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Closing the gender gap at academic conferences: A tool for monitoring and assessing academic events

Author

Listed:
  • Carmen Corona-Sobrino
  • Mónica García-Melón
  • Rocio Poveda-Bautista
  • Hannia González-Urango

Abstract

The importance of participation in academic conferences is well known for members of the scientific community. It is not only for the feedback and the improvement of the work, it is also about career development, building networks and increasing visibility. Nevertheless, women continue to be under-represented in these academic events and even more so in the most visible positions such as speaking roles. This paper presents the development of a tool based on performance indicators, which will allow monitoring and evaluating gender roles and inequalities in academic conferences in order to tackle the underrepresentation of women. The study identifies relevant perspectives (participation, organizational structure and attitudes) and designs specific lists of performance indicators for each of them. The tool is based on a combination of two multicriteria techniques, Analytic Hierarchy Process and Analytic Hierarchy Process Sort, and a qualitative analysis based on in-depth interviews and information gathered from a focus group. The use of the AHP multi-criteria decision technique has allowed us to weight the indicators according to the opinion of several experts, and with them to be able to generate from these weightings composite indicators for each of the three dimensions. The most relevant indicators were for the participation dimension. Additionally, the tool developed has been applied to an academic conference which has been monitored in real time. The results are shown as a traffic light visualization approach, where red means bad performance, yellow average performance and green good performance, helping us to present the results for each indicator. Finally, proposals for improvement actions addressed to the red indicators are explained. The work carried out highlights the need to broaden the study of gender equality in academic conferences, not only regarding the participation but also the performance of different roles and functions.

Suggested Citation

  • Carmen Corona-Sobrino & Mónica García-Melón & Rocio Poveda-Bautista & Hannia González-Urango, 2020. "Closing the gender gap at academic conferences: A tool for monitoring and assessing academic events," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(12), pages 1-23, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0243549
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0243549
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    Cited by:

    1. Koch, Susanne & Matviichuk, Elena, 2021. "Patterns of inequality in global forest science conferences: An analysis of actors involved in IUFRO World Congresses with a focus on gender and geography," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    2. Eva Monson & Kimberly Ng & Hannah Sibbick & Djamal Berbiche & Adèle Morvannou, 2023. "Gender disparity in prestigious speaking roles: A study of 10 years of international conference programming in the field of gambling studies," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(6), pages 1-11, June.
    3. Agnieszka Olechnicka & Adam Ploszaj & Ewa Zegler-Poleska, 2025. "The impact of the virtualization of scholarly conferences on the gender structure of conference contributors," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 130(1), pages 423-445, January.
    4. Claudio Garuti & Enrique Mu, 2024. "A Rate of Change and Center of Gravity Approach to Calculating Composite Indicator Thresholds: Moving from an Empirical to a Theoretical Perspective," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 12(13), pages 1-40, June.

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