Invited presentations at large major conferences like ANS are critical for career progression and promotion; however, historically, the scientific program of conferences worldwide has poorly reflected the diversity of those scientific fields. In 2017, the ANS Equity and Diversity committee proposed a new policy: gender balance in invited and selected talks at the ANS annual meeting should reflect the overall gender balance of ANS membership. This was ratified by council in 2019.

Here, we analyse publicly available data on invited speakers at the ANS conference, focussing on plenaries (1981-2024) and symposia (2008-2024), to assess the impact of this policy on gender balance in representation at the annual meeting. In addition to gender equity, analysis of institutional and geographic representation was also performed.

Analysis of plenary speakers shows that representation of women has increased significantly across the last 40 years. Before 2004, women represented <10% of plenary speakers, whereas across the next decade, this increased to an average of ~20% women. More recently, including following the introduction of the gender equity policy, this has continued to increase, with women speakers averaging ~40% between 2014 and 2019, which subsequently further improved to 50%. We also noted that while around 60% (n=113 of 178 total) of plenary speakers were from Australia, only 5 were from New Zealand, in comparison to 32 from the USA, 7 from the UK, and 6 from Germany.

These data suggest that, over time, gender balance amongst plenary speakers has shifted to better reflect the gender equity in membership. Nevertheless, geographic representation remains heavily skewed.  We also recognise that several groups may be under-represented amongst ANS invited speakers (e.g. LGBTQIA+, First Nations, People with disabilities), which will be important to understand to meet the Society’s goals around equity and inclusion.