Progress and Prospects in Gender Visibility at SMBE Annual Meetings

Käfer, Jos; Betancourt, Andrea J.; Villain, Avelyne S.; Fernandez, Marie; Vignal, Clémentine; Marais, Gabriel; Tenaillon, Maud I.

doi:10.1093/gbe/evy056

Cited by 20 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…The phenomenon of women asking fewer questions than men has been observed in other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) conferences. [13][14][15] In 1 study, women were more likely than men to endorse internal factors, such as lack of confidence, when asked why they did not ask questions despite wanting to. 13 This suggests that encouraging women to ask questions and giving them a safe space to do so could decrease gender disparities.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Gender differences in question-asking at the 2019 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting

et al. 2020

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Attendance at professional conferences is an important component of career development, because conferences are a major forum for presenting new research, interacting with colleagues and networking. An extensive literature documents differences in the professional experiences of women and men, including experiences at professional conferences. We hypothesized that women are less likely than men to ask questions at conferences, thus forgoing opportunities for professional development. To address this issue, we analyzed the question-asking behavior of women and men at the 2019 Annual Meeting and Exposition of the American Society of Hematology. In all, 112 sessions (55% of those eligible) were randomly chosen for coding, yielding data on 577 presentations. Although approximately 50% of moderators and speakers were women, the proportion of questions asked by women was significantly lower compared with the estimated proportion of women attending the conference (23% vs 39%; P < .0001). Women were more likely to ask questions if another woman asked the first question or if the session topic was red cells. These results suggest that although women are represented equally as moderators and speakers, they are less likely to engage in the postpresentation discourse by asking questions. Encouraging women to speak up in professional situations and providing training on question-asking skills can help address this gender gap that potentially contributes to disparities in professional visibility and career advancement for women in hematology.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Gender differences in question-asking at the 2019 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting

et al. 2020

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“…In particular, studies from a wide range of fields suggest that women underparticipate in question-and-answer sessions following talks. [16][17][18][19][20][21][22] Understanding differences in question asking by gender is especially interesting for several reasons. First, question asking is voluntary and self-initiated.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Discussion Affects Question Asking at Academic Conferences

Telis

Glassberg

Pritchard

et al. 2019

The American Journal of Human Genetics

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Women are under-represented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Despite the recent emphasis on diversity in STEM, our understanding of what drives differences between women and men scientists remains limited. This, in turn, limits our ability to intervene to level the playing field. To quantify the representation and participation of women and men at academic meetings in human genetics, we developed high-throughput and crowd-sourced approaches focused on question-asking behavior. Question asking is one voluntary and self-initiated scientific activity we can measure. Here we report that women ask fewer questions than expected regardless of their representation in talk audiences. We present evidence that external barriers affect the representation of women in STEM. However, differences in question-asking behavior suggest that internal factors also impact women's participation. We then examine the effects of specific interventions and show that wide public discussion of the relative under-participation of women in question-and-answer sessions alters question-asking behavior. We suggest that engaging the community in such projects promotes visibility of diversity issues at academic meetings and allows for efficient data collection that can be used to further explore and understand differences in conference participation.

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“…On the other hand, engaging in reviewing activity requires plenty of time, which may negatively affect the time spent on research activity (Lerback & Hanson, 2017;Willis, 2016). Furthermore, while reviewing activity has not been widely recognized for promotions, positions and funding, publishing research results plays a critical role in scientists' career development (Käfer et al, 2018;Mendoza-Denton, 2017). Other duties also tend to increase with a scholar's seniority, leaving less time available for reviewing activity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender differences among active reviewers: an investigation based on publons

et al. 2022

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Peer review of scientific manuscripts before publication is essential in scholarly publishing, and most active researchers hold relationships with a number of journals as both an author and a reviewer. There have been several studies focusing on gender balance in academic research and authorship, but fewer studies on our role as reviewers. Publons is a commercial website run by Clarivate Analytics that allows researchers to track and verify their peer review activities and be recognized for it. The platform features over 2 million researchers and 6.9 million reviews for more than 5,000 partnered journals, listing the most active reviewers as "top reviewers". Our study focuses on gender representation in this 'top reviewer' group while also looking at the countries, regions and research fields they represent, as well as the relationship between their roles as authors and reviewers. The results show that male reviewers dominate in almost all countries, regions, and research fields. Male reviewers generally contribute to review work more frequently than females; however, female reviewers write longer reviews. The correlations between reviewing activity and research activity are generally weak overall and within specific research fields. This may reflect that active reviewers are not necessarily the most productive researchers in their fields. What clearly emerges from our results is the need for more concern over gender representation in the quality assurance and gatekeeping functions of scholarly publishing.

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Progress and Prospects in Gender Visibility at SMBE Annual Meetings

Cited by 20 publications

References 31 publications

Gender differences in question-asking at the 2019 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting

Gender differences in question-asking at the 2019 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting

Public Discussion Affects Question Asking at Academic Conferences

Gender differences among active reviewers: an investigation based on publons

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