skip to main content
Language:
Search Limited to: Search Limited to: Resource type Show Results with: Show Results with: Search type Index

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

PloS one, 2018-09, Vol.13 (9), p.e0202743-e0202743 [Peer Reviewed Journal]

COPYRIGHT 2018 Public Library of Science ;COPYRIGHT 2018 Public Library of Science ;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/ (the “License”), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License. ;Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ;2018 Carter et al 2018 Carter et al ;ISSN: 1932-6203 ;EISSN: 1932-6203 ;DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0202743 ;PMID: 30260980

Full text available

Citations Cited by
  • Title:
    Women's visibility in academic seminars: Women ask fewer questions than men
  • Author: Carter, Alecia J ; Croft, Alyssa ; Lukas, Dieter ; Sandstrom, Gillian M
  • Sugimoto, Cassidy Rose
  • Subjects: Analysis ; Astronomy ; Authorship ; Behavior ; Bias ; Biology and Life Sciences ; Career choice ; Careers ; Community participation ; Conferences ; Gender differences ; Gender studies ; History, Philosophy and Sociology of Sciences ; Human acts ; Human behavior ; Humanities and Social Sciences ; Mathematical models ; Men ; People and Places ; Personality ; Physical Sciences ; Psychology ; Research and Analysis Methods ; Role models ; Seminars ; Social aspects ; Social Sciences ; Visibility ; Women ; Zoology
  • Is Part Of: PloS one, 2018-09, Vol.13 (9), p.e0202743-e0202743
  • Description: 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.
  • Publisher: United States: Public Library of Science
  • Language: English
  • Identifier: ISSN: 1932-6203
    EISSN: 1932-6203
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0202743
    PMID: 30260980
  • Source: PLoS (Open access)
    DOAJ Directory of Open Access Journals
    HAL SHS: Archive ouverte en Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société (Open Access)
    Geneva Foundation Free Medical Journals at publisher websites
    Hyper Article en Ligne (HAL) (Open Access)
    PubMed Central
    ProQuest Central
Back to results list
INSPIRE LIBRARY - TON DUC THANG UNIVERSITY (84-028) 37 755 057 Feedback
19 Nguyen Huu Tho St. Dist.7, HCM thuvien@tdtu.edu.vn

Copyright © 2017 INSPIRE LIBRARY - TON DUC THANG UNIVERSITY

Searching Remote Databases, Please Wait