Data for: Representation in sea turtle science: slow progress towards gender equity and globalization revealed from thirty years of symposium abstracts

Sea turtles are a circumglobal taxon that receive considerable research attention, yet there is little information about the demographics of sea turtle researchers. To assess long-term trends in demographic, geographic, and institutional representation within the sea turtle community, we quantified information from 7041 abstracts presented at the International Sea Turtle Symposium (ISTS) between 1988–2018. The dataset from this study is presented here.