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Leaky pipeline, gender bias, self-selection or all three? A quantitative analysis of gender balance at an international palliative care research conference
  1. Katherine E Sleeman,
  2. Jonathan Koffman and
  3. Irene J Higginson
  1. Department of Palliative Care, Policy and Rehabilitation, King's College London—Cicely Saunders Institute, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Katherine E Sleeman, Department of Palliative Care, Policy and Rehabilitation, King's College London—Cicely Saunders Institute, London, UK; katherine.sleeman{at}kcl.ac.uk

Abstract

Objectives The ‘leaky pipeline’ in academia is a clearly described phenomenon, but has not been examined in palliative care. We analysed the gender balance of speakers at the 9th World Research Congress of the European Association of Palliative Care (EAPC) to test the null hypothesis that there is no difference in the proportion of women and men with senior academic visibility in palliative care conference programmes.

Methods The final programme of the 2016 EAPC World Congress was examined, and the gender of each speaker was recorded. Presentations were assessed using a three-tier hierarchy of senior academic visibility: Free Communication sessions, Themed sessions and invited Plenaries (low to high). As there was only one Invited Plenary at EAPC 2016, we examined the gender balance at EAPC Plenaries from 2012 to 2016.

Results Overall, the majority of speakers at EAPC 2016 (96/130, 73.8%) were women. The proportion of women was highest in the Free Communication sessions (84/107, 78.5%). In the Themed sessions, women made up just over half of speakers (12/22, 54.5%). In 2016, there was 1 invited Plenary speaker, a man. From 2012 to 2016, just 6 of 23 invited Plenary speakers at EAPC conferences have been women (26.1%) (χ2=25.4, p<0.001).

Conclusions These data reject our null hypothesis and suggest that there is attrition of women along the academic pipeline in palliative care. Other factors such as self-selection (that women decline invitations to give talks) and unconscious gender bias need further exploration, as well as actions to address the imbalance.

  • gender balance
  • leaky pipeline
  • palliative

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon this work, for commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjspcare-2016-001211

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors KES conceived and designed this study, performed the analysis and wrote the manuscript, with help from IJH and JK throughout.

    • Funding KES is funded by an NIHR Clinician Scientist Fellowship and has received funding from Cicely Saunders International. No specific funding was received for this study.

    • Competing interests IJH was Chair of the Scientific Organising Committee of the 2015 EAPC World Congress in Copenhagen and gave an invited Plenary at the 2012 EAPC Research Congress in Trondheim. KES, JK and IJH are members of the King's College London Department of Palliative Care Athena SWAN Self-Assessment Team.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.