Diversity in geoscience: Participation, behaviour, and the division of scientific labour at a Canadian geoscience conference

We acknowledge an irreducible (and, for some topics, significant) level of subjectivity in terms of how observers described and classified their observations in the conference, which poses challenges for comparison. To address this we (i) endeavored to use objective metrics such as time, audience counts, and presence/absence tick boxes; (ii) made observations in stratified pairs to enable cross-validation of certain variables and reduce disciplinary bias; and (iii) discussed and revised our observational habits before, during, and after the conference to increase reliability and replication of categorical observations.

In this study we employed binary categories of gender and ethnicity, and we visually identified and classified people into these categories. The category people of colour therefore refers to individuals who appeared non-white (including presenters of Middle Eastern, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, and African descent), and does not provide any information on presenters’ country of birth or education. Similar categories have been employed in other studies (see Ong et al. 2011). We recognize that binary concepts of identity may produce a feeling of exclusion for persons who do not fit these binary categories of identity, and that person of colour is a crude indicator of people’s lived experiences of cultural or racialized exclusion. Acknowledging these limitations, we feel that the reflexive use of these indicators for purposes of promoting diversity and inclusion is beneficial here.

This paper focuses solely on the formal spaces of an academic conference. However, social events, coffee breaks, and informal networking are all important places where both positive and negative conference experiences are produced. The ways in which these informal spaces and practices contribute to the culture and climate of the earth sciences deserve further investigation but are beyond the scope of this study.

In general, data are reported at a population scale, and we do not statistically compare data between disciplinary sections because of low sample sizes in some sections. Where a statistical evaluation of data was possible and provided additional insight, analysis was performed using a Kruskal–Wallis one-way ANOVA.

A total of 516 people registered for the conference (including 1-day attendees). Registrants were asked to self-report their gender, institutional affiliation, and career stage; however, information on registrant ethnicity was not collected. Women comprised just over a third (36%) of the 84% of registrants who indicated their gender. This number is slightly higher than the largest North American geoscience society, the American Geophysical Union, which has a membership of around 60 000 and reports an increase in female membership from 15% in 2000 to 27% in 2015 (Leinen 2016). It is also higher than for the CSAFM’s general membership, wherein women constitute 22% of the 117 email listserv members and 30% of the 30 current members in good standing (A. Glenn, personal communication, 2017). Membership data for CGU were not available. The representation of women at the CGU-CSAFM 2017 conference is also similar to the US geoscience workforce and higher than observed in the Canadian workforce. Wilson (2017) reported that women made up 34% of the geoscientists in the US, whereas Canadian census data from 2011 shows that women make up 23% of employed geoscientists (Statistics Canada 2011).

Figure 1 shows the distribution of conference registrants by gender and career stage. Overall, PhD students were the largest group of conference registrants (25%), whereas undergraduate students were the smallest group (3%). Considering the distribution of career stages for women and men reveals diverging trends; past the undergraduate level, the percentage of women declines steadily with career stage, with the most female attendees at the Master’s and PhD levels (34% and 24%, respectively) and the least at the senior level (7%). Comparatively, the greatest number of male attendees were at both the PhD and senior levels (26% and 24%, respectively), indicating that men at the conference are represented more consistently throughout all career stages. Similar trends were observed in the career stages of oral presenters (Fig. S2). Although a relatively junior female geoscientific workforce may be interpreted as reflecting an increasing interest from females in geoscience careers, a significant body of research has repeatedly demonstrated that increased participation at the graduate level has not translated into proportionate representation in senior positions in STEM fields (Alper 1993; Griffith 2010; Glass 2015). This decreasing representation of women at higher career stages is prevalent in geoscience (Nentwich 2010; Glass 2015; Thornbush 2016) and STEM fields more broadly (e.g., Huntoon and Lane 2007; Levine et al. 2007). This pattern has been described as a “leaky pipeline” (Alper 1993; Holmes et al. 2015b) wherein women for various reasons opt out of the typical academic career pathway, leading to fewer women at highest ranks in the academy.

