Gender Diversity at Academic Conferences—The Case of the International Communication Association (ICA)

Gender diversity and the lack of women in leadership in academia has been an issue of academic interest for decades. However, little is known about gender diversity at academic conferences as an essential aspect of academia. We investigated the gender diversity of 86,719 contributions to ICA conferences over the past 18 years. We also investigated how gender diversity changed following the introduction of childcare, during the global pandemic, and under female division leadership. Lastly, we analyzed differences in gender diversity between divisions/interest groups and by authors’ national affiliation. We found that gender diversity scores are very high in all conference years and are representative of the gender diversity of ICA members. We found differences in gender diversity between divisions, countries of author affiliation, based on the availability of childcare, and during the global pandemic. We discuss implications for the field of communication science and for the organization of future conferences.

性别多元性以及学术界女性领导力不足的问题已为学术界所关注数十年。然而，关于学术界性别多元性的重要方面——学术会议中的性别多元性，了解甚少。我们对过去18年间ICA会议的86,719篇投稿的性别多元性进行了研究。同时，我们还探讨了在引入育儿支持、全球疫情爆发以及女性分部领导力下，性别多元性如何发生变化。最后，我们分析了不同分部/兴趣小组以及作者国家归属在性别多元性方面的差异。研究发现，所有会议年度的性别多元性得分均非常高，并能够代表ICA成员的性别多元性。我们发现在分部、作者所属国家、育儿支持的可获得性以及全球疫情期间存在性别多元性的差异。我们讨论了这些发现对传播科学领域的启示以及未来会议组织的影响。