2020 Market Research Conference Speaker Gender Tracker #MRX #NewMR
This list shows the gender ratio of speakers at marketing research and related conferences during 2020.
These data are not 100% accurate. I am not always able to identify whether a speaker is male or female based on their name and/or photo, and online and printed programs don’t reflect last minute changes to the schedule. However, given that conference organizers want to project the most positive reflection of their conference program, I am assuming the available programs are within a reasonable margin of error. If you are able to provide more accurate numbers, I would be pleased and grateful to make corrections.
And yes, there is far more to diversity than gender. Diversity of age, ethnicity, ability/disability, sexuality, and more also matter. But gender is a start.
Please contribute: If you have a PDF or image of a conference program, even if it’s from 2015, email it to me so I can include the results in the list.
Let’s create the change we want to see.
- MRS Sports, UK, February, 7%
- Insights CEO Summit, USA, January, 23%
- MRMW, Amsterdam, June, 23%
- CX Talks, Dallas, March, 25%
- MRS Data analytics, London, February, 35%
- ESOMAR, Lima, April, 39%
- ARF Audience x Science, New York, April, 41%
- IIeX, Amsterdam, March, 43%
- MRS National Impact, London, March, 45%
- NGCX, USA, March, 46%
- ESOMAR DRIVE, Delhi, March, 48%
- NGCX, California, March, 48%
- ARF+SXSW, Texas, March, 50%
- Insights Double Down, Las Vegas, February , 50%
- Sysomos/Meltwater, London, March, 50%
- Qualtrics experience summit, Salt Lake City, March, 53%
- NewMR Festival, Virtual, March, 50%
- QRCA, Texas , January, 62%
- MRS Kids, UK, January, 68%
- Advancing Research 2020, New York, March, 69%
How To Find Speakers
Be part of the Women in Research 50/50 initiative and take advantage of their speaker database.- Review the speaker lists of other conferences.
- Maybe you don’t need an experienced speaker. Maybe you need to give opportunity to a brand new speaker.
- Use LinkedIn to connect with experts in the city where your conference will take place.
- Use Twitter to connect with experts. I have bookmarked many lists of women who are experts in areas such as artificial intelligence, branding, data science, analytics, cyrpto, neuroscience and much more.
- In addition, you can use the GenderAvenger toolkit to nominate conferences that are succeeding, take the GA Pledge, or call out conferences that need improvement.
Gender Ratios of Years Past:
Defying Stereotypes: A profanity-filled leadership profile of Cindy Gallop
If reading about profanity and sex aren’t your thing, you can read a tame version of this post on the Sklar Wilton & Associates blog.
Meet Cindy Gallop.
Cindy likes to blow shit up.
Cindy Gallop is glaringly bold and contentious in sharing her opinions about the state of advertising, the lack of gender equality in the advertising industry, and misperceptions of what comprises normal, healthy sexual relationships among people.
She began her career in advertising and made a name for herself at the Bartle Bogle Hegarty agency. She later founded their US branch, eventually being recognized as the Advertising Woman of the Year by the Advertising Women of New York in 2003.
Now, Cindy is the founder of MakeLoveNotPorn, an extremely ‘Not Safe For Work’ (NSFW) social sex website that aims to derail misperceptions about healthy sexual relationships. She is also the founder of IfWeRanTheWorld, a real-world experiment in tapping good intentions and turning them into tangible, do-able microactions that anyone and everyone can help you to do.
Just like Cindy, millions of people have worked hard, risen through the ranks, and founded companies. No big deal. Okay, it IS a big deal but that’s not the point here. The point, rather, is that when I think about people who are leaders, not simply presidents or founders or CEOs, I immediately think of Ms. Gallop. She reminds me on a near daily basis of four qualities I admire in genuine leaders.
1) Be bold and fierce. Cindy isn’t meek, mild, and moderately opinionated. We’ve blogged before about the appropriateness of using profanity in the workplace, and Cindy has zero qualms about it. Her unabashed use of profanity and colloquial language to make her points clear and strong captures people’s attention and brings them into the conversation regardless of whether they agree with her.
