Women’s ASA Participation in the

Women’s ASA Participation in the

Joint Statistical Meetings: 1996 – 2002

Beginning in 1996, the Committee on Women in Statistics (COWIS) initiated a project to track the participation of women at the national ASA meetings. As seen in Table 1, there are several roles that participants may take at the national meetings.

*Table 1: Sessions/Presentations at the 1996-2002 ASA Meetings**
Type	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002
Invited Sessions	121	110	121	133	103	133	104
Contributed Sessions+	202	191	146	199	158	180	232
Poster Presentations	127	183	88	153	86	90	92
Lunch Roundtables	63	66	74	78	76	95	40
Other (Speakers’ Lunches, etc)	43	53	10	5	24	7	9

*Exclusions: COPPS Fisher Lecture, Deming Lecture, Wald Lectures, Ritz Lecture, Noether Award, President’s Invited, Presidential Address, Continuing Education, ASA Film Theater.

+ Including Special Contributed Sessions.

The goal of this project is to obtain a better understanding of how women participate at the national conference and to gauge their levels of active involvement in many different roles that are available.

Method

The first step each year is to identify the women in the program. The index of the program book specifies the names of:

· presenters of papers and co-authors

· session chairs

· discussants

· luncheon round table leaders

· poster presenters

· panelists

When names are ambiguous, the ASA office and others provide assistance.

The next step is to determine the counts of all and distinct (“unduplicated”) individuals in the program book. The program book lists an individual each time he or she participates in a session. Duplicated entries as well as unduplicated entries have been tabulated.

Caution

The data for the years 2000 to 2002 were based on the original programs of the joint meetings. Any last- minute cancellations, withdrawals or substitutions were not incorporated in the analysis. It is not clear if the data for 1996 to 1999 were analyzed in the same manner.

The counts were made by different members of COWIS over the years, except for 2000 to 2002 when the counts were made by the same member. Although the results were reviewed by the chair of COWIS, there might have been a variation in classification

The gender distribution should be viewed with caution, since the gender of a number of participants was based on the best guess according to the first name.

Findings

The number of participants displayed a decreasing trend over the years 1996 to 1998 (Table 2). It was higher in 1999 when the meeting was held in Baltimore, MD, and peaked in 2002 when the meeting was held in New York City. Figure 1 shows the percent of women participants each year in the interval between 1996 and 2002. The number of ASA women actively participating in the Joint Statistical Meetings has risen from lows of 18% and 19% in the first 3 years of the project to about 26% in 2000 and 2001 and 25% in 2002.

The differences between unduplicated and duplicated percentages were within 1%.

Table 2: Unduplicated and Duplicated Counts of Participation by Gender and Year

1996 - 2002

1996

Chicago

1997

Anaheim

1998

Dallas

1999

Baltimore

2000

Indianapolis

2001

Atlanta

2002

New York

Women

Unduplicated

Duplicated

535 (19%)

648 (18%)

505 (19%)

601 (18%)

416 (18%)

479 (18%)

746 (24%)

878 (24%)

612 (26%)

714 (25%)

685 (26%)

887 (25%)

787 (25%)

1020 (24%)

Men

Unduplicated

Duplicated

2346 (81%)

2868 (82%)

2201 (81%)

2753 (82%)

1858 (82%)

2207 (82%)

2319 (76%)

2814 (76%)

1732 (74%)

2188 (75%)

1990 (74%)

2667 (75%)

2332 (75%)

3191 (76%)

Total

UnduplicatedDuplicated

2,881

3,516

2,706

3,354

2,274

2,686

3,065

3,692

2,344

2,902

2,675

3,554

3,119

4,211

Table Sources:

1996 Program Book for the Joint Statistical Meetings, Chicago, Illinois

1997 Program Book for the Joint Statistical Meetings, Anaheim, California

1998 Program Book for the Joint Statistical Meetings, Dallas, Texas

1999 Program Book for the Joint Statistical Meetings, Baltimore, Maryland

2000 Program Book for the Joint Statistical Meetings, Indianapolis, Indiana

2001 Program Book for the Joint Statistical Meetings, Atlanta, Georgia

2002 Program Book for the Joint Statistical Meetings, New York, New York

As seen in Table 3, women continued to actively participate in many different capacities. Some roles, such as Session Organizers, continued to be filled by women at a fairly steady rate (Figure 2) which hovered around 24%. Over the six years, the percent of female session Chairs increased from 19% to 24%, with a peak of 32% observed in 2001. The percent of women among Invited Speakers increased by a moderate amount of 2%.

Women’s participation as presenters, invited or contributed, has increased from 19% to 25% over the six years (Figure 3). The proportion of other tasks filled by women, such as Presenting Posters, Serving as Discussants and Hosting Roundtables, fluctuated over the six-year period.

Table 3: Percent Participation in Selected Capacities at the ASA Meetings by Gender and Year, 1996 – 2002

Type

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

Chair

Women

Men

Organizer

Women

Men

Invited Paper

Women

Men

Discussant

Women

Men

Presenter

Women

Men

Poster

Women

Men

Roundtable

women

Men

Discussion

The data showed an increasing trend of women’s participation in annual meetings over the years from 1996 to 2002. However, this trend should be viewed with precaution, since the gender distribution of the participants might be subject to inaccuracy and imprecision. Furthermore, it cannot be verified whether the increase in women’s participation in annual meetings has been greater than the change in female membership in the Association.