Sometimes academics directly suggest giving a talk at a future congress, a possibility of which (according to our personal experience) many women seem to be unaware of.

This is an interesting approach because more often than not, the development of the scientific program of a conference is a relatively informal process that favors “old boys clubs”. In the last years, hundreds of scientists/speakers have decided to boycott “all-men panels” in different fields and offered their help in finding female speakers (e. g. Is it true? Of course not, certainly not in an international context. This is a simple but devastating statement. According to one of the organizers, simply not enough high-profile women could be found. According to data presented there, the percentage of women among speakers and moderators was only 20.9%, although the total female input including delegates and poster presenters was almost twice as high: 39.3%. For example, the annual European Society for Emergency Medicine (EuSEM) congress was recently held in Vienna. The underrepresentation of women in academic medicine is particularly evident in some subspecialties such as critical care and emergency medicine. This is a problem for women in science, because such meetings can be extremely productive, many successful projects have once started in restricted access, such as faculty lounges or at faculty dinners during such events. From Austria to Australia, women continue to be a rare species as faculty of medical conferences although in many countries, medical students and young doctors are more often women than men.

Medical conferences 2016