Gender Diversity at the ICA: New study in the Journal of Communication [12.03.24]
Have you ever wondered how gender diverse academic conferences really are and what organizers can do to support it? In our new paper in the Journal of Communication, Maike Braun, Sabine Trepte together with Laura Heintz, Simon Kruschinski and Michael Scharkow from the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz analyzed the gender diversity of the annual International Communication Association (ICA) conferences from 2005-2022.
Results show that the proportion of women has increased from 51% in 2005 to 59% in 2022 which mirrors ICA membership data. We found positive effects on the proportion of female authors for the availability of childcare, the Covid-19 pandemic (i.e. virtual conferences), and female division leaders. Overall, we also found a strong variation of gender diversity between divisions and countries.
The publication is available Open Access (https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqad032). All data, code and additional analyses can be found on the OSF. For example, we reanalyzed existing data to extrapolate the percentages of women in different career stages (https://osf.io/jc56w)
The project Diversity-X is promoted with funds from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research under the reference number 01FP21029A. Responsibility for the contents of thispublication lies with the authors.
