The question has been asked: What was the sex ratio of attendees of the recent SkepchickCON Track at CONvergence, and of the panelists? To this it would be nice (and appropriate) to add the same questions for CONvergence as a whole. I have some, but not all, of that information.
I looked at the panelist sex ratio by examining every Skepchick run panel on the CONvergnece schedule, and adjusted where I know for who actually was on the panel (it is usually the same but now and then things turn out differently). To sample panels at CONvergence, I simply examined the CONvergence panel immediately after the Skepchick organized panel on the schedule listing, and if the Skepchick panel was the last one, I looked at the one before that. For each time slot, these panels are listed alphabetically so this probably represents a good unbiased pair. This may have errors and it is uncorrected, but the numbers are stark so I’m not worried about false conclusions being drawn if there is an error here and there.
I looked at 17 panels that I could identify as Skepchick organized from the schedule and one panel that was not on he schedule (the last one) but that I knew about (that was the only one not on the schedule). I counted the sex ratio as 29 males to 55 females (1.9) for Skepchick organized panels, and the sex ratio as 32 males to 29 females (0.91) for non-Skepchick CON panels.
As I understand it, it is Skepchick policy to have mostly females on panels, or an even sex ratio, but occasionally one ends up with more males. All the panels I was on or sat and observed were pretty darn good panels except one, which was an embarrassing waste of time, and that one was four guys with a female moderator who is the best in the world but still could not save it. So, yeah, there may be something to avoiding panels with mostly guys.
I have no idea what the sex ratio of the CON attendees might have been, and I have no idea what the sex ratio of the non Skepchick-organized panels might have been. Actually, I have no idea what the sex ratio of attendees of the Skepchick panels was either but I counted boys and girls in three photographs of the audiences, all taken before panels started and people were still wandering in, and found a total of 52 males and 34 females (0.65). That, however, is a very limited sampling and I wouldn’t read much into it. Or maybe boys like to watch girls, I dunno.
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