The majority of conference registrants who volunteered their demographic information originated from the academic sector (83%). Only 9% of these registrants identified as government affiliated and 5% as affiliated with the private sector. The dominance of the academic sector at this conference likely reflects how this meeting is traditionally pitched towards highlighting research advances, attracting a specific subset of geoscientists in Canada. Professional and industry conferences may provide a useful comparator to see whether ethnic minorities are better represented up the career ladder in nonacademic organizations.

A total of 337 oral presentations (excluding plenaries) were given at the conference, and 149 posters were presented. Conference attendee demographics by presentation type are shown in Table 2. Based on the conference program, 39% of poster presenters were female and 62% were students. Of the 256 oral presentations we observed, 28% of speakers were female and 39% were students. Relative to the registration numbers, women were over-represented as poster presenters and under-represented as oral presenters. Although women were over-represented at the student level (62% of women registered as students) at the conference, this does not appear to explain the higher proportion of women presenting posters: 41% of all female student presenters (oral or poster) presented posters compared with 46% of male students. Hence, women in more advanced career stages are either more likely to ask for poster slots overall or are disproportionately assigned posters relative to men. Data about the ethnicity of poster presenters were not collected.

Invited speaker positions at conferences celebrate the important work of individuals and also expose that researcher’s work to a wider audience. At the CGU-CSAFM conference, two of the four plenary lectures were given by women; however, only four of the 21 invited non-plenary speakers (see Table 2) for the oral sessions were women, a proportion similarly observed in ecology and biology symposia (Schroeder et al. 2013; Farr et al. 2017).

Analysis of section-level data found profound differences in diversity among the disciplines of geoscience represented at the conference (Fig. 2). Although women constituted nearly half of the presenters in smaller sections such as CSAFM, in the more populous sections, such as Hydrology and Earth Surface, women made up only one in every five presenters (Fig. 2a). That women made up so few of the Hydrology presenters is significant because, with 41% of all speakers, the Hydrology section was also the largest section at the conference. Our findings corroborate other studies that identify how women are particularly poorly represented in Hydrology relative to the Biogeosciences and other geoscience disciplines, indicating persistent disciplinary differences (Luzzadder-Beach and Macfarlane 2000; Holmes and O’Connell 2003).

Across all sections, people of colour composed 21% of all presenters and 19% of female presenters. This suggests that people of colour, in particular women of colour, were poorly represented at this conference, just as they are in STEM in the US (Williams et al. 2014). Data are not available to compare these proportions to other geoscience conferences; however, the geosciences have the lowest ethnic diversity of any STEM discipline (Huntoon and Lane 2007; Williams et al. 2014; Clancy et al. 2017). Figure 2b shows that differences in the participation of people of colour between sections are more pronounced than those of gender. At the upper end, people of colour comprised up to 60% of speakers in Geodesy (one session) and 41% in Solid Earth (nine sessions), although both of these disciplinary sections contained fewer presenters overall (see Table 1). Conversely, sections with very low proportions of people of colour, such as Biogeosciences (9%) and Earth Surface (6%), tended to have greater total numbers of presenters.

Session-level differences illustrate the effects of this unevenness. Although 36% of registrants and 28% of speakers at the conference were female, a quarter of conference sessions had no female presenters at all. Similarly, although 21% of conference presenters were people of colour, almost a quarter of sessions (23%) had no people of colour presenting, and in five sessions more than 50% of the presenters were people of colour. Although these numbers might be expected statistically speaking, materially this lack of representation produces conference spaces where women and minorities, although present in the audience, are absent from the discussion on stage.

Analysing both the registration and presenter data revealed that despite higher registration numbers at the CGU-CSAFM conference than reflective of the wider geoscience community, women were under-represented as oral and invited presenters and over-represented as poster presenters. Given that oral and invited presentations tend to be more highly valued and reach a greater audience, women’s contributions are thus less visible in the more prominent fora of the conference.

Women and people of colour were also unevenly distributed across disciplines, and were better represented as presenters in the smaller sections such as CSAFM. As a result, larger, less diverse sections, such as Hydrology and Earth Surface, had numerous sessions that contained no women presenters or no people of colour presenting. As will be discussed later in this paper, sessions without women and people of colour presenting can exhibit a distinct climate that makes certain people feel excluded.

