oral presentation on gender equality

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Working Group Presentations at the UN

2021 : virtual presentation to undp colleagues worldwide, march 18.

The GEPA Working Group presented, "Gender Equality in Public Administration in the COVID-19 Era," the culmination of the Working Group's research from the 2020-2021 academic year. This was a closed presentation to UNDP staff and leadership. The presentation focused on links between gender equality in public adminsitration and COVID-19, including:

• public administrators in the health sector;
• COVID-19 task forces; and
• gender-sensitive policy responses to COVID-19 targeting civil servants.

2019 : 63rd Commission on the Status of Women, New York, March 14-16

GIRL Co-Directors Müge Finkel and Melanie Hughes participated in a  High-Level Roundtable Discussion on Gender Equality in Public Institutions for Sustaining Peace . The event was  livestreamed by iKNOW Politics . The event moderator was Raquel Lagunas, Senior Advisor on Gender at UNDP. Other roundtable participants included:

• H.E. Ms. Ana Maria Tribin Uribe, President's High Advisor for Women’s Equality, Republic of Colombia
• H.E. Ms. Janet Camilo Hernández, Minister of Women, Dominican Republic
• H.E. Ms. Awut Deng Achuil, Gender, Child and Social Welfare, Republic of South Sudan
• H.E. Mr. Charlie Flanagan T.D., Minister for Justice and Equality, Ireland  

The GEPA Working Group presented their research, " Opportunities and Challenges in Conflict-Affected Countries ," on the links between armed conflict and gender equality in public administration. The event was co-organized by GIRL, UNDP, and UNPBSO. The Working Group Presentation summarized the findings from three semesters of research. Although similarly themed to their 2018 presentation at the UN Secretariat, the Working Group revised and expanded their presentation to include research on how the presence and intensity of conflict could affect gender equality in public administration. The Working Group investigated several conflict-related factors, including:

• the presence, intensity, and geography of conflict;
• peace processes; and
• efforts to build inclusive institutions after peace.

2018 : UN Headquarters, New York, May 3

The GEPA Working Group presented, " Opportunities and Challenges in Conflict-Affected Countries ," the culmination of the Working Group's research from the 2017-2018 academic year. This was the Working Group's first presentation on the links between armed conflict and GEPA. The presentation included:

• a global overview of the relationship between armed conflict and women's participation and leadership in public administration;
• evidence of effects of armed conflict on GEPA data availability and quality; and
• an in-depth look into ways that armed conflict might shape the gender inclusiveness of public institutions.

2017 : UN Headquarters, New York, May 2

The GEPA Working Group presented, " Gender Equality in Public Administration: Tracking Inclusion Towards SDG 16 ." Returning to the UN Secretariat for a second time, the Working Group presented the findings from the 2016-2017 academic year. Over the course of the academic year, the Working Group researched several different topics, including:

• What counts as public administration in different countries?
• How do gender and age intersect to shape patterns of inequality in public administration participation and leadership?
• What data on gender equality in public administration are available at the subnational level of government?
• In addition to its ongoing focus on gender, a select group also consulted with the UNDP on their efforts to build inclusive institutions for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, and intersex (LGBTI) workers. 

2016: UN Headquarters, New York, May 3

The GEPA Working Group presented, " Gender Equality in Public Administration: A Global Assessment of Publically Available Data ." This was the Working Group's first presentation of its research findings at the UN Secretariat. The 2015-2016 Working Group included 20 graduate students from Public Policy, Sociology, Political Science, and Public Health. Their presentation drew on roughly 1400 person-hours of research and a combination of data sources (UNDP country offices, online research, desk research) to better understand the qualities of good public administration data. The Working Group's presentation:

• argued that "good data" are available, accessible, downloadable, customizable, intuitively organized, and disaggregated by level, sector, and work status.
• likened the search for good data to the children's story of Goldilocks and classified data tracking systems into those that made available too little data, too much data, and just enough data; 
• summarized the availability and quality of data on gender equality in public administration as of 2015-2016; and
• closed with questions for further discussion.

Presentations at the University of Pittsburgh

2020: " Gender Equality in Public Administration in the COVID-19 Era ." Presented to UNDP colleagues.

2019 : " GEPA in the Context of Opportunities and Challenges for the 2020 UN Development Agenda ." Presented to UNDP colleagues at the Mini-Conference on Opportunities and Challenges for the 2020 UN Development Agenda.

2017 : " Gender Equality in Public Administration: A Moving Target " and " Gender Equality in Public Administration: Conflict-Affected Countries ." Presented at the Gender Equality in Public Institutions Workshop.

2016 : " Gender Equality in Public Administration: Fall 2016 Research & Findings ." Presented to UNDP colleagues.

2015 : " Multi Disciplinary Graduate Student Working Group on Gender Equality in Public Administration Research & Findings ." Presented to UNDP colleagues.

Notes on Gender and Racial Discrimination:

An urgent need to integrate an intersectional perspective to the examination and development of policies, strategies and remedies for gender and racial equality

Pragna Patel

Introduction

This presentation will focus on the phenomenon of multiple or intersectional forms of discrimination/subordination faced by many women worldwide based on their gender and race or ethnicity. The combined effects of racism and gender discrimination, in particular on migrant, immigrant, indigenous, minority and marginalised women around the world, has had devastating consequences for their full enjoyment of equality and fundamental human rights in both the public and private spheres.

Intersectional discrimination has only recently been recognised, at least in international forums as a serious obstacle to the achievement of equality for many marginalised women. Historically, at the international and national levels, racism or racial discrimination on the one hand and gender discrimination on the other, have always proceeded in official thinking and policy along mutually exclusive lines. However, the notion of intersectional discrimination has now been acknowledged in a series of UN conferences on women. See for example the Beijing Platform for Action document and the subsequent 'Outcome Document' - the report of the twenty third special session of the general assembly - Beijing+5 in 2000. Both documents draw attention to the need to understand the co-existence of multiple forms of discrimination and their impact on women. But neither document has given deeper attention to the complexities and the ways in which such forms of discrimination structure the disadvantaged position that many marginalised women occupy in relation to other groups of men and women in their societies.

In a separate but parallel development at the fifty-fifth session in March 2000, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination adopted a general recommendation on gender-related dimensions of racial discrimination (CERD/C/56/Misc.21/Rev.3)

Such recognition however, is severely lacking at national levels. In the UK, for instance, there is no official policy statement or document which gives any serious attention to the ways in which black or minority women face gender and racial discrimination simultaneously. An in-depth analysis of the combined effects of racial and gender discrimination and the implications for all legislation, policies and strategies on the elimination of racial and gender inequality has yet to take place. The result is that black and minority women are rendered invisible in official strategies to combat gender inequality and racial discrimination, and they are rendered vulnerable to further discrimination.

But there is a more serious consequence of the failure to recognise the existence of intersectional discrimination. Many so called progressive initiatives, policies and strategies aimed at eliminating racial or gender discrimination actually serve only to reinforce the multiple levels of discrimination experienced by minority women, based on the flawed view that discrimination is one-dimensional and affects all women or all minority communities in the same way.

Although a number of NGOs and researchers have devoted considerable time and resources in understanding and addressing the effect of multiple forms of discrimination, much work remains to be done, especially at the national and local government level. There is an urgent need to ensure full recognition and integration of the intersectional perspective in all national programmes, policies, legislation and initiatives on all forms of discrimination. A more holistic approach to discrimination that recognises the simultaneous nature of women's experiences of various forms of discrimination is necessary, if we are to ensure that human rights are a reality for all women.

This presentation will focus particularly on the ways in which the combined effects of racial and gender discrimination place obstacles to black and minority women's struggle for equality and social justice. More specifically, I will focus on women's experiences of domestic violence, immigration laws, the criminal justice system and the multicultural approach, to show how these sites of intersectional discrimination create and perpetuate the multiple disadvantages that these women face. More importantly I wish to highlight the fact that gender and racial discrimination intersect simultaneously to the detriment of such women.

Whilst this presentation is concerned with the combined effects of racial and gender discrimination on women, it is acknowledged that other factors relating to women's social identities such as ethnicity, class, religion, caste national origin, disability and sexuality can also intersect with and therefore compound gender discrimination.

The presentation also draws on the discussions and findings of the Expert Group Meeting on gender and racial discrimination, organised by the UN Division for the Advancement of Women in collaboration with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN Development Fund for Women in November 2000 in Zagreb, Croatia. The paper will therefore end with some broad based suggestions and recommendations made by the Expert Group Meeting in which I was also a participant.

Background and Conceptual Aspects of Intersectional Discrimination

Globalisation has brought with it an unprecedented flow of unfettered capital and mass migration of labour, especially from the developing countries and the transitional economies of Eastern Europe to Western Europe, North America and Australia. Such large-scale movement of labour has increased the scope for worldwide racist activity and discrimination based on race, religion and ethnicity. The operation of restrictive immigration and asylum policies is one manifestation of such racial and related forms of discrimination in the more industrialised nations. At the same time we are witness to the unprecedented movement of women from the South to the North, constituting cheap and unorganised labour force, particularly as domestics and in the sex and entertainment industries of the industrialised countries. But the migration of such women means that they are also vulnerable to multiple forms of discrimination. It is therefore against the backdrop of the global economy that the intersection of racial and gender discrimination must be understood.

