1 Citation 369 Views 71 Downloads
Although the proportion of women in science, and in evolutionary biology
in particular, has substantially increased over the last century, women
remain underrepresented in academia, especially at senior levels.
Moreover, their scientific achievements do not always receive the same
level of recognition as do men’s, which can be reflected in a lower
relative representation of women among invited speakers at conferences or
specialized courses. Using announcements sent to the EvolDir mailing list
between April 2016 and July 2017, and the symposium programs of three
large evolutionary biology congresses held in summer 2017, we quantified
the representation of women announced as invited speakers in conferences,
congress symposia and specialized courses. We compared the proportion of
invited women to a baseline estimated using membership data of the
associated scientific societies, and surveyed organizers to investigate
their influence and that of potential gender-ratio guidelines on the
proportion of invited women. We find that the average proportion of
invited women is comparable (conferences), significantly lower
(specialized courses) or significantly higher (congress symposia) than the
current baseline (32% women). It is positively correlated to the
proportion of women among the organizers, and it is on average higher for
events whose organizers considered gender when choosing speakers than for
those whose organizers did not. To investigate the impact of Equal
Opportunity guidelines, we then collected longitudinal data on the
proportion of invited women at two series of conferences, covering the
2001-2017 period. The proportion of invited women is higher when Equal
Opportunity guidelines are announced. Encouraging women to sit on
organizing committees of scientific events, and the establishment of
visible Equal Opportunity guidelines, thus could be ways to ensure higher
number of invited female speakers in the future. Our results suggest that
change, if desired, requires deliberate actions.
369 views reported since publication in 2018.