Demographics of presenters and convenors at the EGU General Assemblies 2015-2022 – are there differences between physical, virtual and hybrid meetings?

The first step for institutions committed to equality, diversity and inclusion is to know their demographics. This presentation includes descriptive statistics for 8 consecutive years (2015–2022) 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. In 2022 the GA was held as a fully hybrid meeting with around 7000 participants in Vienna and 7000 online. 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 2015-2022, and this increase was observed throughout all career stages. The proportion of women presenters has increased from 32% in 2015 to 39% in 2022. A similar trend was observed for the convenors, an increase in total numbers over the years and a higher proportion (40%) of women in 2022 than in 2015 (26%).

In the hybrid meeting in 2022 early career scientists to a higher extent participated physically in the meeting than online. Among more senior researchers a higher proportion attended the meeting virtually. While there were no differences in how women and men participated (online or physically), there are differences connected to the country affiliations. More than half of participants from countries in most of western Europe attended in Vienna, while participants from North America and Asia attended online.

Since EGU General Assembly is the largest geosciences conference in Europe 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.