I want to be very clear on this: Yes, MakeLoveNotPorn.com and All The Sky have enormous social benefit, but I am also out to make an absolute goddamn fucking shit ton of money. – MMLaFleur
I deplore the shying away that can go on, within women, from the term ‘feminist.’ I am, absolutely, all about being a feminist. – Ted.com
Cindy personified bold when Kevin Roberts, a top ranking advertising executive at advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, resigned after a gender diversity controversy, She had no qualms issuing a public statement with a valiant dare, a statement that on its own caused even more controversy.
“I see that Kevin Roberts was paid a total salary of $4,137,786 last year, whereas, contrary to his remarks directed at me, nobody anywhere is paying me anything to do the work I do in this area. I note that PublicisGroupe/Saatchi and Saatchi Worldwide now have a vacancy for a leadership coach, and I’d like to offer my services. Obviously, to ensure there is no gender wage gap, at the same salary Kevin Roberts was being paid.”
In her efforts to promote diversity and equality, she’s regularly accused of promoting ‘quota’ and ‘diversity’ hires that will lead to people who aren’t sufficiently qualified to be hired. Her response to those claims continue to be bold and fierce.
“Look around at the mediocre men who were hired just because they were men. Get hired because you are a woman or person of color and then do a bloody brilliant job in that role.” – AdAge
“Diversity raises the fucking bar.” – 3% Conference
2) Defy stereotypes. Everyone is raised with stereotypes. Boys and girls are taught how men and women ought to look, speak, dress, and present themselves. Boys and girls are taught how ‘young’ and ‘old’ people are supposed to behave. Our culture has taught us that older women should be quiet, demure, and blend into the background, but Cindy has completely rejected those notions. Instead, she focuses on what is right for her.
Cindy believes you shouldn’t hide your age. At 57, you could say she’s an older woman. And even though she’s not part of the Hollywood scene, she dresses however she pleases including wearing leopard-skin miniskirts, biker pants, python skin pants, leather pantsuits, and warrior outfits because what she chooses to wear is no one’s business but her own. Who’s to say that older women must show restraint and modesty in their clothing choices? Restraint is not Cindy’s modus operandi.
I consider myself a proudly visible member of the most invisible segment of our society: older women. I would like to help redefine what society thinks an older woman should look like, be like, work like, dress like and date like by the way I live my life. – The Guardian
3) Ignore what haters and nay-sayers think. Cindy knows what is meaningful and important, and if someone isn’t comfortable with her use of profanity, her social sex projects, or how she presents herself as an older woman, well, they’d better get used to feeling uncomfortable. Cindy keeps on fighting for the causes she believes in, and she keeps on trying to mend misperceptions of sexuality so that people can have more realistic expectations of what a healthy sex life really is.
4) Do what is right. Cindy has a firm handle on what it means to do the ‘right’ thing and she’s oriented her life to achieve that goal. Not in keeping with stereotypes of women, and particularly of older women, her end goal is to become rich. But at the same time, she also wants to create and support endeavors that have enormous social benefit. She’s managed to do this with both of her projects – MakeLoveNotPorn and IfWeRanTheWorld.
“When we launched If WeRanTheWorld, I said to my team, I want us to innovate in every aspect of how we design and operate this as a business venture, as much as the web platform itself – because I want us to design our own startup around the working lives that we would all like to live. Women and men alike.” – Forbes
I say to women: you have to set out to make an absolute goddamn fucking shit-tonne of money. When you negotiate your salary, ask for the most money you possibly can without bursting out laughing – for yourself and for every other woman. – The Guardian
Cindy’s leadership style and her dedication to her projects has amassed her more than 60 000 devoted followers on Twitter. Her provocative Ted Talk (Make love, not porn) has garnered millions of views. If you’re not yet convinced that Cindy’s leadership style is one to be admired, or at least appreciated, watch her talk at Mumbrella360 on How Advertising Can Change the World. You might learn a few things.
