Sage on the Stage

Abstract

Who presents at conferences matters. Presenting research benefits speakers, and presenters shape the conclusions audiences draw about who can succeed in a field. This is particularly important for members of historically underrepresented or disadvantaged groups, such as women. We investigated gender representation over a 13-year period among speakers at the largest social and personality psychology conference. On average, women were underrepresented as speakers, though this effect diminished over time. Chairs appeared to serve as gatekeepers: In symposia chaired by women, almost half of the invited speakers were women, whereas in symposia chaired by men, it was a third. The representation of women as speakers varied significantly by academic rank, with women underrepresented at lower ranks but not as full professors, and by topic. Women also tended to present with a smaller, less varied array of individuals than men, though this could be explained by women's lower average academic rank.

Progress and Prospects in Gender Visibility at SMBE Annual Meetings

“…Gender balance in oral presentations at SMBE conferences has gradually improved since 2001, in agreement with what has been observed for other conferences ( Schroeder et al. 2013 ; Casadevall and Handelsman 2014 ; Arnold 2015 ; Johnson et al. 2017 ; Débarre et al, forthcoming).…”

“…Previous work on scientific conferences has shown that women were underrepresented among the speakers ( Schroeder et al. 2013 ; Casadevall and Handelsman 2014 ; Johnson et al. 2017 ; Débarre et al, forthcoming).…”

The Future of Women in Psychological Science

“…One analysis found that across six disciplines (including psychology), men were 1.2 times more likely to be invited as colloquium speakers at the top 50 universities in the United States ( Nittrouer et al, 2018 ); these effects could not be explained by the more senior status of men, by women placing less value on colloquium invitations, or by women being more likely than men to decline such invitations. Relative to the base rates of women members in the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, women were underrepresented as speakers in accepted symposia across 13 years of the organization’s annual meeting ( Johnson, Smith, & Wang, 2017 ). Note, however, that women’s representation in accepted compared with rejected symposia was similar for the 2 years of data available.…”

Caregiving and Conferencing: Supporting Faculty Participation in Conference Travel

“…Childcare issues also impact women's decisions to accept a speaking invitation (Schroeder et al, 2013). Alongside these personal barriers, professional obstacles to travel include insufficient institutional resources as well as being less likely than their male peers to be invited speakers at conferences, to be asked to chair conference sessions, to have a paper accepted at a conference, or to be asked to speak at departmental colloquia (Johnson, Smith, and Wang, 2017;Kalejta and Palmenberg, 2017;Nittrouer et al, 2017;Schroeder, et al, 2013).…”