Creating an inclusive and welcoming research conference environment

Wellcome Genome Campus Connecting Science (ACSC)

Part of Connecting Science, Wellcome Genome Campus Advanced Courses and Scientific Conferences have invested in a commitment to diversity and inclusion as a core part of their training and learning activities.

The issue of gender balance within the scientific research community is not a new one. The reporting of gender pay-gap data in the UK has again highlighted that pay disparities often arise from a lack of women in the most senior research and leadership roles, despite the fact that in the biomedical sciences at least, men and women are represented equally at undergraduate and postgraduate level.

The reasons why women leave academic research are many and complex. Are women less attracted to research careers because of a specific organisational ‘culture’ in academia? Do they lack visible role models? Or is the timeline for progress and promotion to a permanent academic position not conducive to family life? This general pattern of under-representation is reflected at many scientific conferences, some of which continue to support a majority of male programme organisers and invited speakers.

Now part of Connecting Science, Advanced Courses and Scientific Conferences (ACSC) is a courses and conferences programme based on the Wellcome Genome Campus with a 30 year history of delivering high-quality training and learning events. Our audiences are approaching gender parity, and we strongly believe that those on the stage should reflect the community sitting in the seats. We also wanted to open up more speaking opportunities to female researchers, increasing their visibility and supporting their research careers. While we have previously encouraged our conference programme committees to invite a diversity of speakers to our meetings, in 2016 we made this mandatory. The effect was clear – from an average percentage of 34% invited female speakers across all conferences in 2015/16, we reached a 50:50 gender balance in 2018, which we have continued to maintain. This process has not been without challenges, with some programme committees viewing a gender balance requirement as an unnecessary burden, although others have embraced it as an opportunity to be pro-active in identifying emerging female leaders in their fields.

Beyond the visibility that results from being a keynote speaker, the academic research community relies on scientific meetings and conferences to provide opportunities to gain access to emerging thinking, share knowledge by presenting work to peers, and to network and develop collaborations. Conferences are often the place where a late-breaking abstract from a post-doctoral fellow can grab the attention of an established leader in the field and change their professional life. But these opportunities are not always available for everyone and are not shared equally. Speakers are often chosen based on a talk given at other meetings, where men are frequently more ‘visible’ than women, which can have a cumulative effect, with subsequent opportunities available to one group and not the other. In addition, the time when many researchers are looking to accelerate their careers is often also the time when many people are thinking about starting a family, and the impact of this type of personal and professional decision-making still predominantly affects women in research.

ACSC have recognised that for too long those with caring responsibilities face practical barriers to attending scientific meetings – whether these are the costs of child (or other types of) care, or the inability to leave young children at home and travel to a conference venue. We started to address these issues by providing parent and carer bursaries, which any delegates and speakers can apply for, to support the additional care costs their meeting attendance might result in. We have recently extended our policies in this area, and are now able to support parents attending our meetings with young children. A new family room in our Conference Centre enables parents to have access to a quiet space for feeding and napping, while a live-stream of conference sessions ensures that they do not miss out on important content.

We hope that these strategic and practical measures create an environment that is inclusive and welcoming of all our delegates, reflecting the ethos of Connecting Science and generating a positive impact on our community. Interestingly, although we were starting from a high baseline, the years since the introduction of the gender balance policy has also seen a rise in the percentage of female delegates attending our conferences. Are we attracting more women to our conferences because we have more women speakers? Quite possibly.

Looking forward, we know that there is more that we can do. Inclusion at conferences is not just about keynote speakers, but who is asking the questions during the sessions. Recent research has indicated that women are less likely to ask questions at research meetings, even when they form a substantial part of the audience. There may be a range of reasons for this, including social conditioning, but it appears clear that when a woman is the first selected questioner, more women ask further questions. In the year ahead, we intend to investigate this issue in more detail, in order to understand what specific measures may assist session Chairs selecting questions, and to explore what more we can do as conference organisers to support active female participation.

Of course, gender is not the only area to consider with regard to diversity at scientific conferences. We are also actively exploring how we ensure our meetings are not focused on the global north in their representation and content. We are intending to develop and deliver a new policy relating to geographic diversity at our conferences that will set specific targets for invited speakers from outside the anglophone countries, broadening the base of research findings that will be shared with the community and the voices that are heard within it

For all these measures, both current and future-looking, we chose to support equality, diversity and inclusion not only because it is an important principle, but also because we know that a commitment to these areas increases the value of our scientific conferences, and the knowledge that they share, for the entire biomedical research community.

Dr Ireena Dutta, Head of Strategy, Connecting Science: Ireena leads the Connecting Science Programme Office, overseeing its marketing and communication activities, manages programme-wide initiatives, and supports the Director with strategic development. She has a PhD in the molecular basis of antimicrobial resistance from the University of Cambridge, a PgCert in Knowledge Transfer from the Open University, and experience in science communication, research evaluation and stakeholder management.

Dr Treasa Creavin, Scientific Programme Manager, Advanced Courses and Scientific Conferences, Connecting Science: Treasa’s main role is to expand and develop the ACSC scientific conference programme and discussion-based courses, leading on a portfolio of events. Her role also includes marketing and sponsorship management. Prior to joining the conferences programme in 2010, she was the Editor of Trends in Genetics and the Reviews Editor of Genome Biology. Treasa obtained her PhD in genetics from University College London and was a postdoctoral researcher at UCL Medical School and at AIST in Japan.

Connecting Science receives core funding from Wellcome and, alongside the Wellcome Sanger Institute, is part of Genome Research Limited. Find them on twitter @ConnectingSci and @ACSCevents