Participation by women in behavior analysis. II: 1992.
Women were under-represented in ABA leadership in 1992, and later counts show the gap barely moved.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Palya (1993) counted how many women work in behavior analysis. The team looked at 1992 membership lists, journal boards, and convention programs.
They compared the share of women members to the share of women in charge.
What they found
Women were 31% of ABA members but held far fewer top spots. They gave fewer talks and held fewer editor jobs than expected.
The pattern matched the glass ceiling seen in other fields.
How this fits with other research
Bennett et al. (1998) ran the same count five years later. Their data showed only tiny gains for women in JEAB roles, proving the gap stuck around.
Logan et al. (2000) saw the same male dominance in developmental-disabilities research. Together the three papers show the gender gap is wide and stubborn across ABA sub-fields.
Curiel et al. (2023) shift the lens to geography, finding that flagship journals are almost all North-American. Gender and geography gaps both limit whose voices get printed.
Why it matters
If you plan a conference, review a journal, or form a committee, count the women at the table. Invite more. Ask more. The data say the field still needs the push.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Participation by women and men in (a) the editorial process and publication of three behavior analysis journals, (b) leadership in the Association for Behavior Analysis (ABA) and the Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, and (c) participation in the 1982 and 1991 conventions of the Association for Behavior Analysis are described. The data indicate that the relative involvement of women in all three areas is lower than the percentage of ABA members who are women (31%) and is considerably lower than the percentage of women in society at large (51%). This underrepresentation of women in editorial and leadership roles in behavior analysis mirrors the reported phenomenon of a glass ceiling for women in leadership roles in business and industry. The men who control our institutions are asked to share power and responsibility by increasing the involvement of women in behavior analysis.
The Behavior analyst, 1993 · doi:10.1007/BF03392613