There is no magic in speaker policies: creating gender equality at brain stimulation conferences

Lessons from an initiative to address gender bias

“…The letter succeeded in raising awareness and sparked a robust conversation that included a number of published responses in Brain Stimulation ( George and Sackeim, 2017 ; Hinder et al, 2017 ; Antal, 2017 ) and an editorial in another journal ( Brem et al, 2017 ). This episode also encouraged other researchers in the field to take action, and even resulted in some of the delegates at the second conference adding protest signs to poster presentations ( Figure 1 ).…”

“…The conference achieved a representative 40 % female speaker participation. The importance of gender balance was also discussed in the opening session of the conference and was the subject of an editorial in a leading journal in the field ( Brem et al, 2017 ). The gender balance was even better at the third conference in the series, with almost 49 % of all presenters being female ( Brunelin et al, 2019 ).…”