Gender Diversity in a STEM Subfield - Analysis of a Large Scientific Society and Its Annual Conferences

Abstract

Speaking engagements, serving as session chairs, and receiving awards at national meetings are essential stepping stones towards professional success for scientific researchers. Studies of gender parity in meetings of national scientific societies repeatedly uncover bias in speaker selection, engendering underrepresentation of women among featured presenters. To continue this dialogue, we analyzed membership data and annual conference programs of a large scientific society (>7000 members annually) in a male-rich (~70% males), technology-oriented STEM subfield. We detected a pronounced skew towards males among invited keynote lecturers, plenary speakers, and recipients of the society's Senior Investigator award (15%, 13%, and 8% females, respectively). However, the proportion of females among Mid-Career and Young Investigator award recipients and oral session chairs resembled the current gender distribution of the general membership. Female members were more likely to present at the conferences and equally likely to apply and be accepted for oral presentations as their male counterparts. The gender of a session chair had no effect on the gender distribution of selected applicants. Interestingly, we identified several research subareas that were naturally enriched (i.e., not influenced by unequal selection of presenters) for either female or male participants, illustrating within a single subfield the gender divide along biology-technology line typical of all STEM disciplines. Two female-enriched topics experienced a rapid growth in popularity within the examined period, more than doubling the number of associated researchers. Collectively, these findings contribute to the contemporary discourse on gender in science and hopefully will propel positive changes within this and other societies. Graphical abstract ᅟ.

Keywords: Conference participation; Gender diversity in STEM; Gender equality; Scientific conference; Speaker selection; Women in science.

Figure 1

Semi-automated approach to gender assignment. We utilized a publicly available database of gender-matched first names (see Methods for detail) to designate genders of ~85% of the society members. The gender of the remaining members was assigned at the discretion of the researcher using a common web search and giving highest priority to oral presenters

Figure 2

Historic trends of gender distribution in the society membership, award recipients, session chairs, and invited conference speakers. (a) Gender distribution among members of the large scientific society in 2011–2015. On average, females comprised ~30% of all society members. (b) Gender distribution among award recipients of the large scientific society in light of general membership in 2015. The distribution among the recipients of the Senior Investigator award was strongly skewed towards males (~92%), but the gender ratio of Mid-Career and Young Investigator award, recipients more proportionately reflected the current gender distribution of the society membership. (c) Gender distribution of session chairs (2011–2015). Every year exactly 25% of session chairs were female. (d) Gender distribution of keynote lecturers and plenary speakers invited to present at annual conferences (2001–2017). A distinct skew towards males was detected among the invited speakers

Figure 3

Participation of female and male members in annual conferences of the large scientific society. (a) Likelihood of the society female and male members to participate and present at its annual conferences (2011–2015). Female members of the society were more likely to present at the conference than male members (45.5% females versus 38.1% males; p-value < 0.01). Probability of the participants of either gender to apply for an oral presentation and to be selected to deliver one was equivalent (p-value > 0.05). (b) Gender distribution of oral presenters (2011–2015). The gender of the session chair did not have a detectable effect on the gender distribution of selected oral presenters (p-value > 0.05)

Figure 4

Enrichment of female and male participants in various research subareas represented at the annual conferences of the scientific society. (a) Enrichment of female and male participants in research subareas featuring indicated words in their titles. A word was designated as enriched if the gender distribution among the participants associated with it differed from the general gender distribution among all conference presenters (i.e., one female per two males). Size and boldness of words on the plot reflect significance of the detected enrichment (p-value, Fisher’s exact test). (b) Gender distribution among applicants (colored bar) and presenters (white circle) in oral sessions featuring “female” (orange) and “male” (blue) words, as established by the analysis in Figure 4a. Gender distribution of the selected speakers did not significantly deviate from the ratio expected based on the applicant pool (p-value > 0.05)

Figure 5

Popularity of research topics in the annual conferences of the large scientific society. (a) Sixteen research subareas that attracted the most presenters at the annual conference in 2015. ~50% of all conference participants presented their work in one of these topics. Titles of the topics contain both “female” and “male” words, as established by the analysis in Figure 4a. (b) Research subareas that experienced an influx of participants between 2012 and 2015. Two “female” topics, Glycoproteins and Antibody conjugates, more than doubled the total number of associated participants. (c) Research areas that experienced a decline in participation between 2012 and 2015. Instrumentation: analyzers, a topic strongly enriched for male participants, drew three times more participants in 2012 as it did in 2015