UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

Women's visibility in academic seminars: Women ask fewer questions than men

Carter, AJ; Croft, A; Lukas, D; Sandstrom, GM; (2018) Women's visibility in academic seminars: Women ask fewer questions than men. PLoS One , 13 (9) , Article e0202743. 10.1371/journal.pone.0202743. Green open access

[thumbnail of pone.0202743.pdf]
Preview
Text
pone.0202743.pdf - Published Version

Download (2MB) | Preview

Abstract

The attrition of women in academic careers is a major concern, particularly in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics subjects. One factor that can contribute to the attrition is the lack of visible role models for women in academia. At early career stages, the behaviour of the local community may play a formative role in identifying ingroup role models, shaping women's impressions of whether or not they can be successful in academia. One common and formative setting to observe role models is the local departmental academic seminar, talk, or presentation. We thus quantified women's visibility through the question-asking behaviour of academics at seminars using observations and an online survey. From the survey responses of over 600 academics in 20 countries, we found that women reported asking fewer questions after seminars compared to men. This impression was supported by observational data from almost 250 seminars in 10 countries: women audience members asked absolutely and proportionally fewer questions than male audience members. When asked why they did not ask questions when they wanted to, women, more than men, endorsed internal factors (e.g., not working up the nerve). However, our observations suggest that structural factors might also play a role; when a man was the first to ask a question, or there were fewer questions, women asked proportionally fewer questions. Attempts to counteract the latter effect by manipulating the time for questions (in an effort to provoke more questions) in two departments were unsuccessful. We propose alternative recommendations for creating an environment that makes everyone feel more comfortable to ask questions, thus promoting equal visibility for women and members of other less visible groups.

Type: Article
Title: Women's visibility in academic seminars: Women ask fewer questions than men
Location: United States
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0202743
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202743
Language: English
Additional information: © 2018 Carter et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords: Attitude, Career Choice, Congresses as Topic, Female, Humans, Male, Natural Science Disciplines, Surveys and Questionnaires
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Anthropology
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10120322
Downloads since deposit
22Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item