Perhaps you’d like these posts too…
- Chemistry For The Greater Good: A leadership profile of Dr. Eugenia Duodu
- Why Love a Leader Anywhere Else: A leadership profile of Sleep Country Canada’s Christine Magee
- Leading by Design: A leadership profile of Dr. Ann Cavoukian and her passion for privacy
This post was written in my role as a consultant for Sklar Wilton & Associates. SW&A has worked for more than 30 years with some of Canada’s most iconic brands to help them grow their brand, shape corporate culture, build successful innovation, define portfolio strategies, and maximize research ROI. They offer strategic advice, business facilitation, research management, qualitative/quantitative research, and analytics. SW&A was recognized as a Great Workplace for Women in 2018, and the Best Workplace in Canada for Small Companies in 2017 by the Great Place To Work® Institute. Inquire about their services here.
These data prove I am worth 80% of what my male research colleagues are worth #MRX #NewMR
As a freelance market research writer (my service sheet is here), I regularly check my public profiles to make sure they’re up to date. This time, I checked my profile on Savio, a marketplace connecting market research buyers with research experts, which is maintained by GreenBook.
After clicking around the website for a bit, I realized that every researcher’s hourly rate was completely and easily transparent, not hidden behind multiple clicks and privacy walls. My brain gears sped up….
People don’t talk about salaries which is a problem. Freelancers don’t know if they’re being paid what they deserve. Women don’t know if they’re being paid less than their equivalent male counterparts. So in that regard, I have to thank Savio and Greenbook for opening the black box and helping researchers see a piece of reality.
I had planned to go see the new Solo movie but this lovely little dataset just presented itself to me. Plus, I hear there isn’t any ukulele in this movie so let’s do this.
I downloaded the data and removed the business profiles. That left me with 191 individuals who provided an hourly rate, country, and the types of work they do. I manually gendered all the profiles. Obviously, I may have gotten a few wrong as I am not the gender police (much better said by Effin Birds) – 83 women, 107 men, and 1 unknown.
As all good data people do, I started with a frequency distribution. A few things were immediately apparent. 1) 3% of men and 4% of women VASTLY undervalued themselves. If you have listed an hourly rate under $50 per hour, go to your profile right now and FIX IT. I never want to see an hourly rate less than $50. From any freelancer. For anything. 2) 6% of men and 2% of women listed stunningly high rates, a couple over $1000 per hour. These rates might be for bragging, for negotiating, or for real but if you can command them, more power to you. 3) Women were far more likely to undervalue themselves while men were far more likely to overvalue themselves. [“THAT was a pencil in the neck moment!” -Luke Sklar]
Maybe group averages would paint a different picture but nope. Across all 191 rates, women asked for 81% of what men did – $168 versus $207 per hour.I tried excluding outliers from 12 people whose rates were below $50 or above $500. Women still asked for 81% of what men asked – $153 versus $189 per hour. I then focused on the three countries with at least 8 researchers. In Canada, two women and myself listed rates that were a paltry 40% of what five men listed. Among 123 US researchers, women asked for a somewhat better 80% of what men asked for. I am thrilled, though, to offer a huge hurray to the 14 researchers in the UK where hourly rates listed by men and women were equal. (Okay, women can increase their hourly rates by $5 in the UK.)
Maybe it’s because women do “less valuable” work so I tried grouping by the 25 different type of work people specified they did. Major caveat though – these data do not account for the fact that someone might charge different rates for different types of work.
I’ll pick out two examples from the chart since it’s a little bit complicated and uses two axes. At the left of the graph, among people who offer legal research services, women specified an hourly rate of $169 compared to men at $136. Thus, women listed a rate that was 124% of what men listed. There exist four categories of work where women listed a higher hourly rate than men – Legal Research, Field Services, Recruiting, and Support Services.
Second, at the right of the chart, among researchers who conduct Mystery Shopping, women listed an hourly rate of $138 compared to men at $225. Women listed a rate that was 61% of what men listed. There exist 21 categories of work where men listed a higher hourly rate than women.
I don’t know if these differences are because women undervalue themselves or because men overvalue themselves. I don’t know how much of these differences exist for bargaining or bragging purposes.
But I do know this. As much as I love statistics, t-tests and chi-squares aren’t necessary to determine the likelihood that these results are due to chance. Correlations and Cohen’s D aren’t necessary to determine whether the effect sizes are meaningful.
