New Bloomberg rule: At least one woman on panels

Bloomberg editor in chief John Micklethwait announced a new policy on outside speaking engagements for Bloomberg journalists as an expansion of the newsroom’s efforts to promote gender equality and diversity.

The new policy requires that at least one woman be on a panel in order for Bloomberg journalists to participate. That woman could be the Bloomberg journalist.

Here is an excerpt from Micklethwait’s memo:

In recent weeks, I’ve written a lot about our efforts to promote gender equality and diversity. This also needs to extend to our outside speaking engagements — and the need to make sure women speakers appear on panels. We will henceforth follow the same standard that several other news organizations and our own conference unit are adopting. If you are asked to participate on a panel — as a speaker or moderator — you should ensure there is at least one woman panelist prior to asking for approval. (At the risk of stating the obvious, the woman could be you.) If the panelists are not finalized when you are first asked to participate, please inform the organizers of this requirement, kindly explaining that if it can’t be met, you will have to decline. If you still think there is a case for being on a male-only panel (if you were for instance asked to moderate a panel of Catholic cardinals or members of the Chinese Politburo), please explain it to Laura Zelenko, and/or Reto [Gregori], Marty [Schenker] and me. But I think this is a standard that we should be able to uphold on the vast majority of occasions.

If an organization needs suggested names for its panel, feel free to recommend from our own database.