useR! 2024

It will come as no surprise to the reader that women are underrepresented in the R community. Anyone who has organised a conference will know the feeling of seeing the abstracts come in with a particular demographic making up most of the entries. What do we do at this point? Do we positively discriminate to put more women out there? Is that patronising? It certainly leads to being told “you’re only giving the talk because you’re a woman”, or “you’re definitely going to get accepted, you’re a woman”. To have your abilities as a scientist and presenter questioned like that is awful, but is it worth it to move towards equal representation? And how do you fight the imposter syndrome that it instils? There is no perfect answer to these questions, but I wondered, has anyone tried asking the women? I have been gathering the thoughts of some women in the R Community, and in this talk I’d like to present the big picture. Some are newer to the community, and some have been around a bit longer. How do their experiences differ? What help is out there for things like imposter syndrome? Interviewees include Dr Nic Crane, Dr Nicola Rennie, Dr Heather Turner and Dr Sarah Heaps.