Towards women-inclusive ecology: Representation, behavior, and perception of women at an international conference

Abstract

Conferences are ideal platforms for studying gender gaps in science because they are important cultural events that reflect barriers to women in academia. Here, we explored women’s participation in ecology conferences by analyzing female representation, behavior, and personal experience at the 1st Meeting of the Iberian Society of Ecology (SIBECOL). The conference had 722 attendees, 576 contributions, and 27 scientific sessions. The gender of attendees and presenters was balanced (48/52% women/men), yet only 29% of the contributions had a woman as last author. Moreover, men presented most of the keynote talks (67%) and convened most of the sessions. Our results also showed that only 32% of the questions were asked by women, yet the number of questions raised by women increased when the speaker or the convener was a woman. Finally, the post-conference survey revealed that attendees had a good experience and did not perceive the event as a threatening context for women. Yet, differences in the responses between genders suggest that women tended to have a worse experience than their male counterparts. Although our results showed clear gender biases, most of the participants of the conference failed to detect it. Overall, we highlight the challenge of increasing women’s scientific leadership, visibility and interaction in scientific conferences and we suggest several recommendations for creating inclusive meetings, thereby promoting equal opportunities for all participants.

Gender bias in ecosystem restoration: from science to practice

“…Tulloch (2020) raises the importance of creating good practice guides to incorporate gender information, which can be sensitive in many contexts, but could help to address inequality if they are applied to ecosystem restoration. For example, the collection of data in conferences relative to gender of attendees, speakers, scientific committee, and organization staff can reveal barriers to women in academia (Lupon et al 2021) since conscious or unconsciousness of gender bias is responsible for women's underrepresentation in science (Skov 2020). In practice, gender equality should be included and evaluated as a critical determinant for the success of any restoration initiative (Broeckhoven & Cliquet 2015).…”

“…Regarding outreach, equality policies should be incorporated in conferences (congresses, workshops, symposia, discussion panels) that contribute to having a representative gender ratio (Holman et al 2018). Including gender topics in congresses can help to account and speak about gender imbalances in ecosystem restoration and to raise awareness in inclusiveness (Lupon et al 2021). In addition, in order to achieve inclusive science communication, it would be necessary to critically analyze language regarding intentionality on gender identities, reciprocity in the recognition of various forms of expertise in research and practice and reflexivity on the communicators' and audiences' personal identities, practices, and outcomes (Canfield & Menezes 2020).…”

Women in limnology: From a historical perspective to a present‐day evaluation

“…Still, women were underrepresented or even absent as plenary speakers in recent limnology conferences (e.g., women have not reached one third of the plenary speakers at the conferences of the International Society of Limnology [SIL; https://limnology.org/] or at the Symposium for European Freshwater Sciences [SEFS]). Further, the number of attendees during keystone and plenary talks is still lower for female than for male speakers (Lupon et al, 2021), indicating that self‐reflection on gender bias by conference organizers and attendees is urgently needed.…”

Building leaders for the UN Ocean Science Decade: a guide to supporting early career women researchers within academic marine research institutions

“…Importantly, committees should ensure that women are invited to be keynote speakers at conferences. Prior research suggests that women are discriminated against when it comes to invitations to give keynote presentations (Lupon et al, 2021;Carcel et al, 2022). Women keynotes can counteract the negative effects of stereotypes (Burdett et al, 2022) and can be positive role models, as they provide women ECRs with examples to emulate.…”