Vol. 69, No. 2 | Fall 2024
 

Notes from the ABS Historian


ABS Historian, Sue Margulis

I recently read of the passing of Dr. Anne Innis Dagg earlier this year, at the age of 91. Dr. Dagg’s life was beautifully and poignantly presented in the 2018 documentary The Woman Who Loved Giraffes. Innis Dagg was a pioneer in many ways – as a field researcher, an expert on giraffes, and on the challenges of being a woman in science. Despite completing ground-breaking field research on giraffes in the wild in the 1950’s, despite completing a PhD in the 1960’s, and despite having over 20 peer-reviewed publications by the time she applied for tenure, she did not receive tenure. Being a woman set her at a clear and openly-acknowledged disadvantage.

At the 2024 ABS meeting in London, Ontario, I had a conversation with ABS Past President Susan Alberts; she pointed out to me that we now have a string of six consecutive ABS presidents who are women. Election to the presidential track is a four-year commitment: 2nd president-elect, 1st president-elect, president, and past president. These roles have been filled by women for the past three years, meaning six consecutive years with a woman as president of the Society. I had not realized what a feat this was until I looked back at the history of ABS presidents. It took nearly 20 years for the first woman – Devra Kleiman – to serve as ABS president (in 1983, having been elected as 2nd president-elect two years prior) followed by Jeanne Altmann in 1985. By the 1990’s, we began to reach parity, with 40-50% of presidents being women over the next 2 decades. In the current decade however, only women have been elected. In order, the last six 2nd-president-elects are:

Eileen Hebets
Susan Alberts
Vanessa Ezenwa
Emily DuVal
Beth Jakob
Eileen Lacey

While I am delighted to see this shift to parity and beyond (interestingly, as I write this, the summer Olympics have just ended – the first Olympics in history with an equal number of men and women participating), I do find myself asking what has driven this change? I can come up with three hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: The field has achieved some degree of parity, with equal numbers of men and women Prediction: There should be an equal number of men and women presidents.

Hypothesis 2: Women are more inclined to take on service responsibilities Prediction: There should be more women candidates for president than would be expected based on the gender ratio of the society.

Hypothesis 3: Women are more likely to win elections Prediction: In those years when one candidate was male and one female, the female candidate was more likely to win.

Bear in mind that the information available to me for this analysis only breaks down by sex. ABS clearly recognizes the importance of gender identity as demonstrated by the week-long symposium at the most recent conference. Information on gender identity is not currently available in the dataset, thus I base this quasi-analysis on sex.

The proportion of women in the Society is slightly above 50%, which would predict an approximately equal number of male and female presidents. In the past 6 years at least, that is not the case.

Statistically speaking, six years is a relatively small sample size. That said, the odds of flipping a coin and getting six consecutive heads are quite low – 6 women in a row differs from chance expectations via a binomial test. However, in two of those six years, both candidates were women. Looking at the four remaining years, in which one candidate was male and one female, and the difference approaches significance (P < 0.06) but of course, we must question whether P < 0.06 is meaningful.

I reviewed 25 years of elections and candidates and found that across those 25 years (50 candidates), 40% were women, 60% were men. There were significantly more male candidates than female candidates over the past 25 years (P < 0.04). In looking at just the past 10 years, with 11 women candidates and 9 men, the difference disappears. Across the 25 years, there were 10 elections in which one candidate was male and one was female; women won 8 of those 10 elections, which is indeed significant (P <0.04).



So, what to make of these findings? Recognizing that applying statistics to this small dataset is questionable at best, several conclusions can be drawn. First, the Society has clearly achieved parity with respect to sex, but in the last six years at least, we do not see an equal number of male and female presidents as evidenced by the current presidential composition, with six women in succession. Second, women were less likely than men to serve as candidates for the ABS presidency based on the past 25 years. Finally, women are more likely to win elections when one candidate is male and one female.

I’m sure we could creatively speculate as to why this might be. My personal experience has been that women are more often asked to take on service responsibilities or are more inclined to agree to do so. That said, it is impressive that women have so often been asked to take on the primary leadership role of our Society. The increasing representation of women in the Society certainly speaks to this.

My own experience in both academia and the zoo field suggests a growing role for women in animal-related fields. That said, the expectations are often greater for women: more service, more organizational work, more acquiescing to requests. I am, however, quite hopeful that we have moved beyond the experience of Anne Innis Dagg, and that we are evaluated on an equal footing with our male colleagues when it comes to promotion, tenure, and leadership. I am proud to be a member of a Society that certainly seems to support this. With respect to why women are more likely to win an election…I leave you to your own speculations on this.

 

 
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