Conceptualising intersectional discrimination: 'The idea of intersectionality seeks to capture both the structural and dynamic consequences of the interaction between two or more forms of discrimination or systems of subordination. It specifically addresses the manner in which racism, patriarchy, economic disadvantages and other discriminatory systems contribute to create layers of inequality that structures the relative positions of women and men, races and other groups. Moreover, it addresses the way that specific acts and policies create burdens that flow along these intersecting axes contributing actively to create a dynamic of disempowerment.' (Page 9, Expert Group Report)

The Traffic Intersection Metaphor: The notion of intersectional discrimination is best understood by way of a metaphor relating to a traffic intersection. The metaphor was developed by Professor Kimberle Crenshaw and gives what is considered to be an effective model for the understanding of intersectional or multiple discrimination.

'In this metaphor, race, gender, class and other forms of discrimination or subordination are the roads that structure the social, economic or political terrain. It is through these thoroughfares that dynamics of disempowerment travel. These thoroughfares are sometimes framed as distinctive and mutually exclusive avenues of power.' But these thoroughfares often overlap and cross each other, creating complex intersections at which two, three or four of these avenues meet. Marginalised groups of women are located at these intersections by virtue of their specific identities and must negotiate the 'traffic' that flows through these intersections to avoid injury and to obtain resources for the normal activities of life. This can be dangerous when the traffic flows simultaneously from many directions. Injuries are sometimes created when the impact from one direction throws victims into the path of oncoming traffic, while on other occasions, injuries occur from simultaneous collisions. These are the contexts in which intersectional injuries occur - when multiple disadvantages or collisions interact to create a distinct and compound dimension of disempowerment.' (Page 9, Expert Group Report)

There are different types of intersectional discrimination or subordination. But the failure of national governments and the international community to adequately analyse all experiences of intersectional discrimination lies in the fact that in traditional conceptions of race and gender discrimination, certain specific problems or forms of discrimination faced by marginalised women are rendered invisible. Crenshaw describes this as the twin problems of 'over-inclusion' and 'under-inclusion'.

For example, the notion of over-inclusion refers to situations where the racial dimension of an experience is subsumed within a gender perspective. The consequence is that only the gender aspect of the discrimination is addressed and the subsumed or racialised aspect of discrimination is ignored. The trafficking of women and young girls is perceived to be an example par excellence of gender subordination. It is commonly held to be only a woman's problem. So in the debates or strategies on the trafficking of women and young girls, little if any attention is paid to the fact that some groups of women and children may actually be selected and targeted for trafficking. In the UK for example, current news refers to a number of missing young West African girls aged 14 plus years, who have gone missing from care homes following their arrival in this country as asylum seekers. These girls were brought to the UK en route to Italy where they are coerced by human traffickers to work in the sex industries. It is however notable that the news reports refer to their experiences of forced sexual slavery and prostitution, but little or no attention is paid to the reasons why these women from Africa are particularly selected for trafficking. The combination of their gender, socio-economic position and their race that renders them vulnerable to economic and sexual exploitation is obvious but it is not addressed. Also, little or no attention is paid to the unique forms of gendered racial discrimination they experience in the UK as asylum seekers or in Italy as prostitutes and asylum seekers.

The notion of under-inclusion refers to situations where a gender analysis is underplayed or ignored altogether in what is perceived to be a problem of racial discrimination. So, for example, the forced non-consensual sterilisation of black and other marginalized women has been perceived to be a problem of racial discrimination rather than one of sexual abuse. In the UK, in the 1970s and early 80s, the operation of immigration laws and practice sanctioned the practice of virginity testing of South Asian women. The aim of the practice was to ascertain whether Asian women who came to join their husbands were bona fide fianc�es. Underpinning this test was the assumption that Asian women do not have pre-marital sex before marriage: if a woman was not virgin then she could not be a genuine bride and therefore ineligible to enter the country. A public outcry and campaign led to the practice being stopped. Those who were appalled by the practice decried it as racist, but few articulated the way in which it also amounted to a violation of Asian women's bodies.

Apart from the trafficking of women, another well known example of targeted intersectional discrimination is the experiences of rape and sexual abuse of minority women in the context of war and armed conflict in Rwanda and Bosnia. In these cases abuses were specifically targeted at racialised women. Here conflicts which are essentially motivated by ethnic and racial hatred also target women in the selected communities for particular types of rape, sexual violence and aggression as a way of humiliating and dehumanising the entire ethnic group in question.

Another variation is in the form of structural discrimination. This occurs where policies intersect with underlying structures of inequality to create a compounded burden for particularly vulnerable women. So, women may experience specific forms of gender discrimination where they are vulnerable because of their race/class or ethnicity. On the other hand, marginalised women may be subject to specific forms of racial discrimination simply because of their gendered location within their communities. Thus the racism they experience may affect them in ways which are different from that experienced by men in their communities. One example of this is the ways in which vulnerable women within racialised groups may be coerced into non-violent crime in support of the criminal activity by their partners. But their subordinate gender positions within their community which brings about their ready acceptance of the coercion into crime is ignored by the state who may single out the women for harsher sentences. Such women may also be vulnerable to specific forms of gender discrimination in prisons ranging from 'overpolicing' to sexual abuse.

Yet another manifestation of structural discrimination is where the policy in question interacts with background structures thus creating burdens that disproportionately affect margnialised women. Structural adjustment programmes within developing and transitional economies although not specifically targeted at women can lead to increased poverty for marginalised women.

Whatever the type of intersectional discrimination, the consequence is that different forms of discrimination are more often than not experienced simultaneously by marginalised women. But the reality of their lives shaped as it is by disadvantage and social injustice is ignored and lies unaddressed within the traditional framework of understanding gender and racial discrimination because of a lack of a holistic approach to gender and racial discrimination.

The UK Experience

The rest of this presentation will focus on some of the experiences of minority, largely South Asian women, with whom I work with at the London based NGO-Southall Black Sisters. In particular, I will focus on aspects of violence against women - one of the critical areas of concern raised in the Beijing Platform for Action document. My aim is to show how, despite official rhetoric, debates and strategies to combat domestic violence the government has paid little attention to black and minority women's experience of domestic violence, which is essentially a story of multiple discrimination.

Despite decades of struggles by black and minority women for recognition of their daily experiences of racial and gender discrimination, the sad reality is that at best their experiences are seen through the lens of a mutually exclusive checklist of discrimination. One danger of this approach lies in the strategies that are adopted to address discrimination, which can and do have the paradoxical effect of reinforcing certain forms of discrimination that remain hidden. Thus many Asian women are denied the right to protection and redress from abuse experienced at the hands of the state or private actors. Aside from language barriers and cultural constraints that demand their obedience and silence for the sake of upholding family honour, many state policies have the effect of compounding the discrimination they face in their homes and their communities.

Domestic Violence and Immigration Policy Many Asian and other minority women who arrive in the country as new brides and who find themselves subject to domestic violence are then denied effective protection by the operation of the so called 'one year rule' and other welfare rights legislation. The combined legislative framework requires that spouses from abroad remain in a marriage for a probationary period of at least a year without recourse to public funds. Following the completion of the probationary period, if they are still married, they are entitled to seek indefinite leave to remain in the country. If the marriage has ended for whatever reason, then the spouse from abroad is subject to deportation. Many women are thus faced with a stark choice: domestic violence or deportation. Women who are frightened of returning to their countries of origin for fear of destitution, further violence and social persecution as a result of their changed marital status, choose instead to remain within violent relationships.

In recognition of the impact of the immigration rule on domestic violence experienced by minority women, the rule was modified by the introduction of a concession to the latest immigration and asylum legislation. But the modification still does not give effective protection to those minority women who experience domestic violence. The rule states that women who can demonstrate that they were the victims of domestic violence within the probationary period will be entitled to remain in the country on an indefinite basis. The problem, however, lies with the much higher standard of proof that is required of minority women in demonstrating domestic violence. The test which women have to overcome borders on requiring proof beyond all reasonable doubt. Few women are able to meet the level of proof required. The result is that many women are still entrapped within violent relationships.

The operation of such immigration rules means that the autonomy and right of black and minority women to live free from violence is restricted. Moreover, it has the effect of exacerbating the abuse that occurs in the family since the existence of the immigration rules gives the settled spouse added power to perpetrate the violence with impunity knowing that there will be no social censure. Paradoxically the immigration restriction reinforces patriarchal relations and gender discrimination. Yet this aspect of immigration law and policy is not addressed in official rhetoric and national policy and initiatives on domestic violence aimed at increasing social awareness and decreasing social tolerance of domestic violence. Thus major initiatives on domestic violence do not acknowledge the fact that not all women experience violence or protection from such violence in the same way.

The operation of the rule therefore compounds the violence that black and minority women experience and has a racially discriminatory effect in that minority women with no settled immigration status are denied access to protection and other welfare services that are available to battered women in the majority community.

