Friday, September 16, 2016

Gender ratios of speakers at ASL meetings

Hello, everyone! I'm Johanna Franklin, an assistant professor in the math department at Hofstra UniversityThank you, Valeria, for inviting me to write a guest post.

I've put together a fairly complete spreadsheet of people who have been invited to speak at three of the four varieties of ASL meetings: the Annual Meetings, the AMS/ASL meetings, and the APA/ASL meetings. This spreadsheet contains the name, sex, and role of every invited speaker for

  • the Annual Meetings back to 1989 and
  • the AMS/ASL meetings back to 1988 with the exceptions of 1989, 1991, 1992, and 1994.

It's difficult to tell what data I'm missing for the APA/ASL meetings, since the timing of these meetings has historically not been as consistent: it seems like there were both winter and spring meetings in some years but not others, and I don't know which years were which. 


My next post will be a more detailed analysis of the data I have, but here are some basic statistics for the plenaries given at the Annual Meetings and AMS/ASL meetings.


Annual Meetings

  • Out of 268 plenaries in 28 years, 238 (89%) were given by men and 30 (11%) by women.
  • The smallest number of male speakers was 3 (in 2016, the only time the ratio has ever been 1:1); the largest was 13 (in 1997, when there were no plenaries by women).
  • The smallest number of female speakers was 0 (in 9 different years and as recently as 2003); the largest was 3 (which has happened twice: 2016 and 2009).
So the highest number of plenaries given by women in a year matches the lowest number given by men.

AMS/ASL meetings

  • Out of 180 plenaries in 25 years, 155 (86%) were given by men and 25 (14%) by women.
  • The smallest number of male speakers was 3 (in 1990, when there were only 3 plenaries!); the largest was 12 (in 2000, when there were no plenaries by women).
  • The smallest number of female speakers was 0 (in 11 different years and as recently as 2013); the largest was 3 (which has happened once: in 2012, when the most even male:female ratio was achieved).

Once again, the highest number of plenaries given by women in a year matches the lowest number given by men.


Please help me fill in the missing information and let me know what kind of statistical analysis you'd like to see!

2 comments:

  1. The joint meetings with the APA rotate between the three divisions, and the Eastern used to be held between Christmas and New Year's. So you might have a meeting with the Pacific in the Spring and then a meeting with the Eastern in December of the same year.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks! do you know who is responsible for the lovely statement about gender inequality in the ASL main webpage?

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