Women ask for less financial compensation than do men.
Women, my advice to you is simple. Give yourself a raise. Give yourself a giant fucking raise. (I’m channeling my inner Cindy Gallop and I urge you to follow this amazing woman on Twitter or LinkedIn and personally talk about your salary with her here.)
If you’re currently in the $50 to $99 bucket, up your rate to land in the $100 to $149 bucket. If you’re in the $200 to $249 bucket, give yourself a raise into the $250 to $299 bucket. Don’t think twice, it’s all right.
If you’re curious, I may have started my day claiming my worth to be 80% of what my male research colleagues felt they were worth.
It sure didn’t end that way.
You might wish to look at:
2018 Market Research Conference Speaker Gender Tracker #MRX #NewMR
This list shows the gender ratio of speakers at marketing research and related conferences during 2018.
These data are not 100% accurate. I am not always able to identify whether a speaker is male or female based on their name. Online programs aren’t always up to date, and printed programs often change at the last minute and don’t reflect who was actually on stage. If you are able to correct my numbers, I would be grateful for the help.
And yes, there is far more to diversity than gender. Diversity of age, ethnicity, ability/disability, sexuality, and more also matter. But let’s at least measure what we can from conference programs.
Please contribute: If you have a PDF or image of a conference program, email it to me so I can include it in this list.
FYI, I put a ⭐ beside any conference between 45% and 55% and a 👎🏻 beside any conference under 30% or over 70%.
- QRCA, Arizona, January: 19 female, 7 male=73% female (Qual research has more female than male specialists)
- Qual Worldwide, Spain, May: 20 female, 9 male = 69% female
- Qual360, Washington, March: 17 female, 11 male speakers = 61% female
- ESOMAR World, Amsterdam, March: 15 female, 11 male = 58% female
- Customer Experience Strategies Summit, April: 15 female, 12 male=56% female
- ⭐ NewMR Festival, online, February: 16 female, 13 male=55% female
- ⭐ TTRA, June, 49 female, 41 male=54% female
- ⭐ IMPACT MRS Annual, March: 45 female, 42 male = 52% female
- ⭐ Market Research Summit, London, May, 18 female, 18 male = 50% female
- ⭐ ConsumerXscience, The ARF, March, New York, 24 female, 25 male= 49% female
- ⭐ Africa Forum 2018 AMRA, Nairobi, February: 19 female, 20 male=49% female
- ⭐ MRMW APAC, June: 9 female, 10 male = 47% female
- ⭐ MRMW NA, April: 21 female, 24 male = 47% female
- ⭐ MRIA, Vancouver, May: 25 female, 30 male=45% female
- ⭐ Sentiment Analysis Symposium, New York March, 9 female, 10 male=45% female
- The Insights Show, London, March: 19 female, 25 male= 43% female
- CX Next, Boston, April: 10 female, 13 male = 43% female
- TMRE IN FOCUS, Chicago, May: 10 female, 13 male = 43% female
- Quirks LA, January: 45 female, 63 male=42% female
- Insights NEXT, April, New York: 28 female, 38 male=42% female
- Customer Experience & Digital Innovation, San Francisco, April: 5 female, 7 male = 42% female
- ESOMAR MAIN FEST Latam, Buenos Aires, April: 23 female, 33 male = 41% female
- Quirks Brooklyn, February: 55 female, 81 male=40% female
- FUSE Brand & Packaging, New York, April: 19 female, 28 male = 40% female
- SampleCon, February, Texas: 13 female, 25 male = 39% female
- IIEX, Amsterdam, February: 50 female, 84 male=37% female
- Qualtrics experience summit, March, Utah, 32 female, 57 male = 36% female
- IIEX, Atlanta, June: 44 female, 85 male speakers = 34% female
- Sysomos Summit, February, New York: 6 female, 12 male=33% female
- Sysomos Summit, London, April: 4 female, 10 male = 29% female
- 👎🏻 Insights CEO Summit, January, Florida: 4 female, 13 male = 24% female
- Insights50, May 2, New York: 1 female, 4 male=20% female
- 👎🏻 Sawtooth conference, March, Florida, 12 female, 58 male= 17% female
—————————————————————————————————————–
- MRMW Europe, September: female, male = % female
- PMRC : female, male=% female
- AMAART Forum, June: female, male=% female
- AMSRS, September: female , male =% female
- Big Data & Analytics for Retail Summit, June: female, male=% female
- CRC, October: female, male=% female
- CX Talks, October: female, male= % female
- ESOMAR Big Data World, November: female, male=%female
