Gender and early career status: variables of participation at an international marine science conference

Conference participation is an important part of academic practice and contributes to building scientific careers. Investigating demographic differences in conference participation may reveal factors contributing to the continued under-representation of women in marine and ocean science. To explore the gender and career stage dimensions of participation in an international marine science conference, preferences of presentation type (oral/poster) as well as acceptance and rejection decisions were investigated using 5-years of data (2015–2019) from an International Marine Science Conference. It was found that early career scientists were more likely to be women, while established scientists were more likely to be men. Although overall, gender did not show a significant effect on the decisions to “downgrade” requests for oral presentations to poster presentations, early career scientists were significantly more likely to be downgraded than established scientists. Given that more women were often early career scientists, more women than men had their presentations downgraded. Other indicators and evidence from conference prize-giving and recognition awards point to a gender gap remaining at senior levels, highlighting the need for further actions as well as monitoring and researching conference participation from a gender perspective.