars we go to. And so on. I think I am becoming a trifle unpopular on the Congress Steering Committee. I suspect I am steering myself into a cul-de-sac of frustration. But I have not been a militant feminist since I was at university, and it feels good having a second attempt.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
July 2019
Categories |