Almost 50:50

Typically when I go to conferences, I am one of only a handful of women in the room. And often there is only one or two female speakers (sometimes for the whole week)! I was in a session earlier this year (at a different conference) where there was only 1 female speaker and probably only 5 women in the room of at least 30 people total. (This is not a good ratio!) This is the danger of being a woman in the physical sciences. There are many ideas of why this happens, but I'm not sure I believe any of them! In any case, I made an interesting observation at this meeting that even prompted me to do a quick count in one of the sessions I was attending. I counted 33 women in a room of 70 people. That's almost 50%, folks! That means it absolutely can be done. And not only that, we had at least one of the "big" talks given by a woman. Plus when discussing who we wanted to nominate for next year, at least one woman's name came up. I can't tell you how rare this is. It was very exciting for me to notice. Overall, the folks at this conference were awesome - both the men and the women. They seem to work together more and don't seem scared to be trumped by someone stealing ideas. It was a welcome change of pace.