When we submitted our pitch to the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Summit in Paris a few months back,we were excited to have an opportunity to share Open Heroines with the rest of the open government world. We wanted our community to know what we are doing, and how other women can join. So as you can imagine, we were incredibly surprised (and thrilled) to find out that the summit committee made our 15 minute pitch into a 50 minute session. Now, we thought, this is a platform to take it to the next level.
Throughout the year, we have tried to promote different voices from the open government, open data and civic technology communities in various ways. We organised a panel at the International Open Data Conference, published blogs that are written by women and provided a safe space through our Slack channel. The OGP summit will be an excellent way for us to promote even more diverse voices from the community, and for that we need you!
In our session, ‘Open Gender Monologues — unheard voices from the OGP community’, we want to give the stage to the success stories and challenges for women and the LGBTQ community in the open government space. We won’t have a fixed panel or keynote speakers. Instead, we’ll read stories from the women participating out loud, to expose the community to the various aspects of gender in this space. Attendees will also be able to share their stories during the session. Lastly, we will have a reflection of how we can create a better space to overcome gender disparity in our community.
And we need your help! Please share your experiences and stories with us. Even if you’re not going to be physically present at the OGP Summit, we want to hear from you so we can share your experiences with the open government community! Some stories will be told before the session so that we can reflect on them collectively.
All you need to do to participate is to add a 50–150 word anecdote to this form. You can submit the form *anonymously* if you like, and you can tell us your story in English, French, Spanish, Urdu or Portuguese.
It is important to us that this session is open — not just to women, but to everyone. We want to have an honest discussion and an informative event, and for that we need everyone — females and males, cis and trans, straight and queer. Help us to build a diverse movement. Join us on December 9th at 11:15 in our session, and help us to spread the word by sharing this through your networks.
Looking forward to seeing new faces in Paris,
The Open Heroines crew
