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:
#AI and #VoiceSearch and #Chatbots, oh my at the #TTRA2018 conference!
It’s hard to beat a lizard laden, sun shiny, ocean retreat like the Biltmore Hotel in Miami, but add in the Travel and Tourism Research Association (TTRA) conference and you’ve got my attention.
I quite enjoyed a number of the talks. Michael Rodenburgh from IPSOS Canada spoke about behavioural data and offered some fascinating tidbits about where people go to and come from during the tourism and travel customer decision journey. Passive behavioural data collection is a fabulous data collection tool and if you’re careful about obtaining explicit consent, I’m a big fan of it.
I was fascinated by a talk that Thomas Roth and David Paisley from Community Marketing and Insights gave about research with people who are LGBTQ+. Terminology seems to be in a permanent state of evolution and I never know what the most current respectful terms are. Needless to say, Tom and Dave will now be my go-to experts.
TTRA holds a number of academic tracks throughout the conference. In these tracks, graduate students and professors share their academic work which means there is a heavy contingent of highly trained, highly specialized researchers at the event. For those of you who love statistics and the nitty gritty of research details, these tracks are definitely for you. I love them for two reasons. First, of course, you learn about the research itself. But second, and most importantly for me, they are a great way to refresh your statistical and methodology training. ANOVA results take front stage and we see betas, f-values, p-values, and all the supporting statistics. People comment on and strategize over minute details. These discussions make me rethink what I thought I already knew and update my opinions about how to use statistics. Love it.
I was delighted to speak on the main stage Thursday morning about AI, chatbots, and voice search (my slides are below). I shared results from a Sklar Wilton & Associates white paper showing that the general population is fairly knowledgeable about the state of AI. AI can now write newspaper articles about anything you ask of it, AI can create humour that people actually laugh at, in some sense AI can even read your mind, and Google’s millions of dollars have allowed them to create an AI voice that is practically indistinguishable from the human voice. Of course, AI isn’t perfect and Joy Buolamwini of M.I.T.’s Media Lab has conducted research showing how facial recognition technology has trouble recognizing dark faces.
Technology for the regular folk who don’t have millions of research dollars backing us up has progressed to such a point where it is useful for customer service reps, marketers, and market researchers. Customers regularly use AI to book flights and hotels whether through chatbots on Facebook or voice assistants, we can now use AI moderators from companies like Quester to conduct surveys with anyone who has a voice assistant, and chatbots from companies like Elsient to conduct text surveys.
As fabulous as AI is, people are still unmatched for their ethics, emotions, and genuine caring for other people. This is what market researchers bring to the research table. Sure, we bring tech. Tech speeds things up and helps reduce technical errors. But people bring research results to life.
Oh, and if you’re wondering about the diversity of speakers, put your hands up, they’re playing our song, 54% of speakers were women. Rock on, TTRA!
Thank you Kathy and Scott for putting on a fabulous conference. We’re off to Melbourne Australia next year!
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 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
How to make your conference talk a sales pitch without making it a sales pitch
I suspect this is the number one complaint people have about conference talks. Not the lack of vegetarian meals, not the early sessions, but rather sessions billed as educational that turn out to be sales pitches.
What happens when a talk is a sales pitch? People tune out of your talk and in to something else like complaining about you on Twitter, choosing the next talk to go to, finding out what’s for lunch, or checking the sports scores. In my case, I tweet about brownies.
The fortunate thing is that this problem is REALLY easy to avoid.
- Never say the name of your company or your brands. Audience members have the conference program in front of them. We can read about you and your company there. Besides, if you say things that are truly educational and intriguing, people will open that program to your page and circle your name a bunch of times. They’ll probably even wait to speak to you after you’re finished talking.
- Don’t provide an explanation of your company even for context. Company context is irrelevant in about 99.99999% of cases. Even if it’s a really cool video. I’ve yet to see one instance where a company video improved my understanding of the talk.