- ESOMAR Congress, Berlin, September: female speakers, male speakers =% female
- ESOMAR Global Qual, November: female, male=% female
- ILC Insights Leadership Conference (Insights Association), September, female, male=% female
- Insights Corporate Researchers Conference, October, Florida: female, male=% female
- Insights Leadership Conference, November, San Diego: female, male=% female
- MRIA Net Gain, November, Toronto: female, male=% female
- MRMW Europe, November: female, male=% female
- MRS Driving Transformation Through Insight, October: female, male= % female
- MRS, Customer Summit , November: female, male= % female
- MRS, Financial, November: female, male=% female
- MRS, Methodology in Context, November: female, male=% female
- Omnishopper International, November, female, male =% female
- Qual360 APAC, Singapore, October: female, male=% female
- Sentiment, Emotional & Behavioral Analytics, July: female, male=% female
- Sysomos Summit, September: female, male=% female
- TMRE, October, female, male=% female
Gender Ratios of Years Past:
- The gender split in #MRX conferences: 2017 edition
- The gender split in #MRX conferences: 2016 edition
- The gender split in #MRX conferences: 2015 edition
- Note: 2014 ratios were done in individual posts
How many women do you follow on Twitter? #MRX #NewMR
One of the best ways to identify lots of diverse people to speak at conferences is to follow lots of diverse people on social media. But do we?
With that question in mind, I turned to https://www.proporti.onl/, a website that says…
“Estimate the gender distribution of your followers and those you follow, based on their profile descriptions or first names. Many tech leaders follow mostly men, but I want to follow a diverse group of people. Twitter Analytics doesn’t tell me the gender distribution of those I follow, and it doesn’t try to identify gender-nonbinary people. So I built this tool for myself and put it on GitHub. It’s inaccurate and it undercounts nonbinary folk, but it’s better than making no effort at all. I want you to be able to do this, too. Estimate the distribution of those you follow and see if there’s room to improve!”
I’m cool with that so I turned to this tweet by Antonio Santos as a good place to start within the market research industry. I entered each one of these accounts (excluding @MRXblogs which is a bot that follows no one but me), in order to see how we’re doing.
On average, about 36% of the people these market research influencers follow are women.
Sadly, only 3 people follow roughly equal numbers of men and women, and only 2 people follow more women than men (you can guess who!). I’m one of them, but that’s only because I actively follow women and I’ve been using proporti.onl to monitor my status. Unfortunately, for about 43% of us, one third or fewer of the people we follow are women. The curve is far from expected and could use a lot of improvement.
Fortunately, it’s easy to change that proportion. Lots of people have created lists of women on Twitter who specialize in different areas including marketing research, data science, analytics, STEM, and more. I keep a nice selection of those lists on my twitter account right here. However, here are some of my favourite lists.
- Women in Data Science: I love this list. Search through the 1200 members and you’ll find tons of women who specialize in data visualization, statistics, neuroscience, RStats, business intelligence, artificial intelligence, and more.
- Women Game Developers: 100 women who know AI, storytelling, games, user experience, digital marketing, customer relationship management.
- BioInfo Women: 600 women who know about EEGs, fMRIs, neuroscience, computer science.
- STEM women: 500 women who know data, engineering, cybersecurity.
- Women in VR: So, um, these 150 experts know VR.
Now it’s your turn. Go check how many women you follow on Twitter, and then head on over to these lists to make some additions! Expand your world!
How do speakers see themselves? A survey of Speaker perceptions
The entirety of this post is available on the Gender Avenger website.
.
Why are women underrepresented as speakers?
Why are women underrepresented as speakers, particularly at the conferences I go to where half of the audience members are women? Does fear chase them off the stage in disproportionate numbers?