Domestic Violence and the Criminal Justice System Many black and minority women are unable to access the criminal justice systems for a number of valid reasons. Black and minority women's experiences of the criminal justice system have received little official attention since they have largely fallen between two stools. On the one hand, where relations between black and minority communities and the police and other criminal justice agencies have been addressed, including most recently in the wake of the Stephen Lawrence case (The McPherson Report 1999), the concept of these black communities has never included a gender analysis. Thus black women's specific experiences of racism have not received appropriate attention. In parallel official studies on women and the criminal justice system over the years, black women's unique experiences of racial discrimination intersecting with gender discrimination have only been given a cursory glance.

Black women may be subject to oppressive policing practices and so share similar experiences of racism to that of men within their communities. For example when reporting domestic or racial violence, black women may instead be criminalised instead. My experience shows how women who report incidents of domestic violence are themselves subject to incarceration or questioning and investigation as to their immigration status. In other situations, black women are deterred from reporting instances of violence and abuse in their communities because they carry the burden of not exposing the community to 'overpolicing' or extreme state measures'. We have known cases where black men arrested for domestic violence and subsequently deported where they do not have a settled immigration status or dying in police custody. The burden that black women bear is therefore multiple. They are under immense pressures not to expose the wider community to institutional racism, but also, they are unable to seek redress for abuses that take place against them as women within their communities.

At the same time as black and minority women are 'overpoliced,' their experiences of domestic violence are often 'underpoliced'. Historically domestic violence has always been 'underpoliced'. But in much of the official literature on domestic violence, black women's experiences of domestic violence is seen to be one of gender discrimination and sexist attitudes prevalent throughout the police and prosecutorial system. However, the experience of South Asian women in particular show that police failure to criminalise domestic violence is more marked. This is largely due to multicultural assumptions about their different cultural backgrounds. (See below) Differences of culture and religion are often cited as excuses by the police for their non-interference. The result is that patriarchal power within minority communities, manifest for example in abuses such as domestic violence or forced marriages, is reinforced and goes unchecked. The message is that Asian women have no right to rely on the state for protection or to uphold their human rights. On the other hand, the notion of 'difference' is ignored in official strategies on violence to the extent that language difficulties, racism and other obstacles which prevent Asian women from reporting instances of violence, are not addressed. On the other hand, differences in culture and religion are invoked in exaggerated and stereotypical forms to justify non-interference in minority families for fear of being perceived to be 'culturally insensitive'. This latter approach amounts to an inverse form of racism since it denies the right to protection available to other women in society and in fact perpetuates patriarchal abuse of power within minority communities.

Domestic Violence and Multiculturalism. In the UK as in other western democracies, the multicultural approach has come to be the dominant approach to relations between the state and minority communities. With its emphasis on the need to respect and tolerate diversity and difference, it is widely accepted as a more enlightened or progressive approach to the integration of minorities. The multicultural model is all pervasive in social welfare policy and practice. Whilst the underlying notions of respect and tolerance for minorities are important, the tendency within multicultural discourses is to construct minority communities as homogeneous, with static or fixed cultures and without internal divisions along gender, caste or class lines. The consequent power relations and internal contestations of power that flow from such division are not recognised. Also, the model is undemocratic since relations between the state and minority communities are mediated through unelected self appointed community leaders, who are men, usually from socially conservative backgrounds with little or no interest in women's rights or social justice. Most are from religious backgrounds and their interests lie in preserving the family and religious and cultural values. The expectation that women will conform to religious and cultural dictates in order to transmit cultural values from one generation to the next is therefore considered crucial by such leaders.

In reality in Britain community leaders are given control over the family -women and children in return for maintenance of the political status quo. At a formal and informal level, state and community leaders enter in a contract where individual autonomy is traded for some degree of communal autonomy. The state and community leaders thus determine between themselves the level of interference within the community. For example in respect of policing issues, the police regularly consult with community leaders on how and on what issues the community is to be policed.

Multiculturalism is a site where the intersectionality of race and gender discrimination is perhaps at its most complex but also most insidious. This is partly due to the fact that gender discrimination within minority communities is obscured by the model's liberal underpinnings of tolerance and respect for diversity.

The multicultural model in our view, poses one of the main obstacles to the enjoyment of equality and human rights by South Asian and other minority women in the UK and elsewhere. The consequences of the application of multi-cultural policies is that a relativist approach to human rights is adopted and legitimised by the state in respect of minority women. One example of this is the way in which the the Government has recently, in its first ever report on forced marriages, conceded that the process of mediation (which in practice involves reconciling victims with their oppressors without further state scrutiny) is, in the name of recognising cultural difference, a legitimate option to pursue. Yet at the same time, it is acknowledged in state policies on domestic violence and abuse of women in the majority community, that mediation should not be pursued, since it does not guarantee protection from such violence and abuse. The multi-cultural approach therefore not only accommodates but also reinforces certain abuses against women and girl children within minority communities, denying them the protection that they need in view of their enhanced vulnerability as women and members of a minority community.

Recommendations for Action

Urgent action needs to take place at both the national (governmental) and international (United Nations) levels, to raise awareness of the multiple nature of discrimination experienced by marginalised women, and to mainstream an intersectional or more holistic approach to the question of racial and gender discrimination. It is both the intersectional and the simultaneous nature of multiple discrimination that needs to be understood at a theoretical level and addressed at a practical level.

Many of the recommendations for addressing intersectional discrimination are outlined in the Expert Group Report. Since much of my presentation is particularly concerned with failure at the national level to acknowledge intersectional discrimination, the recommendations highlighted below are aimed at forcing governments to take positive action to identify and address how multiple discrimination affects marginalised women who experience violence in the family.

To the UN system and governments

Develop methodologies to identify intersectional discrimination and its effects on women and girls who experience domestic violence and other forms of familial abuse including forced marriages, honour crimes, crimes related to the giving and taking of dowries and sexual abuse in the private and public life. Investigations into intersectional discrimination should begin with analysing the lived experiences of marginalised women in all their complexities. A series of questions need to be asked as to what dimensions of discrimination converge to affect and shape their lives.

• Carry out an urgent review of all governmental policies and laws, including those on violence against women, citizenship, nationality, immigration and asylum, for the discriminatory impact on marginalised women affecting their enjoyment of gender and racial equality.
• A careful audit of governmental policies on the elimination of racial discrimination, including multicultural and other so called progressive 'anti racist' policies, for their impact on gender equality with reference to minority women
• Establish and/or strengthen legislation and regulations against all forms of racism, including its gender-specific manifestations.
• Noting the difficulties women face in challenging multiple or compound discrimination, review national mechanisms to ensure that women can seek protection and remedies against intersectional discrimination based on race and gender.
• Review and repeal all legislation and policies on immigration and asylum that result in any form of discrimination against marginalised women
• Provide immigrant women and women who have no legal immigration status with full and equal access to all the resources and preventative measures against violence available to other women in the community, as well as access to appropriate interpretation and support facilities.
• Provide full access for women within minority communities to transparent and effective ad prosecutorial machinery to seek redress for violations of international human rights.
• Develop policies and programmes, including quotas, to increase participation of immigrant women in decision-making, in particular at the local level.
• Ensure priority and adequate funding for NGOs that work specifically with marginalised women.
• Make funding and the provision of resources to groups addressing any form of discrimination experienced by marginalised groups conditional on the need to integrate an intersectional approach to their work.
• Provide financial and other resources for anti-racist training to agencies across the civil and criminal justice systems and statutory welfare services which integrates an awareness of the gender related dimensions to racial discrimination in such training. And vice versa: To provide resources for gender sensitive training which incorporates race discrimination where it intersects with gender discrimination.
• Develop training and awareness programmes for the legal, welfare, health, education and other statutory bodies designed to address the specific problems created by the multicultural approach to domestic violence and other forms of gender related abuse experienced by minority or marginalised women.

To the UN system

With respect to recommendations for action to the UN system, intergovernmental bodies, and UN human rights treaties and bodies and special mechanisms, please refer to the comprehensive list of recommendations made in the Expert Group Report. There is an urgent need is to mainstream an intersectional analysis into the investigation of all forms of discrimination, by all the various UN constituent bodies. This includes mainstreaming an intersectional analysis of gender and race discrimination into the work of all mechanisms of the human rights system, including treaty bodies, commissions and the activities of the thematic and country specific rapporteurs and working groups.

Speech: Two sides of the same coin: gender inequality and violence against women

Date: Monday, 2 October 2017

[As delivered]

My thanks to Sonke Gender Justice, MenEngage, Men for Gender Equality, FEMNET, Mosaic, Soul City, We Will Speak Out, and of course to my own colleagues from UN Women—thank you all very much for this event. I also want to thank the eminent presenters, panellists, South Africans and all those from other parts of the world, who are going to be here this week to help enlighten us and help us recharge.

These are really hard times. We need the strength to take on the challenges as they re-emerge. The statistics [on increased prevalence] that we have just heard are quite frightening, because the prevalence was already very high.

I’m glad that we are giving these discussions five days, because as Bafana Khumalo said, we will be able to take full advantage of the expertise that we have in a gathering like this. When we leave here we will truly feel that we have quenched our thirst from the wisdom of the other colleagues that are here.

