Gender and early career status: variables of participation at an international marine science conference

Published in ICES Journal of Marine Science.

Conference participation is an important part of academic practice and  contributes to building scientific careers. Investigating demographic  differences in conference participation may reveal factors contributing  to the continued under-representation of women in marine and ocean  science. To explore the gender and career stage dimensions of  participation in an international marine science conference, preferences of presentation type (oral/poster) as well as acceptance and rejection  decisions were investigated using 5-years of data (2015–2019) from an  International Marine Science Conference. It was found that early career  scientists were more likely to be women, while established scientists  were more likely to be men. Although overall, gender did not show a  significant effect on the decisions to “downgrade” requests for oral  presentations to poster presentations, early career scientists were  significantly more likely to be downgraded than established scientists.  Given that more women were often early career scientists, more women  than men had their presentations downgraded. Other indicators and  evidence from conference prize-giving and recognition awards point to a  gender gap remaining at senior levels, highlighting the need for further  actions as well as monitoring and researching conference participation  from a gender perspective.