In 2001 in the US, only 3% of Master’s and 5% of PhD graduates in the geosciences were members of under-represented groups (ethnic and other minorities, NSF 2001), spurring widespread government-funded efforts to increase diversity in the geosciences. Although attempts to increase the number of women in the geosciences have been modestly successful (for example, between 2004 and 2014, the share of Earth Science PhDs earned by women increased from 33% to 43%), the same trend has not been observed across other under-represented groups; the proportion of white PhD graduates remained constant from 2004 to 2014 (Falkenheim et al. 2017).

Demographic data from conferences provides numbers by which efforts to increase diversity can be evaluated. Comparing disciplines within a conference can help to elucidate where women and people of colour are better represented, whereas registrant-level data can be used to compare diversity between different types of conferences and between geographic locations. Although meetings of the CGU tend to attract a more academic audience, it would be interesting to examine how the demographics of a more industry-affiliated conference may compare.

The data reveal the intellectual dominance of specific methods and contribution types in the geosciences, but also highlight that this dominance varies by section. For example, field methods were more common in the Biogeosciences, CSAFM, and Earth Surface, than in Hydrology, Solid Earth, Geodesy, and Joint (Table 3). Modelling, in contrast, is most prominent in Geodesy, Hydrology, and Solid Earth and far less common in other section types. Remote sensing was commonly used in only the Solid Earth and Joint sessions (which included a named remote sensing session). Laboratory research and social methods stand out as approaches that are not commonly utilised in the geosciences and, therefore, as opportunities to improve intellectual diversity.

Similar trends are observed in the intellectual contribution data. Field methods remain prominent, with 44% of all presentations contributing “new observational data”. Other common contribution types were “new method” (31%) or “applied solution” (18%); all other categories occurred in fewer than 15% of presentations (Fig. 3). Disciplinary groupings of contributions are also evident, with “new observational data” standing out as the dominant contribution type in Biogeosciences, CSAFM, and Earth Surface sessions. “Applied solutions” were also common in Earth Surface and Biogeosciences sessions. However, in Hydrology, Solid Earth, and Geodesy, “new method” and (or) “reanalysis of existing data” were much more common, competing with “new observational data” as the key contribution type.

The majority of presenters connected their research to real-world issues in a substantive way, with just 26% providing no justification. Justifications ranged from “vague” assertions of potential applications (e.g. findings might have implications for drainage water chemistry), to “clear” descriptions of how the research enhances understanding of a specific problem or solution (e.g., earthquake early warning systems).

Results reveal notable gender differences in the methods used, intellectual contributions made, and real-world justifications articulated by presenters (Table 3). Higher proportions of women use field and lab methods relative to men, and accordingly, contribute new observational and experimental data more frequently than men. In contrast, remote sensing and modelling methods are slightly male-dominated. However, the gendered use of methods varies by section, with Earth Surface sessions containing greater percentages of women using modelling (37% female vs. 22% male) and greater male use of field methods (53% female vs. 58% male). This variability suggests that the gendered differences indicated by our results may be further differentiated across specific types of methods (e.g., numerical vs. statistical modelling)—nuances that are not reflected in our broad method categories.

Comparing intellectual contributions between men and women showed that “new observational data” were the most common contributions for both genders (Fig. 3). However, applied solutions are almost twice as common among female presenters compared with men, which is notable because applied sessions drew audiences with the highest percentage of females. The relative dominance of women in the applied solutions category is consistent across all disciplines (with the exception of Geodesy and Joint sessions, where 1 and 0 presenters contributed an applied solution respectively), although the degree of dominance differs. Men are more likely to contribute a new method, especially in CSAFM, Hydrology, and Solid Earth, and to make data- and theoretical/literature-based contributions.

The prominence of applied solutions among female presenters is also reflected in the real-world justification data (see Fig. S4). A higher proportion of female presenters provided a real-world justification for their research relative to male presenters (80% vs. 72%), and a higher proportion of justifications by women were recorded as “clear”. This gender difference appears to exist across career stage, sector, and disciplinary section, although the size of the justification gap varies. For example, Fig. 4 illustrates that in disciplines with above average rates of real-world justifications (e.g., Biogeosciences), a substantially larger proportion of female presenters provided a vague or clear justification for their research. Among Hydrology and Solid Earth presentations, however, women and men both communicated a real-world justification less frequently and at similar rates.

