TY - JOUR
T1 - Towards women-inclusive ecology
T2 - Representation, behavior, and perception of women at an international conference
AU - Lupon, Anna
AU - Rodríguez-Lozano, Pablo
AU - Bartrons, Mireia
AU - Anadon-Rosell, Alba
AU - Batalla, Meritxell
AU - Bernal, Susana
AU - Bravo, Andrea G.
AU - Capdevila, Pol
AU - Cañedo-Argüelles, Miguel
AU - Catalán, Núria
AU - Genua-Olmedo, Ana
AU - Gutiérrez-Cánovas, Cayetano
AU - Feio, Maria João
AU - Lucati, Federica
AU - Onandia, Gabriela
AU - Poblador, Sílvia
AU - Rotchés-Ribalta, Roser
AU - Sala-Bubaré, Anna
AU - Sánchez-Montoya, María Mar
AU - Sebastián, Marta
AU - Zufiaurre, Aitziber
AU - Pastor, Ada
N1 - Funding Information:
AL was supported by the Government of Catalonia and the the European Social Fund (ESF) through the program Beatriu de Pinós (BP-2018-00082). PR-L was supported by a Margalida Comas postdoctoral contract (PD/031/2018), funded by the Government of the Balearic Islands and the ESF. AA-R was supported by a Humboldt Research Fellowship. MB was supported by the Spanish Government through the project Alkaldia (PID2019-111137GB-C21). SB was supported by a Ramon y Cajal fellowship from the Spanish Government and AEI/FEDER UE (RYC-2017-22643). AGB was supported by a Marie Sklodowska-Curie (MSCA) Individual Fellowship (H2020-MSCA-IF-2016; project-749645). NC was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the MSCA grant agreement No.839709. MJF was supported by the Portuguese Foundation of Science and Technology (FCT) through MARE strategic project (UIDB/04292/2020) and Norma Transitória. AGO was supported by the CESAM and FCT/MCTES (UIDP/50017/2020 + UIDB/50017/2020). CG-C was supported by the Spanish Government through a Juan de la Cierva - Incoporación contract (IJC2018-036642-I). FL had a doctoral grant funded by FCT (PD/BD/52598/2014). GO was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research within the Collaborative Project “Bridging in Biodiversity Science - BIBS” (01LC1501A-H). SP was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship MSCA Seal of Excellence of the Research Foundation - Flanders (12ZZS21N). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright: © 2021 Lupon et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2021/12
Y1 - 2021/12
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85121054856&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0260163
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0260163
M3 - Article
C2 - 34890389
AN - SCOPUS:85121054856
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 16
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 12 December
M1 - e0260163
ER -