The issue of gender-based violence is at the heart of human rights. It is in fact in many ways a determining factor as to whether we can ever have a just society. The level of tolerance for all aspects of gender inequality, including violence against women, sustains a narrative that almost accepts that you can oppress half of society and life goes on, as if nothing has happened. Our ability to change that narrative, along with many other people who are not with us and who might even disagree with us, is something that we have to find a way of addressing significantly.

We are now for the first time in a world with such a high proportion of young people. Fifty per cent of the world’s population are under 30: there are 1.1 billion girls in the world, and a quarter of them call Africa their home. The capacity of girls to change the world for the best would be missed if we are unable to address the issue of violence against women and girls, because they are facing all of the risks that are associated with violence against women.

Their life trajectories are a major factor in the world’s future stability and prosperity. Their lives and those of millions of women and girls around the world, are being stunted or halted by the violence that prevails in their everyday life. And because so much of this violence happens at home, for many of them there is nowhere to escape, nowhere to run to. A place where you call home, your refuge, is actually where you are most vulnerable. And if you are a young girl, and a child, where else do you go, if home is not safe?

Even though domestic violence has always been a big area of focus, I don’t think that we have developed interventions proportionate to the size of the challenge that address this violence that can be so private. I hope the discussions today, especially in the context of southern Africa, where we do not have the violence that we see in conflict areas, will address this issue of the violence that happens in the home, as truly something for which we need to find far reaching methods.

We are dealing also with the violence that is driven by some of the new challenges that we face in society. For those that are in conflict-affected areas, we now see that these conflicts are driven by non-state actors, whose cruelty and violence against women is something that the world has never seen before. Because ISIS and Boko Haram are non-state actors, it is difficult to bring them to account for what they have done to women and girls.

But at the same time, in many parts of the world, the violence that is perpetrated by states against women, in terms of numbers, can be higher than that which is perpetrated by non-state actors.

In Latin America, for instance, violence against women human rights defenders has reached a level that—if the State were focused on addressing this—would cause many governments to see this as a critical priority.

Another new challenge that we face is how technology is fuelling the trafficking of women, cyber bullying and many other forms of violence that we don’t even understand yet. When you add that to the traditional forms of violence that we know, like domestic violence, the norms, culture and stereotypes that oppress women perpetuate gender inequality, which expresses itself in violence.

We also have access to justice as a major challenge such that even in countries like South Africa where you have laws that are supposed to protect women and to prosecute any crimes against women, women just do not receive the justice they deserve.

Women and girls face far greater levels of vulnerability, marginalization and resulting violence, especially for those who experience multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, like widows, elderly people, as well as women whose sexual orientation someone decides is not acceptable. Both men and women who face homophobia, all over the world, are also among the most vulnerable in our society. Add to them women with disabilities, indigenous women, and women who live with HIV and AIDS.

We have seen an increase in cruelty against women who are caught up in very difficult humanitarian crises. Right now, the Rohingya women fleeing to Bangladesh exemplify the trend of sexual violence against refugees. According to UNFPA, what we have seen in Bangladesh, in terms of sexual assault, is an ‘exceptionally high proportion’ of gender-based violence. This is another trend that is quite worrying, perpetrated against people who are already facing such a big challenge in Myanmar.

We are also challenged in many parts of the world by harmful practices like child marriage and FGM (female genital mutilation) that still continue. Africa is a major area of concern. On the one hand, we have been encouraged by the number of laws and governments that are forging forward, and addressing these cultural practices. However, the numbers affected are still staggering.

In the Declaration that was adopted in Beijing in 1995, you will remember that violence against women was highlighted. In the Millennium Development Goals, unfortunately violence against women was not addressed. We lost momentum, unfortunately, in that space. We are happy now that in the Sustainable Development Goals , violence is addressed in a comprehensive way. That should give us an opportunity to work across the world, because the Sustainable Development Goals have been adopted by all governments of the world. No matter where we are, we have a common platform and a common agenda to address violence against women.

However, we know that agreements, conventions, laws alone do not do the job. They help us to have recourse, they give us an organizing tool, but by themselves these will not address the challenges that we face. Yet we have seen progress in the fight to end violence against women, and we regard the Sustainable Development Goals as a platform through which to focus on how we actually end some of these practices, doing this at scale, and across the board.

In the last 20 – 25 years, we have seen the passing of legislation that addresses violence against women. In the last five years this has been quite intense. Some of the laws have been difficult to pass, such as laws that address honour killings. In some countries, they have been rejecting criminalizing domestic violence, introducing laws that address harassment at the workplace, and laws that protect minors from sexual violence. In a significant number of countries, where the perpetrators previously got an easy ride out of the crime that was enshrined in legislation, this has been addressed. But we still have a long way to go, because there are still countries where these laws exist. But nevertheless, it is important to recognize that there is momentum.

Development and progress has been uneven; as we have seen greater political will to address violent crimes against women, we have also seen pushback and the growth of right wing populism, which has eroded the gains made.

In 2015, we convened a forum of Heads of State and Government . Our feeling as UN Women was that issues of gender equality should not be left to ministers of women and gender, who in many countries have small budgets and limited capacity, and are not always given the support that they need. We said that the issue is so serious that the heads of state themselves need to be the ones leading from the front. In total 72 Heads of State attended that forum. What emerged was that the majority identified violence against women as the biggest challenge that they face in their countries, and that there was a need for them to lead from the front in addressing these issues. So, there is a level of recognition, but there has not been action taken that reflects the awareness that we thought we were seeing there.

When reviewing the implementation of the Beijing Declaration, we have also saw that the biggest elephant in the room in that agreement’s 20 years of implementation was gender norms and stereotypes. All the countries that wrote their report highlighted that as the biggest threat to the progress that they were making. I want to leave this with you as one of the areas that we need to address. We need strategies for this that we can scale and that respond to the specific conditions in different countries.

We have seen progress in countries like Kenya, Egypt and Liberia with FGM, where a broad array of public figures, of politicians, of civil society, of the feminist movement, have made sure that countries take concrete action to address the issue. In Kenya, for instance, there was a reduction from 40 per cent of women in 1984 to 10 per cent in 2016. In Egypt, the decrease was from 97 per cent to 70 per cent in the same period. In Liberia, there was a decrease from 72 per cent in 1983, to 31 per cent in 2013.

There are forms of violence where we have seen change, but because the different types of violence against women has such a big profile, it becomes a drop in the ocean. Nevertheless, this is something that we have to encourage to the extent that it begins to change the pattern of behaviour that will impact and have a positive knock-on effect on other forms of violence against women.

Globally, we have seen rates of child marriage slowly declining. But it is a problem that the pace is so slow. There are just too many girls who are at risk of being married to men they’ve never met, old enough to be their fathers, maybe they become mothers when they’re still children themselves. If the pace of decline is not quicker, we will not reach the levels of decline that we anticipate and need by 2030. So, it’s a mixed picture. We do have some encouraging signals, but overwhelmingly, I would say we face challenges.

In Latin America, we have seen trends where countries are able to organize themselves as a region to address the acts of violence that are most prevalent in that area. Femicide in Latin America is a serious challenge. Now 80 per cent of countries in that region have adopted a protocol, through which they are developing and designing common programmes so that they can create peer pressure and enhance learning between and amongst themselves.

Coming back to our own country and to our own region, we need to organize ourselves, as SADC, as the region, so that we can also strengthen our capacity to fight together. We do have common forms of violence against women. The violence that we have seen is a challenge in South Africa, is a challenge in Lesotho, and is a challenge also in the region in general. The level of cruelty that we see there, and the inability of law enforcement to take the kinds of corrective and responses that we expect, the un-sustained outrage of society over crimes like that, means that we truly have to go back to the drawing board to see what we need to do.

The mobilization of men and boys is an important component of our response. It is important to engage men in changing their own behaviour more than protecting women and girls. Because there’s nothing wrong with women and girls. If men’s behaviour changes, there would be no need to protect girls. We need this dialogue between men to be much stronger than it is today, so thank you to all of you here today to fuel that narrative.

We have also seen that in some countries, where leaders begin to lead from the front, they determine the values and the narrative that will prevail in society. You also need the voices of local counsellors, of provincial leaders, and of heads of state. And in countries where you do not have that zero tolerance amongst leaders, it means that the role of civil society is even more critical. Yet we know that right now also civil society in many countries has its back against the wall. Part of what we need to be discussing also is, how do we strengthen civil society? What should the United Nations do more to strengthen civil societies, in countries where clearly civil society, the women’s movement, and young people, do not get the kind of support that they should be getting from their leadership and from their government?

Gender inequality and violence against women are two sides of the same coin. So, we should fight this equally and in the same way. We cannot fight for focus on one and neglect the other, because, again, we will not get sustainable and life-changing results.

We have seen some examples of countries, of civil society, of stakeholders, who have tried different ways to address gender inequality with some promising results. Maybe it’s too early to regard them as trends, but nevertheless they are important to mention.

Statistical evidence has shown that in Uganda and in some parts of South Africa, intimate partner violence more than halved when gender norms were tackled. A school study showed that the attitudes of boys and girls towards violence changed because of the sustained level of engagement that was directed to them. In Uganda, we learned that violence was reduced by 52 per cent through a community mobilization programme that engaged women and men, religious and community leaders, to change related social norms. That programme has also been adopted by other countries as far from Uganda as the Pacific region.