Our findings also indicate that the use of methods, intellectual contributions, and real-world justifications differ substantially between people of colour and white presenters, and with the opposite trend of gender differences. For example, 52% of people of colour use modelling as a primary method, which is considerably more than white presenters (Table 3). People of colour also have markedly lower representation in field methods but use remote sensing and lab methods with similar frequency to white presenters.

The intellectual contributions of people of colour also differ substantially from those of white presenters. For this group, new methods are the most common intellectual contribution, followed by new observational data and reanalysis of existing data. As illustrated in Fig. 5, applied solutions (which were common among female presenters in general) are notably less common among people of colour. Similarly, people of colour provided a real-world justification for their research less frequently than white presenters (60% vs. 78%, see Fig. S4).

Analysis of the intellectual diversity data revealed mixed relationships with career stage. Although the use of methods and real-world justifications showed clear differences according to career stage, contribution types did not. When analysed by method, the use of remote sensing increases consistently with the presenter’s career stage, from 18% of students and 25% early-career scientists to 27% of mid-career and 32% of late-career scientists. In contrast, modelling is more common among student (47%) and early career (51%) scientists compared with mid-career (41%) and late-career (32%) scientists, suggesting that interest in modelling may be increasing generationally.

The career stage of the presenter does not clearly affect the contribution type. New observational data, new method, and applied solution are the dominant contribution types across all career stages, with the exception of early-career presenters who are more likely to make a theoretical contribution or perform a reanalysis than provide an applied solution. Students are much less likely to make theoretical or literature review contributions than other career stages, but they are more likely to justify their research with reference to real-world problems. The proportion of presenters who did identify a real-world justification for their research generally decreases with career stage, from 22% among students to 35% among late-career presenters (see Fig. S4).

Although geoscience methods and contributions are changing with the introduction of new modelling and quantitative techniques, fieldwork and instrumental campaigns remain mainstays of geoscience research (see also Luzzadder-Beach and Macfarlane 2000). The popularity of geoscience methods and contribution types across different demographics suggests that seeking demographic diversity can foster increased intellectual diversity within geoscience conferences. For example, women were responsible for a large proportion of the applied solution studies presented at the conference (an otherwise less common contribution type) and were more likely to articulate the real-world significance of their research. Similarly, a larger proportion of people of colour contributed modelling studies and proposed new methods than white scientists. Students also contributed to the large number of presentations using modelling, whereas presenters from later career stages were responsible for the few, but important, presentations on theoretically focused work. Drawing attention to particular groups’ distinctive intellectual contributions is one way of increasing the visibility of otherwise marginalised groups within the geosciences and actively valuing a diverse scholarly community. This suggestion mirrors Etzkowitz et al.’s (2008) observation that women’s leadership in marginal, but growing, fields is one way in which female participation in science has grown over time. Given the negative consequences of a lack of relatable intellectual role models on student confidence (Shen 2013), celebration of the intellectual contributions of marginalised groups is likely to be important in encouraging increased participation by these groups into the future.

Scholarly areas in which women, people of colour, and students are under-represented relative to the wider geoscience community can and should be identified and potential barriers examined. Women’s use of remote sensing and data analysis contributions are notably lower proportionally than men’s, whereas participation in fieldwork-based research by people of colour is significantly lower than that of white presenters. This may in part reflect differences in interest, but much research has shown that differential access to research resources and inherent biases and cultural norms (producing a chilly climate) are often also responsible for pushing people to opt out of a scientific field (see Holmes 2015b; Cheryan et al. 2017; Clancy et al. 2017). By characterising the division of scientific labour in geoscience, scientists and administrators can ask why such differences exist in key areas and make efforts to remedy any such factors in operation. Modelling, for example, increases in popularity with earlier career stages, suggesting it is the next big thing. If modelling is indeed increasing in popularity and prestige in geoscience, then any gender gap here is worth significant investigation and remedial effort. Faculty leadership and mentorship are widely recognized as important supporting mechanisms for encouraging women and people of colour to persist and succeed in fields in which they have been traditionally under-represented (Ong et al. 2011; Thornbush 2016). In addition to highlighting hotspots of difference, characterising the intellectual diversity of geoscience can also indicate progress on past gaps; in contrast to evidence that women had less access to labs and to the field (Luzzadder-Beach and Macfarlane 2000; see also Carey et al. 2016), our results show women are now participating in these areas in higher proportions than men, although this does not necessarily mean that these women do not still face significant barriers within these scientific areas.