I’ve pondered this question for years but I never knew if my hypothesis was grounded in fact or in stereotype. Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case may be, the opportunity presented itself and here we are pondering real data from a survey I did of 297 male and 252 female computer or data scientists, and market researchers aged 25 to 49 — people who ought to be on their way to securing spots on the conference circuit.
One of the questions in the survey asked people to imagine speaking at an event and to choose any attributes that would describe themselves as a conference speaker. I was careful to include an equal number of both positive and negative attributes so as to avoid leading people to choose a greater percentage of positive (or negative) items.
Curious how men and women viewed thselves? I know you are. Read the entirety of this post on the Gender Avenger website. If you’re braver enough.
2017 Market Research Conference Speaker Gender Tracker #MRX #NewMR
This list shows the gender ratio of speakers at marketing research and related conferences during 2017.
These data are not 100% accurate. I am not always able to identify whether a speaker is male or female based on their name. Online programs aren’t always up to date, and printed programs often change at the last minute and don’t reflect who was actually on stage. If you are able to correct my numbers, I would be grateful for the help.
Please contribute: Some conferences remove their information immediately afterwards. If you have a PDF or image of a conference program, email it to me so I can include it in this list. If you have a paper program, mail it me or do the counts and simply send me the final numbers.
- ESOMAR Global Qual, Porto, November: 25 female, 17 male=60% female
- MRS Driving Transformation Through Insight, London, October: 15 female, 12 male= 56% female
- ⭐️ AMSRS, Sydney, September: 3 female keynotes, 3 male keynotes, 1 female invited, 1 male invited, 28 female speakers, 19 male speakers=53% female
- ⭐️ MRS, Financial, London, November: 11 female, 12 male=48% female
- ⭐️ Qual360 APAC, Singapore, October: 16 female, 17 male=48% female
- ⭐️ TMRE, Orlando, October, 79 female, 88 male=47% female
- ⭐️ MR and CI Exchange, St Louis, May: 13 female, 16 male speakers=45% female
- MRIA, Toronto, May: 25 female speakers, 33 male speakers, 6 female panelists, 4 male panelists, 1 female keynote, 4 male keynotes=44% female
- CRC, Chicago, October: 37 female, 55 male=40% female
- Market Research Summit, London, May, 22 female, 29 male=43% female
- ESOMAR Congress, Amsterdam, September: 62 female speakers, 83 male speakers =43% female
- MRS, Customer Summit 2017, November, London: 6 female, 8 male=43 % female
- MRMW Europe, Berlin, November: female, male=43% female
- IIEX, Amsterdam, February: 52 female, 76 male=41% female
- MRS, Methodology in Context, London, November: 40 female, 6 male=40% female
- Customer Experience Strategies Summit, April, Toronto: 12 female, 18 male=40% female
- Sysomos Summit, February, North Carolina: 16 female, 25 male=39% female
- Sysomos Summit, September , NYC: 6 female, 10 male=38% female
- MRIA Net Gain, November, Toronto: 6 female, 10 male=38% female
- ILC Insights Leadership Conference (Insights Association) Chicago, September, 13 female, 24 male=35% female
- IIEX, Atlanta, June: 58 female, 108 male speakers=35% female
- 👎🏻ESOMAR Big Data World, New York, November: 10 female, 24 male=29%female
- 👎🏻Sentiment Analysis Symposium, New York, June, 14 female, 35 male=29% female
- 👎🏻Omnishopper International, Spain, November, 4 female, 13 male =24% female
- 👎🏻CX Talks, Atlanta, October: 7 female, 25 male=22 % female
- 👎🏻Big Data & Analytics for Retail Summit, Chicago, June: 5 female, 19 male=21% female
- 👎🏻 Sysomos Summit, June, London: 3 female, 14 male=18% female
- 👎🏻 Insights50 (Insights Association), Chicago, October: 1 female, 7 male=13% female
- 👎🏻 AMAART Forum, Seattle, June: 4 female, 32 male=11% female
- 👎🏻Sentiment, Emotional & Behavioral Analytics, July, San Francisco: 4 female, 36 male=10% female
- .