- Never say ‘we’ or ‘our.’ I KNOW who you are talking about. I KNOW the things you say represent you and your company. Instead of saying “We believe that mobile surveys are the most disruptive methodology you will see this year,” try saying “Mobile surveys are the most disruptive methodology you will see this year.” Besides, this phrasing offers a bigger and more memorable punch. And no, mobile surveys are not the next big thing.
- Don’t describe YOUR tools. We don’t care about YOUR tools. Your audience is there to learn about new theories and processes and tools beyond the bubble of your company. Teach them the generic ideas, which just so happen to be reflected in your tools and your business model. As you demonstrate your impressive knowledge about the broader industry, the audience will decide that you are worth talking to and they will whip open that agenda and circle your name to follow up with later.
- Don’t answer questions about your product or company. Listen to questions and focus them towards industry knowledge so that everyone in the room will learn something from your answer. For example, you can say, “I’d be happy to talk about our pricing or features during the break but I agree with you that privacy should be designed into every piece of software from the beginning, not as an after thought.”
- Put a compelling sales pitch in your bio. And by sales pitch, I mean offer an interesting and relevant bio that contains specific details about your offerings not dreams, buzzwords, and nondescript nonsense.
- Put your logo on every slide (if you’re allowed to). Put your contact information on the first and last slide so that strong silent types can reach out to you privately afterwards. Put your twitter name on every slide and encourage people to tweet. I shouldn’t have to say those things but I recently went to a conference where NUMEROUS speakers did not put their name on their presentation. I’m positive most of them lost out on potential follow-ups.
- Finish exactly on time. When you’re late, conference organizers get upset, audience members get ansty, the speakers after you get annoyed, and you create a lot of bad karma. Respectful speakers generate follow ups.
- Deliver fabulous content full of actionable recommendations that people can implement immediately. Fill your talk with to-do lists and checklists and reference materials. Offer additional white papers and case studies to those who want more information. The best sales pitch is awesome content. Hands down.
A behind the scenes look at choosing speakers for the Worldwide Conference on Qualitative Research, by Susan Abbott #MRX #Diversity
Hi readers,
This is a guest post from my colleague Susan Abbot who was on the speaker selection committee for the Worldwide Conference on Qualitative Research. After reading an earlier blog post of mine about diversity of speakers, Susan decided to run the numbers on the conference and see how the conference did. These numbers can be seen in context with others on my conference comparison post. I would be thrilled if other conferences followed suit because this type of transparency is how we can really determine where any problems may lie.
Overall
We received multiple proposals from the same speakers, in varying combinations. Any given name was only counted once, and counted in the place first recorded, which would have been in the order received.
Some proposals had more than one speaker. We counted only primary and secondary speakers.
Our keynote speaker is female. We did a search, and invited this individual to speak, we did not solicit proposals. Factors considered: wanted an expert on futures, wanted an expert based in Europe, wanted someone who would connect with our audience, wanted to be within our budget. We looked at three speakers from one organization as finalists, two males and a female, and felt the woman would connect better because she had some qualitative research background. She is not included in the numbers shown below.
Proposals received from:
| Primary speaker gender | Secondary speaker gender | Totals | ||
| Total count female | 33 | 12 | 45 | 57% |
| Total count male | 26 | 8 | 34 | 43% |
| Totals | 59 | 20 | 79 | 100% |
Program
The final program line-up is as follows.
I would note here that some people who were offered a speaking slot (including both males and females) declined the offer, for a variety of reasons.
As well, I believe one male secondary speaker was added after the session was accepted, and I didn’t try to take that into account.
| Primary speaker gender | Secondary speaker gender | Totals | ||
| Final Program Female | 19 | 6 | 25 | 58% |
| Final Program Male | 13 | 5 | 18 | 42% |
| Totals | 32 | 11 | 43 | 100% |
Process
We have a speaker committee of three people who have done a lot of conference planning work over the years.
In addition, I was involved in the initial discussions with the committee, and Kendall Nash, my co-chair, also participated in some of the final selections.
