Who are we now? A demographic assessment of three evolution societies
Who are we now? A demographic assessment of three evolution societies
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DOI：
10.1111/evo.14168
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发表时间：
2021-01-20
期刊：
影响因子：
3.3
通讯作者：
Matute, Daniel R.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Rushworth, Catherine A.;Baucom, Regina S.;Matute, Daniel R.
科学社团有可能促进对历史上被排除在科学之外的社区的支持。其中许多协会成立了委员会，提出和管理促进其成员的职业和福利的倡议，特别强调种族和族裔少数群体。然而，这些社会很少有数据来指导他们的建议。三个进化学会（美国自然主义者学会，“ANUS”;系统生物学家学会，“SSB”;进化研究学会，“SSE”）在过去几年中也成立了多样性，公平和包容委员会。作为确定社会需求的第一步，这些委员会通过调查2019年进化会议的与会者收集了有关社会成员人口特征的数据。在这里，我们报告了出席会议的不同人口群体的比例，并将这些比例与博士学位获得者的人口统计数据进行了比较。在进化生物学或更广泛的生命科学，以及美国的人口统计学学位。我们的研究结果表明，历史上被排除在外的群体在美国的进化生物学专业协会中仍然代表性不足。我们探讨了不同职业阶段的人口构成是否不同，并发现女性和LGBTQ+成员的代表性随着职业阶段的进展而下降。我们还发现了一些证据，表明不同社会的种族构成存在异质性。最后，我们讨论了我们的程序的注意事项和局限性。我们的研究结果将有助于为今后在社会层面收集人口数据的工作提供信息，这些数据反过来应用于设计和实施基于证据的包容和公平举措。这份报告应该是一个起点，系统地努力表征进化生物学中不断变化的代表性，并努力将所有群体包括在内。
Scientific societies have the potential to catalyze support for communities that have been historically excluded from science. Many of these societies have formed committees to propose and administer initiatives to promote the career and well-being of their members, with a special emphasis on racial and ethnic minorities. Yet, these societies are rarely armed with data to inform their proposals. Three of the evolution societies (American Society of Naturalists, "ASN"; Society of Systematic Biologists, "SSB"; Society for the Study of Evolution, "SSE") have also formed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committees in the last few years. As a first step in determining the needs of the societies, these committees collected data on the demographic characteristics of the societies' constituents by surveying the attendants of the Evolution 2019 meeting. Here, we report the proportions for different demographic groups in attendance at the meeting and compare these proportions to the demographics of recipients of Ph.D. degrees either in evolutionary biology or in the broader life sciences, as well as population demographics of the USA. Our results indicate that historically excluded groups are still underrepresented across US-based evolutionary biology professional societies. We explore whether demographic composition differs at different professional stages and find that representation for women and LGBTQ+ members decreases as the career stage progresses. We also find some evidence for heterogeneity across societies in terms of racial composition. Finally, we discuss the caveats and limitations of our procedures. Our results will serve to inform future efforts to collect demographic data at the society levels, which should in turn be used to design and implement evidence-based initiatives for inclusion and equity. This report should be a starting point for systematic efforts to characterize the ever-changing representation in evolutionary biology and to work toward the inclusion of all groups.