Study highlights sex disparities in participation during virtual academic meetings
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Key takeaways:
- Female attendees were less likely than male attendees to ask questions during virtual grand rounds.
- Strategies to encourage equal participation are needed.
Female attendees were less likely than male attendees to ask questions during virtual ophthalmology grand rounds, according to a report published in JAMA Ophthalmology.
This occurred even though half of the attendees were women and nearly half of the speakers were women.
Grand rounds are academic meetings that include a presentation by an invited expert and are attended by physicians, researchers, other health care workers and students. During 31 virtual grand rounds sessions held between 2020 and 2021 in the department of ophthalmology at the University of California, San Francisco, a predesignated observer collected data on sex of attendees, sex of speakers and sex of each individual who asked questions. Attendees and speakers were unaware of the study.
The mean percentage of female attendees at each of the sessions was 47%. In 13 sessions (42%), the speaker was female, and in 17 sessions (55%), the moderator was female. However, female attendees asked only 40 of 140 questions (29%), the study found. Male attendees were more likely to ask one of the first three questions. No change was observed in relation to the sex of the speaker.
The authors said to be aware that their study oversimplified sex “by assumption based on appearance or identification name.” However, their results confirm those of previous studies, showing that women in academia are less likely to ask questions than men and demonstrate that this remains true also during less formal online meetings.
“Strategies to encourage equal participation of sex in academic discourse should be encouraged,” they wrote.
In an invited commentary titled “Apparently it’s still thought risky to speak while female,” Julia A. Haller, MD, congratulated the authors on “highlighting another part of our academic life that deserves intentional discussion and remediation.”
She cited previous research into the topic, highlighting how even today women who speak up in a professional setting are perceived and rated differently from men. The conclusion is that “women, even powerful women, are right in assuming that they will incur backlash as a result of talking more than others.”
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