A consideration in forming the committee was to have at least one European (which we did, from the UK).
We did actively solicit speaker proposals through social media, through e-mail announcements with partner organizations, and so forth. The committee also invited noteworthy individuals to submit, and we made announcements at other industry events. Basically, looking for the best and brightest.
The initial review of proposals was blinded as to name and organization. It is difficult to do that entirely, because you see trademark phrases and styles in the proposal content that make it easy to guess, however I would say we worked hard NOT to guess. Where people recognized the content, or had close friends or associates with a proposal, they disclosed this and/or recused themselves from discussions.
I have to say that we didn’t really give gender a lot of consideration in discussions.
After an initial independent rating of each proposal by the committee members, any session rated below a cut-off was not given significant further consideration.
We DID give region/country quite a bit of consideration, as we wanted to have a truly global program, which we do. Since we had many more proposals of merit than we had speaking slots, we did not have to sacrifice anything to get this global mix.
In our final deliberations, we considered our collective knowledge of the individual’s skills at presenting, as well as how often we had seen them on a conference platform recently. We also tried to ensure that the same people are not on the podium every year, even if they are really good speakers, because they already get a lot of air time for their ideas.
So, I am pretty thrilled to see that gender does not appear to have been a factor in our deliberations.
Gender is clearly a factor in how people choose to engage with QRCA – our volunteers tend to skew female, and I think that chapter meeting attendance also skews female. I’m not sure about overall membership, and there is really no way to know about participation in the workforce, as there are a lot of people who do qualitative and other marketing research that are not members of any organization. My hypothesis is that conference speaking is a more appealing way for males to participate in the industry than volunteering is.
Insight and Innovation
The gender split in #MRX conferences: 2016 edition
Rating conferences on gender ratios is not easy. Though we may want every conference to be 50/50 male/female, it doesn’t always make sense.
- Not all industries are balanced on gender. For instance, qualitative researchers are much more likely to be female than male, and some regions in the world have very different employment rates for women and men.
- Men and women don’t necessarily submit at the same ratio. For instance, maybe 70% of the submissions were male and thus it makes sense that 70% of the speakers were male.
- Men and women don’t necessarily agree to speak at the same rate. A conference may offer equal numbers of acceptances to men and women but then it’s up to men and women to actually accept those offers. Conferences with 10 speakers can instantly drop from 50% female to 44% female if just one women declines the invitation.
- Normal variation means that sometimes a conference will have more men or more women. That’s just how numbers work and you can’t fault an organization because one time, one of their conferences wasn’t perfectly equal. But when ‘random’ variation across every conference is consistently in the same direction, you’ve got to wonder what’s happening behind the scenes.
Regardless, the best way to be aware of whether there may be gender issues is to actively measure reality. My methods aren’t perfect. I can’t always tell the gender of a speaker from their name and so I manually check names in LinkedIn and other times I leave that speaker out of the equation. I never know the submission rate by gender and so I can’t defend a conference that has few female speakers even if they had zero submissions from women. If you can correct my numbers, then I absolutely welcome your help. And, if you’ve been to a conference that I haven’t attended, do let me know the numbers and I’ll add them here.
TOTAL (Excluding AAPOR/WAPOR): 1845 men, 1096 women: 37% female
The Grades
A: Ratios between 47% and 50% – Huge round of applause for any conference that lands here!
- TTRA June (Colorado): 194 speakers, 78 men, 89 women (cannot identify gender of many names) = 53% female
- TMRE October (Florida): 126 speakers, 65 women, 61 men = 52% female
- TMRE Consumer Insights May (California): 12 men, 12 women, 50% female
- IIR Insight Tech: 22 speakers, 11 men, 11 women: 50% female
- AAPOR/WAPOR June (Austin): 1463 speakers, 718 men, 745 women = 49% Male (Yes, you read that correctly. 745 female speakers.)
