Achieving Speaker Gender Equity at the American Society for Microbiology General Meeting

48.5 % of the oral presentations being given by women. The mechanisms associated with increased female participation were (i) making the Program Committee aware of gender statistics, (ii) increasing female representation among session convener teams, and (iii) direct instruction to try to avoid all-male sessions. The experience with the ASMGeneral Meeting shows that it is possi-ble to increase the participation of female speakers in a relatively short time and suggests concrete steps that may be taken to achieve this at other meetings. IMPORTANCE Public speaking is very important for academic advancement in science. Historically women have been underrep-resented as speakers in many scientific meetings. This article describes concrete steps that were associated with achieving gender equity at a major meeting