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Joint FTF/COSWL/WGSS Research Project on Gender Presence in ALA Conference
Presentations
Introduction
In 2006 a discussion took place on the FEMINIST list (Feminist Task Force’s (FTF) listserv)
about the number of male presenters versus female presenters at ALA programs. List members
felt that there were more men presenting in spite of the fact that the profession is heavily
dominated by women. It was suggested that some kind of study be done to examine this issue and
that it could come out of FTF and/or the Committee on the Status of Women in Librarianship
(COSWL). FTF continued the discussion at Annual and decided to move forward with a study
and to ask both COSWL and the ACRL Women and Gender Studies Section (WGSS) (then
Women’s Studies Section (WSS)) to participate in what would be a joint project. Dr. Dolores
Fidishun agreed to chair the project and those who were interested from the three groups were
solicited to participate in coding and evaluating data.
Over the next few months a protocol was developed and presented. The goal of the study was to
address the perception that there is a disproportionate ratio of male speakers to female speakers at
ALA. It included the subgoals to: evaluate whether certain division or other entities have more
female or male speakers, evaluate whether certain topics have more male or female speakers and
to evaluate whether certain level programs, such as President’s programs have more female or
male speakers.
Protocol for the Study
It was decided that the group would focus on ALA Annual using the years, 2007 in Washington,
D. C., 2008 in Anaheim, CA and 2009 in Chicago, IL. ALA did not keep gender or diversity
statistics on presenters and printed programs were the only access to the data. There were no
electronic files available to convert for use in evaluation of the study making it necessary to scan
copies of the programs and for coders to manually enter data about programs into an Excel
spreadsheet. A research site was created on Penn State’s ANGEL course management system to
be used as a repository for study documents and a place to upload data files as they were created.
Volunteer coders were assigned sections of the program listings and were responsible for coding
the data into various fields. Sample coding of data from a year not included in the study was
completed by two committee members to test the categories of for coding and the process. When
that was completed the protocol was slightly revised, further directions were created, assignments
were sent to committee members and coding began.
Data entered into the spreadsheet included: the name of speaker, probable gender (f/m), library
type represented if library speaker (public, academic, etc.), name of program, number of speakers
on program, sponsoring entity, co-sponsoring entities, indication of refereed or invited speaker,
topic of program and level of program (ALA, section, division, roundtable, task force, etc.).
It was decided that the use of names was the only way to assume gender. This created an issue for
names that are not usually gender-specific or that were not familiar to coders such as non- English
names or non-traditional names. A protocol was developed for those names that are not clearly
male or female. Coders were instructed that they could do minimal searching on the internet to
establish gender but that they should not spend large amounts of time trying to establish gender if it
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could not readily be assumed. This decision was necessary because of the volume of data being
coded. In addition, there were some presentations that did not list the presenters. In both of these
cases presenters were coded as unknown.
Qualitative analysis was used for the evaluation of topics for presentations with coders listing a
topic based on the program description and evaluators using thematic analysis to group like
topics then considering gender representation for the program presenters in each topic.
Results
Before the details about data are shared it should also be noted that to this point those we have
been contacted at ALA have not been able to give us breakdowns for gender of the membership of
ALA or its Divisions, etc. or the current percentage of women to men in the profession so we
cannot draw conclusions about the relationships to percentages of gender membership versus
percentages of gender in presentations, etc. This information will be pursued at a later date.
Percentages of Gender in Annual Presentations As A Whole
For ALA Annual presentations for the three years individually, and as a whole, the data indicated
that presentations were made by more females than males. It should be noted that due to minor
coding variations and the amount of programs to be counted some evaluators had slightly different
numbers of programs in some categories. When this happened the evaluators were polled for their
results and reported numbers of programs were decided upon based on the prevalence of that
count among the coders.
Total numbers of presenters:
Year
2007
2008
2009
2007-09
Female n
466
369
577
1412
Male n
262
219
266
747
Unknown n
37
49
104
190
Female %
61%
58%
61%
60%
Male %
34%
34%
28%
32%
Unknown %
5%
8%
11%
8%
2007-2009 Gender Analysis by Number of Speakers for a Program
When looking at the gender break-out for the number of speakers at ALA Annual Conference
programs, there were only two categories in which there were more male than female speakers:
programs in 2007 with four speakers and programs in 2008 with one speaker. Of these, only the
2007 programs with four speakers involved over 50% more male than female participants (139
males vs. 67 females).
For programs that had 2 – 17 speakers, there were 17 categories in which female speakers
outnumbered male participants by over 50%. Fourteen of these categories occur in programming
with 5 to 17 speakers.
All programs with 9 to seventeen speakers had over 50% more female participants than male
participants for all three years of the study. The one exception may be a 2008 program with 13
speakers, because the gender could not be verified for 6 of the participants.
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A trend than may be drawn from these findings is that the more speakers for a given program, the
more likely the participating speakers will be female. Since so few programs involved 8 to 17
speakers, however, we cannot claim any statistical significance from the data. (The only program
with 17 speakers occurred in 2008. The only program with 11 speakers occurred in 2007.) While
the data might suggest women are more collaborative in programming involving eight or more
speakers, many variables may influence the reasons for the gender representation at events with
many speakers.
