YouGov Cambridge tell women to listen to what twelve men think and say.

YouGov-Cambridge have been sending round an email to news and politics journalists inviting them to a major symposium which will be held in London on Thursday 15th March. The media partner is the FT. The topic is a huge one which affects everyone, women most of all given the effect of budgetary and social services cuts and women's existence, labour, participation and contribution at all levels of life: it's Public Opinion, Economic Governance and The Future of Europe. The organisation seems to be allied to Cambridge University and its YouGov-POLIS Programme for Public Opinions Research. Its slogan is "What the world thinks...and the experts say" and it bills itself as...

...a new kind of research-centre that combines the tools of academic expertise and professional polling to analyse key trends and events in global affairs. Through a mixture of debates, lectures and in-depth, international polling reports, the  Symposium will examine how both experts and the public approach the same vital questions of European purpose, crisis and future.

But it is no kind of "new" research centre at all. It's the same old thing. Its major symposium, programme here, features 12 white men speakers and 0 women.

Here's the email that was sent round, below. Think you'll agree that the questions up for debate are extremely interesting. Think you'd concede that the issues are universal ones for Europe and have implications for the rest of the world politically, culturally and economically. Hope you'll concur that since they only needed 12 speakers in all they could have found 6 women from across politics, the media, finance, the backbenches, academia, economics and business to talk. Had it been more diverse, I would have loved to have attended and reported from it. The email:

On behalf of Stephan Shakespeare, Founder & CEO, YouGov plc, we would be delighted if you could join us for the YouGov-Cambridge Symposium on Public Opinion, Economic Governance and the Future of Europe, on Thursday 15th March 2012 at the British Academy, 10-11 Carlton House Terrace, SW1. YouGov-Cambridge is a new kind of research-centre that combines the tools of academic expertise and professional polling to analyse key trends and events in global affairs. Through a mixture of debates, lectures and in-depth, international polling reports, the  Symposium will examine how both experts and the public approach the same vital questions of European purpose, crisis and future, including:            

• To what extent does public opinion impact the economic decision-making process of the EU?
• What kind of capitalism will enable us to recover and prosper after the crash?
• Is a bolder European Central Bank the answer; should European sovereigns be viewed as TBTF (Too Big To Fail); and can either be democratically justified?
• What kind of Euro-governance should we covet and fear between Balkanisation and Federalisation?
• Is 21st Century Europe destined to be a ‘hobbled giant’ of the world economy, as the US National Intelligence Estimate suggests?
• How do EU polities view the desirability of membership and the health of its governing institutions?
• Must the EU and its currency borrow ideas from America’s Founding Fathers to survive?
• Is the Euro doomed and Germany too powerful?
• What drives public opinion for and against the competing economic arguments for recovery – and how shallow/entrenched are they?
• ‘What is Europe’ according to public opinion – and if it’s more than geography, what makes it so? 

Speakers include: John Humphrys, Presenter, BBC Radio 4 Today Programme; Rt Hon Alistair Darling MP, former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer; Sir Roger Carr, Chairman, Centrica and President, CBI; Jim O’Neill, Chairman, Goldman Sachs Asset Management; Alex Ellis, Director of Strategy, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office; Sir Win Bischoff, Chairman, Lloyds Banking Group plc; Bernard Jenkin MP,Chairman, House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee; Lord Wood, Advisor to Ed Miliband and Shadow Cabinet Minister Without Portfolio; Lord Glasman, Labour peer and co-editor of "The Labour Tradition and the Politics of Paradox"; Declan Ganley, entrepreneur and founder, Libertas; Georges Ugeux, Former Vice President of the New York Stock Exchange, now CEO of Galileo Global Advisors and Professor Andrew Gamble, Head of Politics, Cambridge University.

A full programme can be found here.

The Symposium is not open to the public but is by invitation only. Registration and coffee begin at 9:00am with opening remarks for 9:30am. We look forward to hearing from you in the hope you can join us for this Symposium.
 

Warm best wishes,

Emma Sullivan, Business Manager, YouGovStone

and 

Dr Joel Faulkner Rogers, Director, YouGov-Cambridge

...and warm best wishes to you, YouGov, for creating a major symposium about issues which affect everyone and inviting 12 white men to speak, and 0 women.