We also know that in India, girls and boys aged 11 to 14, who participated in a school-based curriculum and campaign activities to address gender equality and violence against women, were more likely to develop gender equitable attitudes towards gender roles and norms and to challenge the use of violence as well as to challenge their peers.

We have a programme in UN Women called ‘ Safe Cities ’ with 27 participating cities that address gender-based violence in public spaces. Through that programme we have seen municipalities changing by-laws, addressing simple things like lights in the streets where attacks on women are prevalent, increasing the capacity of the security officials to patrol areas that were identified as hotspots for violence against women, and addressing violence in public transport. Again, this is about protecting women in a situation where you actually want this violence not to happen in the first place. This is important, but our focus should be about ensuring that the violence does not occur in the first place, and that of course there is zero tolerance amongst authorities. There must also be community and peer pressure at home and in the communities where this violence takes place.

We have seen in Brazil ‘One Stop Centers’, where the different services have been brought together that women require when they have been attacked, so women can be served when they are in need. The success of these initiatives, obviously, still needs to be reviewed and evidence still needs to be collected so that we can see what exactly is working in these One Stop Centers. We have seen similar initiatives in Rwanda, the Isange Centers, which also provide one-stop centres that are now being rolled out in 26 locations. We do not yet have enough data and evidence whether women’s increased ability for women to go somewhere as a survivor of violence translates into the reduction of prevalence. It is the reduction of prevalence that is probably the biggest goal that we have.

Having said all of this, and looking at this mixed picture, we face a big challenge when it comes to the implementation of the good laws that we have passed. This is something that we need to address: the accountability of authorities, the lack of justice or poor access to it; the poor investment in gender equality programmes of all sorts; the difficulty of scaling up good interventions; the importance of addressing social norms starting at a very early age; and the importance of focusing on ending some of the forms of violence against women through working in a targeted and consolidated way, in specific geographic areas.

Recently you may have heard that the EU has promised to fund specific regions of the world to address certain forms of violence against women in collaboration with the UN and in collaboration with broader actors, civil society and government. In Asia, they have committed to address trafficking. In Latin America, they have committed to address femicide. In the Caribbean, they have committed to address domestic violence. And in Africa, they have committed to address cultural practices and sexual assault. This Fund, which is 500 million euros, is significant in itself because we have never seen this level of investment. We hope this money will crowd in more resources so that all of the stakeholders, many of them in this room, will be able to find the benefits and resources needed for your work to be taken to scale and to depth, and for the work to have life-changing impact. And I hope that as we get clearer and clearer about how this initiative will work, we will continue to be in touch with you, so that we strengthen our collaboration.

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Towards equality: gender representation at the Royal College of Radiologists’ Annual Scientific Meeting 2014-2021

Lorna M. Gibson Roles: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project Administration, Software, Supervision, Visualization, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing Kayleigh L. Wood Roles: Data Curation, Validation, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing Joanna M. Wardlaw Roles: Conceptualization, Methodology, Supervision, Writing – Review & Editing

Gender equality, inclusion, diversity, female, male, radiologists, conference, career

Revised Amendments from Version 1

We have added text to the results and conclusion sections of the abstract to clarify the change in the proportions of women presenters over time, and to clarify that the proportion of women presenters (37.5%) is similar to that of RCR membership (37%), but that this does not reflect wider society. We have added text to our discussion section to include points raised by our peer reviewers. These include highlighting that women shouldered a disproportionate burden of care during the COVID-19 pandemic (we have added a new citation to support this statement), and that our study is not able to comment on the gender-related content of presentations although this would be an important area of future research on this aspect of gender equality.

See the authors' detailed response to the review by Rachel Palmen See the authors' detailed response to the review by Christine Kremer

Introduction

Studies of science, academia and business show that diversity is positively associated with improved productivity, effectiveness, communication and innovation, and the benefits of a diverse workforce are increasingly recognised within healthcare 1 , 2 . Diversity can improve the quality of care, employees’ job satisfaction, and the impact of research and collaboration, and reduce risk taking 1 , 2 .

Unfortunately gender imbalances persist within medicine - globally and at all levels of, and disciplines within, the profession 2 . Systemic, organisational, cultural and individual factors differentially impact women compared to men, limiting women’s career progression 2 , 3 . Female doctors are under-represented in senior academic roles, medical society leadership positions and journal editorial boards 3 – 11 . Female doctors in UK hospitals earn an average of 19% less than male doctors, a pay gap partly accounted for by fewer women holding the highest paid positions 12 . A higher proportion of women doctors work less-than-full-time to accommodate their disproportionately higher burden of unpaid care work 12 – 14 . Inflexible working pattern policies and maternity and parental leave disproportionately impact on the daily work and the career progression of women, and reinforce pervasive stereotypes of both women and men at work 3 , 15 . Such stereotypes can manifest materially, with women reporting limitations on their training opportunities, and men reporting pressure to prioritise work over family life 15 – 17 , impacts that ultimately further entrench gender inequality and impede necessary change.

Conference speakers have the opportunity to share knowledge, express views, develop networks and gain visibility and professional recognition 18 – 22 . Delivering prestigious keynote presentations and chairing sessions can strengthen applications for promotion and research funding at mid and senior levels 20 – 22 while oral presentations increase visibility, research impact, and chances of a good start to career advancement at junior levels. As women are under-represented as invited speakers at medical speciality conferences, they have fewer opportunities to reap these benefits 19 , 22 , 23 , or to benefit the community at large: diverse conference speakers broaden perspectives and ideas, and provide a broader variety of role models to inspire trainees and medical students 18 , 23 .

Efforts to address gender disparities in radiology, such as the Women in Focus initiative at the European Society of Radiologists’ meeting 2019 24 , the American Association of Women Radiologists 25 and Women in Interventional Radiology 26 , have set out programmes, monitoring strategies and statements to support the underlying principles of equality, diversity and inclusion. These organisations and others provide networks, workshops and mentorship to support the development, visibility and success of women 25 , 27 , 28 , and have lobbied for changes to pregnancy and parental leave policies 25 . Conference organisers have responsibilities to encourage diverse participation, whilst compiling a programme of engaging and interesting speakers, including field experts and covering a variety of novel topics and quality content 22 . The development of hybrid online and in-person conferences as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic may improve access to conferences for potential speakers and audience members and reduce the environmental impact of these events.

Evidence on patterns of gender representation at radiology conferences is required to inform policies and provide measures to benchmark progress. Using data from the 2014–2021 Royal College of Radiologists’ Annual Scientific Meeting (RCRASM), this study aimed to describe the patterns of the participation of women and men in conference roles of varying levels of prestige.

This study was deemed to not require ethics approval, as it makes use of data already within the public domain. Ethics approval was waived by ACCORD at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

The RCRASM is a yearly event held in the United Kingdom, comprising of keynote presentations, lectures and workshops on clinical topics, and opportunities to present research and audit orally and in poster form. In 2020 and 2021, the RCRASM was held online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Data extraction

One author (LMG) extracted data from all the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) annual scientific meeting (ASM) full conference programmes that were available online, covering the period 2014–2021. For each session, we extracted all data on presenters’ names, and classified their role and the session type (and repeated this for presenters who were involved in multiple roles within the same session, for example chairing and lecturing). We extracted the names of the Scientific Committee, the Ansell poster reviewers, the audit poster reviewers and the audit poster prize judges. We contacted the RCRASM administrative committee if this information was not publicly available, and for names/genders of presenters listed as ‘to be confirmed.’

Classification of gender, conference session type and presenters’ roles. Using presenters’ names, one author (LMG) classified gender as either female or male, and confirmed the classification using the General Medical Council (GMC) Register of Medical Practitioners, or photographs or text containing personal pronouns from institutional or the RCR websites for non-GMC-registered presenters, accepting that some presenters may not identify with these binary gender categories. If only a presenter’s first initials were provided, we checked the RCR website for presentation materials to identify their first name. If this could not be found, but a GMC record matching the first initial and surname with a training programme listed as clinical radiology or clinical oncology, or specialist registration as a clinical radiologist or clinical oncologist was found with no other potential matching record for a doctor of another gender or specialty, we classified gender according to the available GMC record, assuming a match. If we could still not find information on the presenter’s first name, we checked any available LinkedIn , Instagram and Facebook profiles and correlated professional titles and workplaces. If we could still not find information on full names to allow us to classify gender, we emailed the RCR.

One author (LMG) classified session types using the conference programme titles (as either lecture, workshop, keynote, proffered papers, poster presentations [either ePoster, scientific, audit or pictorial review poster presentations], or other panel debate, lunchtime symposium, quiz or interactive discrepancy meeting or case based discussion, or Schwartz round).

We categorised presenters’ roles according to four levels of prestige: lead roles (lecture session chair, workshop leader, keynote speaker, lunchtime symposium chairs and speakers, panel chair, quiz session chair or Schwartz round facilitator); other roles (lecture session speaker, workshop faculty, quiz panellist, panel participant, interactive discrepancy meeting participant, interactive case study participant, Schwartz round participant); oral presenters of proffered papers; or poster presenters.

