Female representation at Australasian specialty conferences

In a recent article, Modra and colleagues1 have highlighted the importance of balance and diversity throughout our workforce, including the scientific front end. The overlap of female under-representation in specialty medicine, research and scientific meeting presentations makes for harrowing reading. The prospect of remedy offers an exciting and worthwhile opportunity.

On behalf of the Regional Organising Committee for the 2017 Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists Annual Scientific Meeting (ANZCA–ASM), we would like to respond with our context and vision. Our college has a rich history of strong female leadership. Four consecutive past presidents have been women. Since 2010, four out of six of our ASMs have been convened or co-convened by women; however, there have been no female scientific conveners and the speaker selection has tended to strongly favour men.

In 2014, Martin’s2 guidelines for achieving conference speaker gender balance were accepted by our newly formed committee as integral to our planning. The meeting attracts up to 2000 delegates, of which about 45% are women. The college currently has 1727 female active fellows (31%), and in the past 5 years, 40% of the new fellows have been women.

No straightforward solution exists, but our strategy has involved:

• formation of a gender balanced organising committee;

• guidelines for gender balance in speaker selection provided to current and future organising committees;

• participation targets of at least 30% (college membership), but ideally of 45% (meeting delegation) across sessions;

• half of the international keynote speakers to be women;

• negotiation with the health care industry to have gender balanced representation in the sponsorship and exhibition area; and

• provision of on-site child care services (this will be the first time such services have been offered at an ANZCA–ASM).

The problem of gender balance is now firmly on the agenda for all meetings on the ANZCA calendar, and there is an open and ongoing conversation in the leadership team and in the general ranks.