- PMRC Speakers not available online
Gender Ratios of Years Past:
- The gender split in #MRX conferences: 2016 edition
- The gender split in #MRX conferences: 2015 edition
- Note: 2014 ratios were done in individual posts
Your Facebook opinion has no effect on me
It doesn’t matter whether you like it, it’s common practice to share on Facebook and Twitter your support, or lack thereof, for political candidates and issues. It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense when so many people hold firmly to their beliefs and won’t change their mind anyways. So why bother?
For me, there are two main reasons.
- It reminds people that there are opposing views out there and the entirety of the world does not agree with them. It helps prevent some of the silos.
- It reminds people that others they respect and perhaps look up to for being intelligent and good people disagree with them. This helps them to see that diverging opinions probably have merit even if they hate those ideas.
With the increased use of social media algoeithms, it’s getting easier to go an entire day and not see any opinions that differ from yours. We need to see and appreciate the diversity of people and opinion.
Presidential Address: Mollyann Brodie talks about diversity in all its forms #AAPOR @MollyBrodie
Introduction
- Molly loves !!!!!!!!!!
- If there is only one ! in an email, then maybe you’ve done something wrong. Several is lukewarm endorsement
- She also likes 🙂
- She is so athletic it’s exhausting to sit beside her
- Harvard beats Ya; 29 to 29
Address
- Spent 3 months reading EVERY past presidential address
- Most set #AAPOR agenda relating to it’s role in the world
- We’re having. a deep conversation about equality and diversity, we might elect our first woman president after our first black president
- Is it some for us to have a discussion about inclusion in our own institutions
- We are stronger and more successful if we embrace more fully what has made us special, diverse methods, diverse people, diverse issues, diverse culturally
- The answer isn’t Sure, of course
- We study methods and implications, Qual or quant, small or large, chapters and regions, and yes by our personal demographics – gender, race, religion, age, sexual orientation
- Many feel their perspective has belittled or ignored,
- Do we ignore nonprobability, do we care if you aren’t a methodologist
- There ARE inequities but it is not intentional exclusion, it comes from our inattention
- We must be more deliberate about who we mentor and include
- Gender in AAPOR leadership, Molly was preceded and mentored by many women, gender wasn’t an issue for her. But picture changed. Grumbling about all male panels. 7 male presidents in a row. Does the data support a concern?
- [woot my gender ratio chart is on the screen! You can see that most conferences have a higher proportion of male speakers. Http://Lovestats.Wordpress.ca]
- In the old days 1 in 5 members were female, by the 70s had the first woman president
- Over last 16 years, share of women members increased but not the share of the leaders
- We’ve only seen ONE female versus female president election, just once in 7 decades
- We rarely select female achievers as award winners – only five
- Is this a problem across the board or just some committees
- This is a long persistent pattern, not intentional or quickly fixed
- Are we sampling properly to get a full range of perspectives?
- We need ALL differences of opinions to expand our thinking
- We can’t risk being irrelevant by not ensuring their is fresh air in our organization
- We want everyone to feel that AAPOR is their home, we want all companies large and small, surveys and data science to feel at home
- We want to bring different styles into the organization as well, we are stronger together
- It is the right thing to do [can we insert Justin Trudeau here? Because it’s 2016!]
- We need to LOOK like the public for them to believe and trust us, we need to have the voices of the public
- More diverse is not necessarily easy, more constituencies with limited resources, traditions might have to change
- We will have to get better at dealing with differences of opinion
- We need to appreciate some uncomfortable differences to benefit from the collective whole
- We have the tools to do this
- We now have a diversity statement
- Our bylaws call for a rotation of public and private organizations to guarantee equity between the groups
- Need to understand structural barriers
- New policy added term limits to ensure one voice isn’t the only voice for decades
- Pipeline for leadership is being seeded
- Where are our gaps, what are our impediments, FILL OUT YOUR MEMBERSHIP SURVEY
- Need for affinity groups so everyone has opportunity to find their voice
- GAYPOR is one group that self organized in 2012, Hispanic AAPOR established this year, Retired AAPOR might be the next affinity group, we have have so many more
- ASA has a Women in Statistics group which helps with mentoring
- #WomenAlsoKnowStuff – find voices for your conferences
- Racial and ethnic diversity is the hardest at all – we are very white. [As I look around the room, I can’t see any black people. 😦 ]
- We do care about over sixty but good intentions are not enough. We need to change this going forward.