Number of
Program
Speakers
Male
2007
Female
2007
Unknown
2007
Male
2008
Female
2008
Unknown
2008
Male
2009
Female
2009
Unknown
2009
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
20
28
50
139
48
21
20
6
0
0
2
0
0
0
0
0
0
22
43
93
67
72
56
22
10
0
0
9
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
2
0
1
0
1
0
0
9
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
24
9
41
56
51
23
4
1
1
2
0
0
3
0
0
0
4
16
36
50
96
94
30
10
7
5
8
0
0
4
0
0
0
13
0
1
0
4
0
1
0
0
3
0
0
0
6
0
0
0
0
26
24
60
81
39
12
9
0
5
3
0
0
2
0
0
0
0
42
50
136
134
104
42
19
7
13
7
0
0
11
0
0
0
0
0
0
3
1
7
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Sponsoring Entities
There were several sponsors that consistently had more male presenters than females. These
included LITA, LLAMA, LLAMA/BES, RUSA/BRASS, BCALA and the SRRT. ACRL division
programs had a little less prevalence of male presenters but still showed some male prominence.
There were a number of sponsors who has more women presenters. These included: AASL,
ALCTS, ALTAFF and PLA.
Program Topics
The Committee noted that there were a number of topics that distinctly stood out as having more
male presenters. These included technology programs, those on digitization and preservation,
buildings and equipment, safety and security issues in libraries, programs on business resources,
management issues, environmental and sustainability programs, and programs on science
resources and science fiction.
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Refereed Versus Invited Presentations
In general there were more female than male presenters in both the refereed and invited categories
of programs. In 2009 the referred presentations were 3/4 women which is slightly higher than the
norm of 60% to 30%.
Affiliation of Presenters
The Committee did not find any real prominence of gender in the type of library or organizational
affiliation with one minor exception. In programs presented by ALA staff there were 58 female
presenters versus 9 male presenters. We do not have data for the percentage of gender among the
ALA staff but the committee theorizes that this may be the reason for the numbers of presenters
listed.
Level of Program
It was noted that among all levels of programs the only category that had more males than female
presenters were President’s Programs from various entities, including ALA. The Division that had
the most President’s Programs with heavily male presenters was LITA.
Recommendations About Dissemination And The Need For Further Study
The Committee found that the trends evidenced were fairly stable across all the years studied and
so, although some in the sponsoring agencies had asked whether a similar study should be done
for the 2010 and 2011 conferences, the Committee feels that this data provides a good snapshot of
the current situation and does not recommend further study. Given the large amounts of data that
would need to be evaluated the Committee feels there would not be much change in the results
and it would not worth the large amount of time that this evaluation would require. It is suggested
that if, in the future, there are once again questions about the gender percentages at Annual the
study could be redone at that point.
The Committee asks COSWL to share the results of the study with ALA Council so that the entire
organization can become aware of the results of the gender presence in presentations. As suggested
originally by FTF, the group also suggests that this be disseminated more widely such via a vehicle
such as a possible article in American Libraries. In addition, the final copy of the report should be
put on the web site or presence of each of the three sponsoring entities.
For now the study data will remain on the Penn State ANGEL system where it has resided since
the study began. The Committee requests that the data also be transferred to the WGSS archive at
University of Illinois making it available for anyone who would like access to it in the future.
Conclusions
Overall the Committee commends ALA for gender representation of conference presenters that is
mostly in concert with the gender representation of the profession. Clearly there are a number of
topics where those arranging programs should be aware of the need to include more females, or in
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a few cases more males. It is also important to note that unfortunately the Association shows signs
of societal stereotypes in areas such as programs on technology, statistics, and buildings as well as
Environmental and sustainability issues and science including science fiction. It is hoped that this
survey will provide a tool to raise awareness of the issue of gender among presenters at future
conferences.
This study was conducted by the Joint FTF/COSWL/WGSS Research Project on Gender Presence in
ALA Conference Presentations Committee:
Chair:
Dolores Fidishun, Ed. D., Penn State University Libraries
Data Evaluators:
Erin Gratz, University of La Verne
Betty Glass, University of Nevada, Reno
Jane Ingold, Penn State University Libraries
Deborah Tenofsky, University of Cincinnati
Ellen Greenblatt, University of Colorado Denver
Dolores Fidishun, Penn State University Libraries
Data Coders:
Barbara Andrews, Immaculata University
Jill Barr Walker, New York University-Abu Dhabi
Marcia Barrett, University of Alabama Libraries
Kayo Denda, Rutgers University
Dolores Fidishun, Penn State University Libraries
Jennifer Gilley, Penn State University Libraries
Jane Glasby, San Francisco Public Library
Betty Glass, University of Nevada, Reno
Ellen Greenblatt, University of Colorado Denver
Erin Gratz, University of La Verne
Alexia Hudson, Penn State University Libraries
Cynthia Ingold, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Jane Ingold, Penn State University Libraries
Amanda Maddock, Ohio State University at Mansfield
Rachel Masilamani, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
John Moorman, Williamsburg Regional Library
Jane Nichols, Oregon State University
Caitlin Shanley, University of Pennsylvania Libraries
Beth Strickland, University of Michigan
Theresa Tobin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Rebecca Tolley-Stokes, East Tennessee State University
Susan Wood, University of Memphis
Staff support:
Mary Murray, Penn State University Libraries
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