- Quirk’s Event February (USA): 126 speakers, 64 women, 62 men = 49% Male
- LIMRA June (Florida): 39 speakers, 19 women, 20 men = 49% Female
- NewMR February (Global online): 27 Speakers, 14 women, 13 men = 48% Male
- MRIA June (Canada): 63 speakers, 33 men, 30 women = 48% Female
- EphMRA June (Frankfurt): 45 speakers, 24 men, 21 women = 47% female
- AIMRI Under30 February (New York): 9 speakers, 5 men, 4 women = 44% Female. Although this percentage doesn’t strictly belong here, with 9 speakers it can’t get any more equal.
B: Ratios from 42% and 46%
- MRS Health February (London): 26 speakers, 12 men, 14 women = 46% male
- PMRG May (USA): 37 speakers, 17 women, 20 men = 46% female
- IIR New Face: 22 speakers, 12 women, 10 men = 45% male
- Qual360 February (Berlin): 32 speakers, 14 women, 18 men = 44% female
- Media Insights February (Florida): 56 speakers, 24 women, 32 men = 43% female
- IIeX Health April (Philadelphia): 40 speakers, 17 women, 23 men = 43% female
- NEMRA May (Massachusetts): 14 speakers, 6 men, 8 women = 43% male
- ARF Audience Measurement: 58 speakers, 25 women, 33 men = 43% female
- NEMRA May (New England): 14 speakers, 6 men, 8 women = 43% male
- WCQR March : 43 speakers, 18 men, 25 women = 42% male. One of the conference organizers ran the numbers and determined that the ratio of submissions from men and women was the same as for speakers. You can read details about their speaker selection process here.
- MRA ISC May (New Orleans): 43 speakers, 18 women, 25 men = 42% female
- CASRO CRC, October: 72 speakers, 42 men, 30 women: 42% female
C: Ratios from 37% and 41%
- MAGHREB SUMMIT January (Casablanca): 17 speakers, 10 men, 7 women = 41% female
- MRS Travel March (London): 22 speakers, 13 women, 9 men = 41% male
- ESOMAR LATAM April (Bogota): 32 speakers, 13 women, 19 men = 41% female
- ESOMAR APAC May (Tokyo): 51 speakers, 20 women, 31 men = 39% female
- Omnishopper July (Chicago): 67 speakers, 41 men, 26 women: 39% female
- AMSRS September (Melbourne): 61 speakers, 37 men, 24 women: 39% female
- BHBIA May (London): 39 speakers, 24 men, 15 women: 38% female
D: Ratios from 32% and 36%
- MRS National March (London): 94 speakers, 34 women, 60 men = 36% female
- MENAP Forum March (Dubai): 25 speakers, 9 women, 16 men = 36% female
- ESOMAR congress September (New Orleans): 72 speakers, 26 women, 46 men = 36% female
- CASRO Tech (New York): 11 speakers, 7 men, 4 women: 36% female
- PMRC Europe October (Berlin): 25 speakers, 16 men, 9 women: 36% female
- Shopper Brain, June (Chicago): 23 speakers, 15 men, 8 women: 35% female
- OmniShopper International, November (London): 31 speakers, 20 men, 11 women: 35% female
- CXfusion April (Las Vegas): 53 speakers, 18 women, 35 men = 34% female
- ARF ReThink: 141 speakers, 48 women, 93 men = 34% female
- Febelmar Februrary (Brussels): 21 speakers, 14 men, 7 women = 33% female
- MRA CEO January (Florida): 12 speakers, 4 women, 8 men = 33% female
- Sentiment Analysis Symposium July (New York): 15 speakers, 5 women, 10 men = 33% female
- Shopper Brain Amsterdam (June): 21 speakers, 14 men, 7 women: 33% female
- IIeX NA June (Atlanta): 194 speakers, 63 women, 131 men: 32% female
F: Ratios <32%
- MRS Kids January (UK): 29 speakers, 20 women, 9 men = 31% male
- MRSI February (India): 35 speakers, 24 men, 11 women = 31% female
- IIeX Europe March (Amsterdam): 115 speakers, 36 women, 79 men = 31% female
- IIR Analytics: 42 speakers, 13 women, 29 men = 31% female
- ARF ReThink March: 140 speakers, 96 men, 44 women = 31% female
- MRMW Europe: 54 speakers, 37 men, 17 women: 31% female
- IIeX Latam: 68 speakers, 47 men, 21 women: 31% female
- MRweek: 32 speakers, 22 men, 10 women: 31% female
- MRIA QRC January (Toronto): 15 speakers, 11 women, 4 men = 27% male
- CASRO Digital March (Texas): 46 speakers, 14 women, 32 men = 30% female
- CX Fusion: 53 speakers, 35 men, 16 women: 30% female
- BVM Kongress April (Berlin): 28 speakers, 8 women, 20 men = 29% female
- Market Research Exchange, Florida (May): 41 speakers, 29 men, 12 women = 29% female
- AMA Analytics February (Arizona): 18 speakers, 5 women, 13 men = 28% female.