Finally, the intellectual contribution profiles of women and people of colour differ in sometimes opposite ways, and this should be recognized in diversity strategies. Although field methods are used proportionately more by women than men, a significantly lower proportion of people of colour use field methods, as they instead tend to use modelling approaches (although there is likely significant variation within the broad category of people of colour). Similarly, a high proportion of women contribute applied solutions, whereas this is an uncommon contribution type among people of colour. Since different under-represented minorities appear to contribute to intellectual diversity in different ways, it is important that efforts to re-value intellectual diversity do not promote one demographic at the expense of another (see Ong et al. 2011).

Session conveners exert first-order influence on who presents in a session as they solicit speakers and decide on the allocation of oral presentations and posters. If the identity of a convener has an effect on the demographics of their network, this should be evident from conference session demographics. Although we did not collect data on convener ethnicity, data on convener gender were collected and are explored here.

The 47 observed sessions fell within 33 thematic topics, each with distinct conveners. Of these topics, 16 had one or more female conveners. Similar to previous studies (e.g., Sardelis and Drew 2016), we find that the involvement of at least one female session convener results in significantly (p < 0.05) higher percentages of female presenters in a session (averages of 38% vs. 23% in sessions with no female conveners). The impact of female conveners was particularly pronounced within Earth Surface where the involvement of female conveners increased the percentage of female presenters from an average of 17% to 50%.

Although there are likely multiple explanations for these results, they confirm that securing female conveners appears to be an effective diversification strategy for recruiting more female presenters. We encourage interested researchers to reflect on the choices they make in their own networks and consider how we collectively might make future conference sessions more diverse.

Oral presenters at a conference play a significant role in setting expectations (via role models) about whose time and expertise should be accorded value and respect. We investigate how presenters kept to time (or not) and how the use of language varied across the conference, to consider what this might mean for student or minority scientists looking to/for role models within geoscience.

Observations of in-conference behaviours can identify otherwise invisible components of the climate of sessions at a geoscience conference. Evidence from the CGU-CSAFM meeting illuminates several behaviours that contribute to chilly climates for women and people of colour in particular sessions: presenter behaviour that includes cues of belonging such as the use of gendered language, a higher tendency for men to take more time when giving a presentation or asking a question, higher levels of audience distraction when women and people of colour (in particular) are presenting, and more aggressive questioning styles in male-dominated sessions.

These results confirm that a chilly climate is often part of the lived experience of people of colour and women at academic conferences (Settles and O’Connor 2014; Biggs et al. 2017). For student researchers (62% of female CGU-CSAFM attendees were students), their scientific interest in a particular field must be weighed against behaviours they have either experienced or think they might experience in particular research communities (Ratliff 2012). A choice to pursue a research career within a field whose ideal worker does not resemble one’s self may require adopting those behaviours that reproduce its chilly climate (Katila and Meriläinen 1999). Otherwise, a researcher might choose to opt for a different discipline with a more welcoming climate, leave research altogether, or simply be less active in their research careers. We wonder, for example, whether previous chilly experiences at conferences might contribute to the apparent fact that women either opt for or are assigned more poster presentation slots rather than oral presentations.

To support the ongoing diversification of the geo/sciences, we invite individual members of the community to cultivate awareness of the ways in which people’s sense of self as researchers are affected in negative ways, including the scale of subtle, apparently everyday interpersonal acts. We emphasize the need to recognize the cumulative and harmful nature of these experiences throughout the professional and personal lives of marginalized peoples and the ways in which community values expressed in places like conferences can perpetuate the privileged sense of self enjoyed by already dominant groups.