So, we're hosting this meeting again and it's up to me to get invited speakers. Last year, we worked together to figure out who to invite and I sent the emails and stuff. This year, I'm getting input from others, but in the end it's pretty much up to me. The big boss had some suggestions, but he doesn't really know all that many people in the field. My direct boss is much better acquainted with the field, but there are big gaps in his knowledge. I have different gaps. This is how it works when you're involved in interdisciplinary research.
Anyway. I'm disappointed in myself/us, because at this point we only have one woman lined up out of seven speaking slots so far. We asked one who said no. Some of the other usual suspects spoke last year and we don't want to overuse them (we are passing on some men for the same reason). In some cases there is a man we needed to invite for complicated political reasons, which means we passed on a woman who works on a similar topic. I think we'll be inviting on the order of six additional people, and hopefully we find some women in that round of invites. Of course it would be fantastic to get some people from other underrepresented groups too, but I don't even know where to begin with that.
So that's how it comes to pass that even a meeting with a woman in charge can be dominated by men.
3 comments:
The fact is that most fields of science are male-dominated still. So to have a lot of women involved in anything - including invited speakers at a meeting - means you have to represent them disproportionately. It may be appropriate to do this (I, though male, tend to do it - push for more women speakers when organizing meetings and seminar series) but it raises issues sometimes, as you've found, and one has to be realistic. You can't expect to work miracles or make the field entirely different than what it is just by organizing a meeting. The point is just to make sure that women have equal opportunity.
That's true, Anon. I'll keep my chin up about it!
Anon has a good point. For the meeting I co-organized 2 years ago, we had a very broad topic and were luckily quite free of political restrictions. Our committee was actually 50/50, and yet we had many more men among the candidates, but at least one of the guys was a strong supporter of inviting more women. We had 3/8 in the end, which I was quite happy with. Good luck!
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