- NMWF April (Dubai): 36 speakers, 9 women, 27 men: 25% female
- Insight Show MW May (London): 123 speakers, 30 women, 93 men: 24% female
- CX week May: 25 speakers, 6 women, 19 men = 24% female
- MRMW APAC March (Malaysia): 39 speakers, 8 women, 31 men = 21% female
- ESOMAR Big Data: 27 speakers, 22 men, 5 women: 16% female
- Text Analytics Event April (Chicago): 19 speakers, 3 women, 16 men = 16% female
- SampleCon January (USA): 40 speakers, 6 women, 34 men = 15% female
- Predictive Analytics World April: 28 speakers, 4 women, 24 men = 14% female
Upcoming ratings: ESOMAR congress September, AMSRS congress September. (Please let me know of others.)
What can YOU do?
- Submit! You can’t complain if you don’t join the cause. Take the plunge and submit your first proposal ever this year! Make it easier for conference organizers to find you by taking the first step yourself.
- Encourage! Look to your left and look to your right. Have your neighbors submitted to a conference yet? Well, maybe right now is the perfect time to encourage them to just do it!
- Demand diversity! When you notice that conference speakers reflect a very narrow group of people, point it out and ask for more. Organizers want to give you want you want. But first, you need to tell them what you want. And, still, sometimes organizers don’t realize what is happening.
- Recommend! Remember that awesome speaker you saw at the last company meeting? At the last chapter event? Email your favourite organization and let them know you found a speaker for them. Organizers can’t ask them to speak if they don’t know who to ask.
What can conferences do?
- Look at submissions from a new point of view. Realize that people from different walks of life write differently and that some proposal styles may have greater appeal to you. Notice how much the writing style is affecting your choice of content and remove your style preferences from the equation. Recognize that some equally high quality proposals brag and exaggerate, while others are factual and modest.
- Ask sponsors to promote diversity. As conference organizers, only you know when the collection of speakers has veered away from a diverse group. Take a proactive approach and let sponsors know you care about representing the entire community. Ask sponsors to send great speakers who don’t fit into traditional boxes – really old, really young, differently abled, non-white, women.
- Ask for recommendations. Not just of the most popular speakers who know other popular speakers. Ask your fringe speakers about other awesome fringe speakers.
- Go to Twitter. There are tons of lists of women speakers and experts. My Lovestats account has several lists you can use. WIRe has a list a women speakers. Just ask.
- Share your numbers. When it turns out that one of your conferences seems skewed, let people know that the submissions were also skewed. It’s not necessarily a bad thing if 30% of your speakers were female if only 30% of your submissions came from women.
- Be the change we want to see. Even if your speaker ratio matches the submission ratio, if it’s not mostly equal, do something about it! Don’t wait for submissions. Hunt for awesome speakers who didn’t submit.
Demand that your conferences be Diversity Approved! (Tweet this post!)