If sessions continued over multiple time slots in the programme (e.g. before and after a coffee break), we counted chairs of these sessions once, unless the programme indicated that the chairperson changed. If the same person acted as both chair and a named lecturer of a titled presentation within the same session, or chaired a panel debate and presented as a panellist, or led a workshop and presented a titled talk during a workshop, we counted these people as having presented twice and extracted data on both of their roles. During 2020 and 2021, all sessions were online, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and ‘case-based interactive sessions’ were classed as lectures only if titled talks were listed. If a session contained a panel discussion with panellists described as ‘all faculty,’ or named participants, we counted each presenter as also participating in a panel discussion. If a programme listed a ‘discussion’ or ‘question and answer session’ presenters were not counted twice, as these elements of a session are usually standard. If workshops were repeated by the same presenters during a conference, we counted these presentations twice. We excluded industry-led workshops presented solely by non-NHS presenters, as our paper focuses on opportunities for radiologists at the RCR ASM. A 10% subset of conference materials were double read by a second author (KLW) to check accuracy of data extraction and differences were resolved by discussion.

Statistical analyses

We present descriptive data for each of the eight included RCRASM conferences (2014–2021) on the proportions of the different conference roles which were presented by women and men, the numbers of women and men who held one versus more than one role, and the numbers of sessions with no women and those with all women presenters.

We calculated odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) to assess for associations between gender and binary outcomes using logistic regression. We used SPSS (version 27) for analyses, and Excel 2013 for data display.

We were able to classify the gender for over 99% of presenters, for whom the RCRASM provided 2,826 opportunities to fill roles between 2014-2021, of which 1,059 (37.5%) were held by women and 1,767 (62.5%) by men ( Figure 1 ) 29 . On double checking a sample of 10% of records, two authors were in agreement on all presenters’ gender classifications and on 99% of their conference role classifications.

Figure 1. N (%) roles held by women and men at each RCRASM conference from 2014–2021.

The proportions of roles filled by women has increased from 2014–2021, although most presenters each year have been men ( Figure 1 ). In 2020 and 2021, the RCRASM was held online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Compared to pre-pandemic years, the odds of a role being filled by a woman increased during the pandemic (OR 1.61, 95% CI 1.36-1.91).

Conference roles

Fewer lead roles were filled by women than men between 2014–2021 (n=156 versus n=270, Table 1 ), although there were no significant differences in the proportions of women and men who held lead roles, or who presented proffered papers ( Table 1 ). Compared to men, women were less likely to hold other roles such as speakers and workshop faculty (OR 0.72 95% CI 0.61-0.83), and more likely to present posters (OR 1.49 95% CI 1.27-1.76) ( Table 1 ).

Table 1. Conference roles filled by women and by men in the RCR ASM 2014–2021.

1 Other role includes: lecture session speaker, workshop faculty, quiz panellist, panel participant, interactive discrepancy meeting participant, interactive case study participant, Schwartz round participant

From 2014 to 2021, the proportions of lead roles held by women has increased, with women filling just over half of lead roles during the online conferences of 2020 and 2021 ( Figure 2 ). The proportions of other roles filled by women also increased during 2020 and 2021, as did the proportions of women presenting proffered papers in 2021 ( Figure 2 ).

Figure 2. Proportions of prestigious and less prestigious roles presented by women and men at RCRASM 2014–2021.

All-male and all-female sessions.

Between 2014 and 2021, there were 318 multi-presenter lecture, workshop, panel debates, quiz sessions, lunchtime symposia, interactive discrepancy meetings or Schwartz rounds, which included at least two (and up to 18) presenters. Of these sessions, 60/318 (18.9%) consisted only of male presenters, and 8/318 (2.5%) consisted of only female presenters ( Figure 3 , Table 2 ). Women constituted the vast majority of participants in up to 22% of sessions per year. During the online conferences, larger proportions of multi-presenter sessions had a balance of male and female speakers ( Figure 3 ).

Figure 3. N (%) sessions comprising all women, no women and mixed-gender groups of presenters.

Table 2. involvement of women in rcr asm 2014–2021 by multi-presenter lecture, workshop or panel session topic..

HPB = hepatobiliary *Involving topics relevant to patients of any gender

The proportions of women involved in lecture, workshop or panel sessions varied by topic of the session ( Table 2 ). Women made up the majority of presenters in at least one session on neonatal and fetal imaging, breast/gynaecology/pregnancy, uroradiology, radiotherapy, academia, chest radiology, professional issues and education and teaching during the RCR ASM from 2014–2021 ( Table 1 ). Of the 15 interventional radiology sessions, women made up one-third to two-thirds of presenters in only one session ( Table 2 ).

Lecture and workshop sessions with and without women leaders

Of the 281 lecture and workshop sessions held between 2014 and 2021, compared to sessions that did not involve any women leaders, in sessions that were led by at least one woman, women more frequently accounted for higher proportions of presenters ( Table 3 ).

Table 3. Proportions of women presenters in lectures and workshops led by at least one or no women.

Keynote speakers.

Between 2014 and 2021, there were 27 keynote speakers, of whom a third were women (9/27) and two-thirds were men (18/27). In 2014, 2015 and 2021 all keynote presentations were delivered by men, and in 2020 the single keynote presentation was delivered by a woman.

Conference committees

Details of organising committees were listed in RCRASM programmes from 2014–2016. From the available data, the scientific committees, and scientific abstract reviewers were predominantly men ( Table 4 ). In contrast, groups of audit abstract reviewers and judges tended to be more equally representative of men and women ( Table 4 ). Men were in the minority in only one committee over these three years: audit poster prize judges in 2016 ( Table 4 ).

Table 4. Women and men involved in committees and as reviewers.

CR = clinical radiology, CO = clinical oncology

Main findings

Women held 37.5% of conference roles and presented one-third of keynotes during the 2014–2021 RCRASM. Women were also less likely than men to hold mid-prestige roles such as speakers or workshop faculty, and much more likely to hold low-prestige poster presenter roles. Male-only sessions are over seven times more common than female-only sessions, and scientific committees comprised predominantly of men. However, women’s inclusion in the RCRASM increased during 2020–2021 (when the conference was online due to the COVID-19 pandemic) and when prestigious chair and workshop leadership roles were held by women, higher proportions of women held the mid-prestige speaker and workshop faculty roles. Apart from these two latter exceptions, the overall pattern of over-representation in posters and under-representation in keynotes, chairs and invited speakers simply reinforces the low prestige/low visibility roles occupied by women, perpetuating career disadvantage and other adverse effects.

Comparison with other studies

The proportion of women radiologists involved in conferences does not represent the population from which our profession is recruited or the patients we serve. The proportion of women involved in the RCRASM from 2014–2021 reflects that of RCR consultant membership (37%, 30 ), and is similar to the proportions of women presenters at the 2018 Radiological Society of North America conference (RSNA) (35% 31 ), and at the Association of University Radiologists’ (AUR) and the American Roentgen Ray Society (ARRS) conferences in 2009, 2014 and 2019 (39%, 32 ).

Women conference participants are overrepresented in low-prestige roles, and under-represented in high-prestige roles, inadvertently creating programmes of male ‘killer’ and female ‘filler.’ Similar to our findings, 35% of keynote presentations were presented by women during three ARRS conferences 32 . Women surgeons are over-represented in non-technical presentations, more likely to introduce speakers and present awards, and less likely to give technical and scientific presentations 33 , 34 .

Our study and others suggest a recent trend towards improved gender balance in conferences although this trend varies across different conferences and time periods 19 , 22 , 23 , 35 and may have been accelerated artificially by the COVID-19 pandemic. The increase in women presenters in the RCRASM during 2020 and 2021 may relate in part to the online format necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic; it remains to be seen whether these changes are sustained and therefore are likely to be truly reflective of broader cultural changes in attitudes toward gender diversity over recent years. Online conferences facilitate attendance through reducing barriers relating to time, travel and expenses, and may improve participation by people from diverse means and backgrounds, such as those on lower incomes and with unpaid care responsibilities 36 – 38 , the latter of which was shouldered disproportionately by women during the pandemic 39 . Two of five critical care conferences held between 2013–2017 showed significantly increased female representation this period 40 and while there was no temporal trend in gender distribution at multiple rheumatology conferences between 2015–2019 there was a narrowing of the gender gap compared to 2003 and 2004 41 .

All-male panels are much more common than all-female panels in the RCRASM and other clinical conferences, and the gender balance of those in conference leadership positions reflects that in less prestigious roles. During 2017–2018, 37% of panels in medical conferences were all-male compared to 7% all-female 42 , and 40% of surgical conference sessions are all-male. All-male panels are more common when organised by all-male groups of conveners 43 . In surgical society meetings, having at least one female convener was significantly associated with fewer all-male panels 23 , as was the presence of women in conference leadership roles 44 , and sessions with at least one female co-ordinator are significantly associated with a higher proportion of female presenters compared to those with all-male coordinators e.g. 36% vs 7% female presenters 45 .

