Who presented and convened at EGU General Assemblies 2015-2021?

The first step for institutions committed to equality, diversity and inclusion is to know their demographics. This presentation includes descriptive statistics for 7 consecutive years (2015–2021) based on presentations and convenorship at the EGU General Assemblies.

In the years 2015-2019, when the meeting was a physical meeting in Vienna, around 90% of the participants gave presentations. In 2020 the meeting was held online at short notice and the registration for participation was free of charge. In 2021 the entire meeting was planned online already at the time of submission of abstracts and the participant fee was lower than for the previous physical meetings. We cannot completely compare the participant data from the online meetings with the previous years, therefore this presentation will focus on the gender, career stage, and geographical distribution among presenters and convenors.

The total number of presenters has increased over the time period 2015-2021, and this increase was observed throughout all career stages. The proportion of women presenters have increased from 32% in 2015 to 39% in 2021, with a leap from 36 to 39% between 2020 and 2021. A similar trend was observed for the convenors, an increase in total numbers over the years and a higher proportion (39%) of women in 2021 than in 2015 (26%). This trend of increasing numbers of conveners was observed independent of career stage until 2018. Since then, the number of senior scientist conveners increased, whereas the number of Early Career Scientist conveners has dropped to a number lower than 2015. The gender difference between “presenters per convenors”-ratio has been shrinking since 2015 and was similar for women and men in 2021.

Since EGU General Assembly is the largest geosciences conference in Europe and still growing, understanding the demographic evolution and their participation to EGU activities, including the GA, of various groups is an important tool for EGU governing body to draw targeted actions to ensure that the current procedures are fair and that all in the community are being and feeling included. We therefore aim to analyse the changes in demographics with regards to gender, career stage as well as to geographical distribution of the presenters and convenors also in coming years to better understand the potential impacts of meetings organized online or physically, or as a combination of both these modes.