Similar posts for other conferences
Related Posts
- Because it’s 2015: I challenge you to make your #MRX conference Diversity Approved
- The gender split in #MRX conferences: we’re not there yet – 2015
- The Presenter Gender Split #IIeXap14
- The Gender Bias Rears its Face #ESOMAR
- The Conference Presenter Gender Gap #WAPOR
- Gender bias among #AAPOR presenters
Because it’s 2015: I challenge you to make your #MRX conference Diversity Approved
Demand that your conferences be Diversity Approved! (Tweet this post!)
When Canada’s new Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, was asked why his cabinet was 50% male and 50% female, his answer was simple. Because it’s 2015. Such a simple answer to a long standing problem.
As I look back over 2015, I see that “because it’s 2015” didn’t apply to every market research conference. Some conferences had speaker lists that were 70% male. Some conferences had speaker panels that were 100% male. No conferences had attendee lists nor industry lists that were 100% male let alone 70% male.
There are many reasons that men might be over-represented as speakers, but few that are acceptable.
- Random chance. As a lover of statistics, I accept that random chance will create some all male panels. But since I’ve never seen an all female panel, random chance is not what’s at play here. If you’d rather see the math, Greg Martin calculated the chance of having all male speakers here. It’s not good.
- 70% or more of submissions were from men. That also is an acceptable reason. If women aren’t submitting, then they can’t be selected. So on that note, it’s up to you ladies to make sure you submit at every chance you get. And don’t tell me you’re not good enough to speak. I ranted on that excuse already.
- You haven’t heard of any women working in this area. This excuse is unacceptable. You can’t look for speakers only inside your own comfortable friend list. Get out of your box. Get online. There are tons of women talking about every conceivable industry issue. Find one woman and ask her for recommendations. You can start here: Data science, Marketing research, Statistics, Tech.
- The best proposals happen to be from men. This excuse is also unacceptable. It demonstrates that you believe men are better than women. You need to broaden your perception of what ‘better’ means. Men and women speak in different ways so you need to listen in different ways. It’s good for you. Try it.
- Women decline when we ask them to speak. It’s a real shame particularly if women decline invitations more often than men. But any time a woman declines, ask her for a list of people she recommends. And then consider the women on that list. No women in the list? Then specifically ask her if she knows any women.
- It’s a paid talk and they only sent men. Know what? It’s okay to remind companies that their panel isn’t representative of the industry. You can suggest that they send a broader range of people.
- We didn’t realize this was a problem. Inexcusable. Diversity has been an issue for years. People have been pointing this out to market research conferences for years. The right time to fix things is always now.
When was the last time you prepared a sampling matrix balanced on age, gender, and ethnicity and then were pleased when it was 70% female, 70% age 50+, and 90% white? Never, that’s when. You stayed in field and implemented appropriate sampling techniques until your demographics were representative. This is absolutely no different.
So, to every conference organizer out there, ESOMAR, CASRO, MRA, MRIA, ARF, MRS, AMSRS, ESRA, AAPOR, I challenge you to review and correct your speaker list before announcing it.
- What percentage of submissions are from men versus women? Only when submissions are far from balanced is it acceptable for the acceptance list to be unbalanced.
- Are there any all male panels? Are there any all female panels? (By the way, all female panels talking about female issues do NOT count.)
- Are more than 55% of speakers male? Are more than 55% of speakers female?
- Is the invited speaker list well balanced? There is zero reason for invited speakers to NOT be representative.
- Did you actively ask companies to assist with ensuring that speakers were diverse?
If you can give appropriate answer to those questions, I invite you to publicly advertise your conference as Diversity Approved.
Will you accept this challenge for every conference you run in 2016? Will you:
- Post the gender ratio of submissions
- Post the gender ratio of acceptances
- Proudly advertise that your conference is “Diversity Approved”
Demand that your conferences be Diversity Approved! (Tweet this demand!)
The gender split in #MRX conferences: we’re not there yet – 2015
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!
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