Building More Equitable Conferences: A Practical Blueprint

If we want to engage a wider diversity of opinions, discussions, knowledge, and experience, we have to actively plan for more equitable opportunities. The good news is that the approaches needed to do this aren't difficult. The less good news, as the saying goes, is that they're easy not to do.

Research projects vary widely in how much weight they give to respect, team diversity, and inclusion alongside their scientific objectives. Some treat these as integral to good research; others treat the scientific goal as the sole priority, with everything else considered secondary. The latter approach is short-sighted. Without deliberate attention to who is included, projects risk engaging only with those who have already had the opportunity to participate or be heard, rather than those who may hold deeper, more relevant knowledge and lived experience. This applies not only to how research is carried out, but also to the knowledge mobilisation and impact activities that follow - including how findings are shared and discussed such as workshops and conferences.

Organising a conference involves the usual list of considerations: purpose, intended audience, speakers, session chairs, timing, location, cost. Most organisers will readily say that equity and inclusion matter. Where things tend to fall down is on the practical side - knowing exactly what to do differently to increase representation and diversity, rather than just agreeing it's important but changing nothing. 

A recent article "A Blueprint for Gender-Equitable Conferences" by Sharon Cox, Mareike Schomerus, and Susan Michie, addresses this point directly and sets out concrete, practical suggestions for conference organisers and session chairs to address gender equity. Grounded in the authors' own experiences of speaking at, chairing, and running international conferences, the authors reframe gender imbalance as a structural problem rather than a confidence problem. The standard narrative tends to put the responsibility on women, suggesting that they need to be more confident, put themselves forward and say yes more often. They suggest that gender imbalance arises during the planning phases of events often caused by a lack of consideration around who gets asked, when they are asked and the assumptions organisers make, often without realising it, about people's availability. 

A few of the practical steps suggested that are aimed at the people building the programme include:

• Ruling out all-male panels 
• Inviting women early and more women than needed, rather than after most slots are filled and organisers are looking to "find a woman for the last spot" 
• Recognising that chairing is not a substitute for speaking. Speaking brings visibility to her research and the career benefits that come with it, such as networking, profile, follow-on opportunities, in a way that chairing alone doesn't.
• Looking closely at the logistics that quietly filter people out before an invitation is even considered such as inconvenient timing, long travel, short notice, no genuine hybrid option. These are all decisions within an organiser's control.

Chairs shape who gets heard more than they often realise, and the pattern is visible to everyone in the room. Practical approaches can therefore include:

• Calling on women first when hands go up for questions. Often when one woman asks a question, others tend to follow.
• Giving panellists an equal share of the questions, preparing some in advance if needed, so no single panellist - or gender - dominates the discussion.
• Introducing everyone using full titles and credentials consistently, rather than defaulting to first names for women and formal titles for men.
• Actively managing the room, stepping in when a few attendees monopolise the floor, or when a woman's answer gets talked over or repeated back to her by someone else.

The authors are careful to note that gender is just one axis of exclusion among many, and they don't claim their recommendations address every dimension of inequity. But they raise an important point in closing: making women visible isn't the same as genuinely including them. Tokenistic presence isn't enough on its own. What matters is whether people feel genuinely welcomed and included, not just present in the room. It's that kind of environment, the authors argue, that produces the lasting professional collaborations conferences are meant to enable in the first place.

None of this requires reinventing how conferences work. It just requires deciding early and deliberately to do it.