Strengths and limitations

Previous studies have focused on a single year of a conference 31 , 46 , or focused on subgroups of conference presenters 46 or presenters only without assessing the gender balance of conference organising committees 19 , 31 , 32 , 41 , 46 . In contrast, our study makes use of eight years of data from the RCRASM, using information on presenters in all roles, and on the gender balance of the conference committees to give as complete a picture as possible of the patterns of involvement of women and men at all levels of the RCRASM, and to assess for changes in these patterns over recent years. Double checking of data showed high (>99%) agreement on the classification of gender and conference role, indicative of a reliable dataset.

We were not able to classify the gender of 14/2,747 (0.5%) presenters, due to first names being listed as initials, although such a small portion is unlikely to have affected our main results. We also acknowledge that our binary classification of gender in this study limits our ability to inform on the representation of people with non-binary gender identities within the RCRASM, or on any other form of imbalance relating to a protected characteristic. As we focussed are analyses on the roles and the gender of the person who filled them (rather than on individual presenters), our data are not affected by presenters who changed their name or submitted works under different variants of their names.

We used publicly available conference programmes to assess gender balance, and in doing so we are unable to comment on further sources and manifestations of gender imbalance, or detail on the gender-related content of presentations. Reasons for under-representation of women at conferences can be in part due to female speakers declining invitations 21 and women may opt for shorter presentations and posters compared to male counterparts 20 . Data on women and men who were invited to participate and declined (or who submitted oral or poster abstracts and were rejected) are not publicly available (but should be made so yearly by the RCR), and as we were unable to attend all of the conferences (and not all sessions are recorded) we are unable to comment on differences in speaking time, formality of introduction of male and female speakers by male and female chairs, or the numbers and genders of audience members asking questions. During AUR 2009, women gave significantly shorter (mean of 5.7 minutes) presentations and disproportionately fewer women than men gave presentations longer than 30 minutes, but this improved in subsequent years 32 . In RSNA 2018, women asked questions in only 24% of sessions and when they did participate, they spoke for a mean of 7 seconds, compared to 29 seconds for men 31 . Although our study does not capture such metrics of participation, doing so at future RCRASMs would round out our knowledge of the gender balance at the conference.

Implications for patients, doctors, researchers and policy

Several conferences have shown improved gender balance following new policy implementation. The Society of Interventional Radiologists (SIR) required prospectively identified women to be invited as speakers at the SIR ASM, resulting in an increased proportion of female presentations, from 9% in 2016 to 14% in 2018 45 , and dedicated recruitment efforts to attract and encourage female trainees are being made 47 . Women gave 48.5% of oral presentations at the 2015 American Society for Microbiology General Meeting, after organising committees were made aware of data on gender balance, and increased the numbers of women involved in convening sessions and deliberately avoided convening all-male panels 48 . Although evidence of association cannot be taken as evidence of causation, these pragmatic strategies could be implemented by the RCRASM and other conference committees, and have the potential to swiftly improve gender balances in presenters, efforts that are most needed where greater gender imbalance exists, such as in interventional radiology 28 , 45 , 49 . However it should be noted that conference planning should take account of the higher attrition rate of female invitees at all stages in the process. For example, the European Stroke Organisation Conference increased female faculty from <33% in 2019 to 43% in 2022 through positive action; however, despite starting with a 50:50 female to male invite list by 2022, women invitees were far more likely to decline, or accept but then have to withdraw, due to domestic or work commitments, resulting in <50% presence in the end (JMW personal communication).

The 2022 RCRASM rejected an abstract of this current work. Although many support the idea of gender balance in theory, this does not inevitably lead to a change in practice 50 and consistent efforts from both within and external to conference organisations is needed to bring about meaningful change. Publicly available data from ongoing monitoring of gender equality would hold organisations to account, and inform real-time policy-making to create genuine change. Our study and the references herein describe a number of metrics that could be used to assess the gender balance in participants, and further work using presentation abstracts or other media could inform on the gender dimension of presented content. Priority targets would be those areas in which improvement is needed most rapidly and would have the most impact: the most prestigious roles of session leadership and keynote speakers.

However, implementing policies that result in more women in positions traditionally dominated by men fails to challenge our ideas of gendered norms relating to work and domestic lives, or the complex relationships of conferences and profit-seeking industry, or the impacts of conference attendance on environmental sustainability. Men who say no to work may experience stigma, with male doctors who request to work less-than-full-time reported they were made to feel ‘guilty and weak,’ and lacking commitment 12 . In clinical couples, female doctors are significantly more likely to bear the majority of unpaid domestic work 13 , 14 , with 29% of women describing their career progression being limited by their male partner’s job, as opposed to 15% of men 12 .

Failing to challenge gender disparity in conferences limits career opportunities for women from the earliest stages, pressurises men to participate in work at the expense of caring roles, and reinforces gender-based norms around the distribution of paid and unpaid domestic labour with material and social consequences for all. Hybrid conferences would not only reduce the environmental impact of these events but also enable all – men, women and those identifying as non-binary – the flexibility to manage their paid and unpaid work. Progressive conference programming policies informed by publicly available data and targeted at gender representation within the most prestigious roles are needed to hold organisers to account and accelerate change.

Data availability

Underlying data.

RCRASM conference programmes were made publicly available online each year by the Royal College of Radiologists, and readers are directed to [email protected] for access.

Edinburgh Datashare: Towards equality: gender representation at the Royal College of Radiologists’ Annual Scientific Meeting 2014–2021

https://doi.org/10.7488/ds/3776 29

This project contains the following underlying data:

220413_Full_programme_dataset_datashare.sav

Data are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC-BY 4.0).

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Comments on this article Comments (0)

Open peer review.

Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise: Sex and gender differences in stroke.

• Respond or Comment
• COMMENT ON THIS REPORT

Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature?

Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?

If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?

Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility?

Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?

