This week I am privileged to be a keynote speaker at the 21st International Congress of the Brazilian Association for Distance Education in Bento Goncalves, Brazil. The scholarly stimulation, hospitality, weather and fine Brazilian wine have been great – but something is wrong. Only 1 of the 12 keynote speakers and none of the 10 officials who addressed the opening ceremony are women.
This inequality reminded me of the ICDE World Congress held at Penn State in 1997, when a very brave women marched to the stage during the closing ceremonies, grabbed the mic and demanded to know if it was really possible for a woman to talk from the stage at this event! Seems like not much has changed since then.
In this post, I provide a list for distance and online education conference organizers of female distance education scholars who I have personally heard give high-quality keynote addresses. I approach the task with some trepidation because I am sure that I have omitted more than one very qualified scholar from this list and hope to be able to edit it with the help of the crowd.
But first a rationalization for producing the list.Read More