I’m behind on conference tallies this year but I think this is a better way to do it anyways. I’ll continue to add all conferences to this page as the year progresses. Do note that I mainly attend quantitative research conferences so other types of conferences may have different results. Also note that, for the most part, quantitative research conferences don’t generally have a gender bias in terms of attendance – men and women are about equally likely to go.
These counts represent the number of speakers listed in the program not including any changes made after the fact. They are also based purely on my interpretation of people’s first names or their photo. If I didn’t know whether a name was likely male or female, I ignored it. Thus, counts will not accurately reflect reality. If you are able to provide a more accurate tally, I’d be more than happy to correct my numbers.
In addition, these numbers say nothing about the gender split that submitted applications to speak, and the gender split of those who were invited to speak but declined.
AAPOR Hollywood (To come)
MRIA Toronto 33 male, 43 female, 43% male
Given that the entire history of MR has been ridiculously in the other direction, this is a welcome and delightful change. The normal curve dictates that sometimes there are more male speakers and sometimes more female speakers. I do believe this is the FIRST EVER conference on the female side of the normal curve.
MRA San Diego 30 male, 24 female, 56% male
I’ll call this a reasonable gender split. It can’t be 50/50 and this is a nice distribution.
IIeX Atlanta 126 male, 53 female, 70% male
Ok folks. What happened here? This is too far from 50% for me to be okay with it. All the round tables were led by men. All the DIVA award judges were men. Here are the options: Skilled women aren’t in digital, tech, and innovation areas of MR. Women are choosing not to speak at this conference. Women weren’t sought out to speak at this conference. Which problem area can YOU address at the next conference.
ESRA Reykjavik 415 male, 412 female, 50.2% male
In other words, if you doubted whether there are enough female speakers in the survey/research/polling niche, I can tell you that there are at least 412 of them. Most of the women I heard speak were good speakers and they knew their material. If you need a speaker, get the speaker list from this conference.
Quirks’s Event 40 female, 49 male, 55% male
QRCA Orlando 25% male
Well, QRCA is a tough call. Everyone in the research industry knows that qualitative research is dominated by female researchers. But what exactly is the true ratio? Is it 25% male, 5% male, or 35%? If you’ve got those stats, i’d love to put them here so that readers can judge for themselves whether the speaker ratio here is acceptable.
AMSRS Sydney 57% male
CRC St. Louis 23 men, 18 women; 56% male. (Early program)
ESOMAR Dublin 98 men, 59 women; 62% Male. (Early program) We’re still a couple of weeks away from the official event so things may change but as of today, the program is leaning male dominated. Not good Esomar!
Speakers at The Quirk’s Event 2015 were 40 female (45%) & 49 male (55%). However, 52% of all sessions included at least one female. We didn’t plan it that way — we simply selected sessions based on a diversity of topics and then choosing the best proposals.