- We need an actionable plan
- Do YOU pay attention to this? It changed her behaviora and choices. Honestly think about inclusion in your role. Planning panels, committed, who you sit with, how are you trying to reach outside your normal circle? Are you seeding the pipeline? Have you recruited a different type of person?
- Insights are richer when produced by a diverse set of researchers.
- Who is and isn’t participating? Who is on the sidelines?
In which I rant about “we only choose the best conference proposals and we can’t help it if they’re mostly from men” #NewMR #MRX
I’ve had this post on my mind for many months now but I’ve been hesitant to write it. It seems today is the day.
If you’ve been following my speaker gender ratio post, you’ll see that I keep adding to the list conferences where fewer than 40% of speakers are women. Today, I added several to that bucket. On top of that, Ray Poynter just pointed out that the nine new and genuinely deserving fellows of the MRS are all, you guessed it, men. Have women not made any important contributions? I highly doubt it. So today is the day.
There are many different reasons for conferences to over index on male speakers but I’d like to address one reason in particular. Conference organizers regularly say they choose the abstracts that will be the most interesting and intriguing for their audience. If that means that most of the speakers are men, then so be it. Quality wins. As it rightly should.
But.
Men do not propose better topics than women. Men do not have better ideas than women. Men do not propose more innovative nor more important ideas than women. This is truth.
How do I know? I’m lucky that I get to go to a lot of conferences. I’ve been in the audience for literally hundreds of talks. I’ve seen lots of men give horrible talks. But, as expected, the vast majority of talks given by men are fine. Not horrible, not great, just fine. Most male speakers are awkward or forget what they were going to say or don’t speak loud enough or rush or go over or under time. Most men are basically acceptable speakers. Such is the law of averages.
To be clear, most women are also basically acceptable speakers. I, for one, know I’m an awkward speaker who regularly forgets what I want to say. If the goal of conference organizers is to choose great speakers, well, I’m not seeing it. They could have randomly selected speakers by putting submissions in a hat and the quality of speakers wouldn’t decrease very much. It could even increase because the gems who keep submitting awkward proposals might actually get chosen.
And when it comes to the topics of the talks, most talks that men give are fairly ordinary. People like to think that THEIR talk is unique and innovative and offers a previously undiscovered point of view in their field but that’s usually not the case. The vast majority of talks given by men cover material that has already been addressed in twenty other talks at twenty other conferences and in twenty other white papers and fifty other blog posts. New material is exceedingly rare. Our industry simply doesn’t move very fast.
To be clear, most women also cover material that has been addressed in twenty other talks at twenty other conferences. Again, the topics I present are rarely truly new and innovative. If the goal was to choose innovative topics, I’m not seeing that either. Once again, we could randomly choose talks with a magician’s top hat and the degree of innovation would… Well, actually, the talks might be more innovative simply because people who stink at bragging would finally have their papers chosen.
Even better, random choosing based on top hats would increase the demographic diversity of speakers, and ensure speakers better reflect the diversity of submissions.
My point is that men and women are similarly generally ok speakers. Men and women give similarly ordinary talks. If submission acceptances for men outweigh acceptances for women, something is terribly wrong with how organizers identity “greatness.”
Maybe it’s time to completely rethink how conference proposals are reviewed. Maybe it’s time to use only blind submissions where names and companies are removed. Maybe it’s time to find a way to remove writing style gender cues that unconsciously affect our perceptions. Maybe it’s time to consciously review proposals with the mindset that some people brag and exaggerate the importance of their work whereas other people stick to the facts and discuss their findings within the confines of appropriate generalizations. Maybe it’s time to give the magician’s hat a chance – remove the obviously horrid submissions and then put every submission in the hat.
It could only improve things. Rant done.
(By reading this far, you hearby commit to submitting to at least one conference this year. Thank you for being part of the solution. )
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