Women’s voices continue to be underrepresented, if not denied, in the public and academic space. In spite of significant progress in fostering gender equity globally, patriarchal norms remain deeply entrenched in society and continue to manifest themselves in multiple forms. One of these seemingly innocuous, but actually pernicious forms, is the proliferation of “manels”, i.e all-male panels, and their denial of women as subject-matter experts. Interestingly while in the “real” world there had been a growing awareness of the importance of diversifying panels, during the COVID-19 pandemic there has been a reprise and deluge of all-male panels in webinars as if the voice of male experts in a time of crisis would be more reassuring, but also because women were overburdened with increased care responsibility at home.
 
Women activists from Burma were particularly struck that manels persisted in the pro-democracy movement fighting against dictatorship in spite of the promises of gender equity and social inclusiveness for the New Burma. And this, often with the support of international organizations engaged in promoting human rights and spreading democracy. To bring more awareness that all-male panels prevent healthy debates that are critical to a democratic society, while perpetuating patriarchy and gender-based discrimination, they started to collect documentation of manels by organizations from Burma, which eventually resulted in the first #Manels Exhibition in Chiang Mai in March 2023. Organized by the Women League of Burma (WLB) and Salween Institute (SI) the exhibition displayed visual documentation of manel events, manelists, manel organizers and donors who supported those events and the reasons (excuses) given to justify organizing manels.