Reviewer Expertise: Gender Equality in Research and Innovation

• Author Response 24 Nov 2023 Lorna Gibson , Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society, Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK 24 Nov 2023 Author Response We would like to thank Dr Palmén for her considerate comments on our manuscript.   We agree that ‘[g]ender equality is much more than ‘equal’ representation of women/ men ... Continue reading We would like to thank Dr Palmén for her considerate comments on our manuscript.   We agree that ‘[g]ender equality is much more than ‘equal’ representation of women/ men in terms of participation,’ and that it would be important to include research into the gender dimensions of the presented content, as well as the gender balance of presenters themselves (the latter is the focus of this manuscript).   Dr Palmén suggests that the gender dimension of presented content could be explored in future by scanning titles and abstracts. In the current manuscript, we provide a breakdown of session topics by gender of presenters (table 2), showing that topics more often associated with women (neonatal, fetal, breast, gynaecology and pregnancy) tend to be presented by women. The RCR ASM sessions are often geared toward continuing education with relatively few sessions on primary research. Abstracts are available for only a minority of presentations (for example, the annual keynote presentations), with only titles available for the remainder. We did not collect data on individual presentation titles, although searching the dataset for session titles for terms relating to gender yielded too few results to enable us to comment reliably on the gender dimension of presented content (for example, in 2021 there was one relevant session, focussing on care of transgender patients with cancer), and text-searching the conference programmes similarly yielded few results (for example in 2021 no titles contained the term ‘women’). We agree that this is certainly an area worthy of future research, and we have added statements to our discussion section and thank Dr Palmén for her suggestion. We would like to thank Dr Palmén for her considerate comments on our manuscript.   We agree that ‘[g]ender equality is much more than ‘equal’ representation of women/ men in terms of participation,’ and that it would be important to include research into the gender dimensions of the presented content, as well as the gender balance of presenters themselves (the latter is the focus of this manuscript).   Dr Palmén suggests that the gender dimension of presented content could be explored in future by scanning titles and abstracts. In the current manuscript, we provide a breakdown of session topics by gender of presenters (table 2), showing that topics more often associated with women (neonatal, fetal, breast, gynaecology and pregnancy) tend to be presented by women. The RCR ASM sessions are often geared toward continuing education with relatively few sessions on primary research. Abstracts are available for only a minority of presentations (for example, the annual keynote presentations), with only titles available for the remainder. We did not collect data on individual presentation titles, although searching the dataset for session titles for terms relating to gender yielded too few results to enable us to comment reliably on the gender dimension of presented content (for example, in 2021 there was one relevant session, focussing on care of transgender patients with cancer), and text-searching the conference programmes similarly yielded few results (for example in 2021 no titles contained the term ‘women’). We agree that this is certainly an area worthy of future research, and we have added statements to our discussion section and thank Dr Palmén for her suggestion. Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed. Close Report a concern Reply -->
• The conclusion in the abstract does not refer to the data presented in the results? How is the distribution in RCR membership? (this is mentioned in the discussion) and which patient population? One often refers to female representation in RCRs compared to patient population which would be something else. There was an increase in roles held by women over time which is not mentioned in the conclusion.  
• In the discussion the possible downsides of the pandemic with more women being forced to stay at home with a relative overload of unpaid domestic work might be mentioned. The ones registered to online conferences do not reflect the ones actually being online.  
• More pro-active strategies in recruiting women for prestigious roles could be mentioned, like professional or societal networks supporting and promoting women, or analyzing the reasons why more women tend to say no to invitations.  
• In summary, these data can serve as source for more directed future efforts to promote gender balance and diversity within medicine and needs to be public. One would like to see more data published, including future follow-ups of the gender distributions throughout conferences and meetings.
• Author Response 24 Nov 2023 Lorna Gibson , Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society, Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK 24 Nov 2023 Author Response We would like to thank Professor Kremer for taking the time to review our article and for her interest in our results and her kind comments.   Our abstract ... Continue reading We would like to thank Professor Kremer for taking the time to review our article and for her interest in our results and her kind comments.   Our abstract conclusion states that ‘[t]he proportion of women presenters and keynote speakers reflects that of RCR membership, but not of the patient population.’ With reference to this statement, Professor Kremer asks with regard to gender balance ‘how is the distribution in RCR membership?’ Our abstract results section states that women held 37.5% of conference roles, and we refer to this in the conclusion. As our study did not generate original data on the proportion of women in the RCR membership, we presented this information (37%) along with the citation within the discussion section of the manuscript (under the ‘comparison with other studies’ section), as Professor Kremer rightly points out. Our abstract conclusion thus avoids repeating our result in both the abstract result and conclusions sections, and avoids presenting data from another source without a citation within the conclusion.   Also in regard to the opening sentence of our abstract conclusion statement, Professor Kremer asks which patient population we are referring to. We have amended the abstract to state ‘wider society,’ to indicate that anybody may require access to clinical imaging services at some point in their lives. We thank Professor Kremer for drawing attention to this wording, and we hope that this clarifies our initial statement.   Professor Kremer highlighted that ‘there was an increase in roles held by women over time which is not mentioned in the conclusion.’ Our abstract results section previously stated ‘The odds of roles being held by women increased during online meetings during COVID (OR 1.61, 95% CI 1.36-1.91).’ We have amended this to read ‘The odds of roles being held by women increased during online meetings during COVID in 2020 and 2021 (OR 1.61, 95% CI 1.36-1.91) compared to earlier years.’ We hope that this wording clarifies the change in women’s roles over time, and further emphasises this interesting result.   With regard to our discussion section, Professor Kremer writes ‘In the discussion the possible downsides of the pandemic with more women being forced to stay at home with a relative overload of unpaid domestic work might be mentioned.’ We agree that this is a very important point, and we have added text to our ‘comparison with other studies’ section to highlight this, along with a new supporting citation should readers wish to find out more.   Professor Kremer also writes that women ‘registered to online conferences do not reflect the ones actually being online.’ We agree that this is likely, but our work focuses on presenters at conferences, rather than the non-presenting audience attendees. While some presentations may have been cancelled at the last minute, data on these are not available publicly for the RCR ASMs but would be an important metric for conference organisers to collect data on when monitoring the involvement of women presenters in future, and in our discussion section we call for further research in to why women turn down conference invitations.   In terms of potential solutions, Professor Kremer suggests that ‘[m]ore pro-active strategies in recruiting women for prestigious roles could be mentioned, like professional or societal networks supporting and promoting women, or analyzing the reasons why more women tend to say no to invitations.’ We provide examples and citations of several such networks in our discussion subsection ‘implications for patients, doctors, research and policy,’ drawn from radiology, and other medical and non-medical fields, including work by the European Stroke Organisation to increase the proportions of women faculty. We absolutely agree that more work should be done to understand why women are more likely to turn down invitations to conferences, and we would also be interested in work to understand why men are more likely to take these up. As we are not organisers of the RCR conference, we are not able to implement these projects with regard to the RCR ASM, although we would call on the RCR and other conference organisation committees to begin to conduct this research or make appropriate data available. Some conferences have begun this work, and within the same subsection of our manuscript we provide a personal statement from Professor Joanna Wardlaw (a co-author on this work) with data from the European Stroke Organisation Conference. Professor Kremer writes ‘[i]n summary, these data can serve as source for more directed future efforts to promote gender balance and diversity within medicine and needs to be public. One would like to see more data published, including future follow-ups of the gender distributions throughout conferences and meetings.’ We would like to thank Professor Kremer again for her careful reading of our manuscript and thoughtful comments, and strongly agree that data collection on gender distribution within conferences should be ongoing and made publicly available to inform policy and create meaningful change.   We would like to thank Professor Kremer for taking the time to review our article and for her interest in our results and her kind comments.   Our abstract conclusion states that ‘[t]he proportion of women presenters and keynote speakers reflects that of RCR membership, but not of the patient population.’ With reference to this statement, Professor Kremer asks with regard to gender balance ‘how is the distribution in RCR membership?’ Our abstract results section states that women held 37.5% of conference roles, and we refer to this in the conclusion. As our study did not generate original data on the proportion of women in the RCR membership, we presented this information (37%) along with the citation within the discussion section of the manuscript (under the ‘comparison with other studies’ section), as Professor Kremer rightly points out. Our abstract conclusion thus avoids repeating our result in both the abstract result and conclusions sections, and avoids presenting data from another source without a citation within the conclusion.   Also in regard to the opening sentence of our abstract conclusion statement, Professor Kremer asks which patient population we are referring to. We have amended the abstract to state ‘wider society,’ to indicate that anybody may require access to clinical imaging services at some point in their lives. We thank Professor Kremer for drawing attention to this wording, and we hope that this clarifies our initial statement.   Professor Kremer highlighted that ‘there was an increase in roles held by women over time which is not mentioned in the conclusion.’ Our abstract results section previously stated ‘The odds of roles being held by women increased during online meetings during COVID (OR 1.61, 95% CI 1.36-1.91).’ We have amended this to read ‘The odds of roles being held by women increased during online meetings during COVID in 2020 and 2021 (OR 1.61, 95% CI 1.36-1.91) compared to earlier years.’ We hope that this wording clarifies the change in women’s roles over time, and further emphasises this interesting result.   With regard to our discussion section, Professor Kremer writes ‘In the discussion the possible downsides of the pandemic with more women being forced to stay at home with a relative overload of unpaid domestic work might be mentioned.’ We agree that this is a very important point, and we have added text to our ‘comparison with other studies’ section to highlight this, along with a new supporting citation should readers wish to find out more.   Professor Kremer also writes that women ‘registered to online conferences do not reflect the ones actually being online.’ We agree that this is likely, but our work focuses on presenters at conferences, rather than the non-presenting audience attendees. While some presentations may have been cancelled at the last minute, data on these are not available publicly for the RCR ASMs but would be an important metric for conference organisers to collect data on when monitoring the involvement of women presenters in future, and in our discussion section we call for further research in to why women turn down conference invitations.   In terms of potential solutions, Professor Kremer suggests that ‘[m]ore pro-active strategies in recruiting women for prestigious roles could be mentioned, like professional or societal networks supporting and promoting women, or analyzing the reasons why more women tend to say no to invitations.’ We provide examples and citations of several such networks in our discussion subsection ‘implications for patients, doctors, research and policy,’ drawn from radiology, and other medical and non-medical fields, including work by the European Stroke Organisation to increase the proportions of women faculty. We absolutely agree that more work should be done to understand why women are more likely to turn down invitations to conferences, and we would also be interested in work to understand why men are more likely to take these up. As we are not organisers of the RCR conference, we are not able to implement these projects with regard to the RCR ASM, although we would call on the RCR and other conference organisation committees to begin to conduct this research or make appropriate data available. Some conferences have begun this work, and within the same subsection of our manuscript we provide a personal statement from Professor Joanna Wardlaw (a co-author on this work) with data from the European Stroke Organisation Conference. Professor Kremer writes ‘[i]n summary, these data can serve as source for more directed future efforts to promote gender balance and diversity within medicine and needs to be public. One would like to see more data published, including future follow-ups of the gender distributions throughout conferences and meetings.’ We would like to thank Professor Kremer again for her careful reading of our manuscript and thoughtful comments, and strongly agree that data collection on gender distribution within conferences should be ongoing and made publicly available to inform policy and create meaningful change.   Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed. Close Report a concern Reply -->

Reviewer Status

Alongside their report, reviewers assign a status to the article:

Reviewer Reports

• Christine Kremer , Lund University, Malmö, Sweden
• Rachel Palmen , Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain

Comments on this article

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Gender Discrimination in Society

Gender discrimination in society presentation, free google slides theme, powerpoint template, and canva presentation template.

The fight for gender equality has always been a topic that has been talked about for centuries. With the help of technology, it has become more accessible to share information and raise awareness about gender discrimination in society. That's where the Google Slides & PowerPoint template comes in. The perfect combination of black and pink adds a touch of elegance while delivering a powerful message. The minimalist style of the slides doesn't distract from the information presented, making it easier to absorb and understand. With included resources such as tables, graphs and diagrams, it becomes easier to visually demonstrate the inequalities faced by many. With this layout, creating a presentation about gender discrimination has never been easier. Let's use our voices to make a change and raise awareness about this critical issue.

Features of this template

• 100% editable and easy to modify
• 35 different slides to impress your audience
• Contains easy-to-edit graphics such as graphs, maps, tables, timelines and mockups
• Includes 500+ icons and Flaticon’s extension for customizing your slides
• Designed to be used in Google Slides, Canva, and Microsoft PowerPoint
• 16:9 widescreen format suitable for all types of screens
• Includes information about fonts, colors, and credits of the resources used

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