The International Union of Immunological Societies has a firm commitment to gender equality, with a significant budget allocated to initiatives established by the Gender Equity Committee (GEC), and a clear affirmation on its website. As a global organisation, however, not every member country is equally committed to gender equality, so the main activities of IUIS in this regard have been focused on encouragement and facilitation for women immunologists.
Organisational demographics
Within the organisation itself, 58% of its leadership are women, which is a significant change from the situation two or three decades ago, when it was exclusively men. It has not been possible, however, to establish the exact proportion of women in the profession as a whole which comprises close to 28,500 individuals in total in the member organisations. While those statistics are not readily available from member organisations, a data collection working group has been initiated within the GEC, and – as a starting point – IUIS conferences collect gender, LGBQT and other data on the registration forms, which may help to provide some useful information in this respect.
Invited Speakers at conferences
Perhaps the main source of influence which IUIS exerts is in terms of facilitating women as invited speakers at conferences, which are significant forms of communication in this rapidly-changing science. Following some negative experiences in the main IUIS conference, which is hosted by different member countries, a balanced quota of female invited speakers has been established as one of the ground rules. In addition, the IUIS aims to encouraging women speakers at conferences in general, and to this end the GEC has established an incentive for other conferences in the discipline, which is that they will fund a place for a woman speaker in those which have achieved a certain level of gender balance in terms of their invited speakers – a not inconsiderable contribution. Furthermore, member societies can use the IUIS platform and social media channels to promote conferences they organize – pending approval by GEC, whose members monitor the gender balance among speakers at these conferences.
The gender balance among prize winners within he immunologic community is historically dominated by males. To compensate this situation, the GEC has initiated a USD 40K prize for outstanding female immunologists (EXCELL), which is awarded every three years at the IUIS conference and aims to showcase the exceptional contributions of women in this area.
Career development
The role of the GEC is both promotion and help with career development wherever practical. To this end, members of the Committee are fostering strong links with young immunologists, who have their own dynamic organisation, to find out what they see as particularly important. They have also encouraged systems for accommodating young children at conferences, and have established a system which can provide a grant for travel expenses for those with care responsibilities, enabling them to cover the associated additional expenses. There has been limited take-up of this grant so far, possibly owing to the difficulties of communicating with individual members through parent organisations and local groups.
Other initiatives have been less successful – for example, the formation of a list of outstanding women immunologists was developed in order to assist the selection of invited speakers at conferences and local awards, but the nomination process proved problematic since the very high-achievers were less interested in self-promotion, and keeping the list updated presented another challenge.
Key Takeaways for other institutions
- Include that there must be a balanced quota of male to female invited speakers in the basic rules of your organisation’s main conference
- In other conferences in your field of work, encourage explicitely gender balance among invited speakers. For example, by the provision of a grant to cover the full expenses of one woman invited speaker if that conference has achieved an acceptable quota of women among their invited speakers.
- Provide a grant for expenses for those with care responsibilities which will cover not only conference expenses but also the costs of care provision.