FLICKR, RE:GROUPA researcher at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City and his collaborator have come up with a simple fix for the common theme of all-male panels at scientific conferences: invite more women to help choose speakers.
In an mBio paper published today (January 7), Einstein’s Arturo Casadevall and Yale University’s Jo Handelsman examined scientific symposia at the annual American Society for Microbiology (ASM) general meetings held between 2011 and 2013. They focused on all-male “convener teams,” the groups of researchers assembled to choose panelists and speakers for an upcoming meeting, plus 112 such teams that included at least one woman. The researchers found that symposia put together by all-male teams resulted in a list of symposia speakers comprised, on average, of 25 percent women, while the latter teams helped organized conferences with an average of 43 percent female speakers per panel. According to a statement from the school, “including at least one woman among the conveners increased the proportion of female ...
