This list shows the gender ratio of speakers at marketing research and related conferences during 2020.
These data are not 100% accurate. I am not always able to identify whether a speaker is male or female based on their name and/or photo, and online and printed programs don’t reflect last minute changes to the schedule. However, given that conference organizers want to project the most positive reflection of their conference program, I am assuming the available programs are within a reasonable margin of error. If you are able to provide more accurate numbers, I would be pleased and grateful to make corrections.
And yes, there is far more to diversity than gender. Diversity of age, ethnicity, ability/disability, sexuality, and more also matter. But gender is a start.
Please contribute: If you have a PDF or image of a conference program, even if it’s from 2015, email it to me so I can include the results in the list.
Let’s create the change we want to see.
- MRS Sports, UK, February, 7%
- Insights CEO Summit, USA, January, 23%
- MRMW, Amsterdam, June, 23%
- CX Talks, Dallas, March, 25%
- MRS Data analytics, London, February, 35%
- ESOMAR, Lima, April, 39%
- ARF Audience x Science, New York, April, 41%
- IIeX, Amsterdam, March, 43%
- MRS National Impact, London, March, 45%
- NGCX, USA, March, 46%
- ESOMAR DRIVE, Delhi, March, 48%
- NGCX, California, March, 48%
- ARF+SXSW, Texas, March, 50%
- Insights Double Down, Las Vegas, February , 50%
- Sysomos/Meltwater, London, March, 50%
- Qualtrics experience summit, Salt Lake City, March, 53%
- NewMR Festival, Virtual, March, 50%
- QRCA, Texas , January, 62%
- MRS Kids, UK, January, 68%
- Advancing Research 2020, New York, March, 69%
How To Find Speakers
- Be part of the Women in Research 50/50 initiative and take advantage of their speaker database.
- Review the speaker lists of other conferences.
- Maybe you don’t need an experienced speaker. Maybe you need to give opportunity to a brand new speaker.
- Use LinkedIn to connect with experts in the city where your conference will take place.
- Use Twitter to connect with experts. I have bookmarked many lists of women who are experts in areas such as artificial intelligence, branding, data science, analytics, cyrpto, neuroscience and much more.
- In addition, you can use the GenderAvenger toolkit to nominate conferences that are succeeding, take the GA Pledge, or call out conferences that need improvement.
