Trends in Women's Participation at the Meetings of the Association for Behavior Analysis: 1975-2005.
Women now fill applied sessions but still land fewer keynote and basic-research spots at ABA conventions.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The authors counted every woman listed in ABA convention programs from 1975 to 2005. They looked at posters, papers, symposia, and invited addresses. They split the counts into basic research, applied work, and theory.
No people were treated or surveyed. The team simply tallied names and roles from old conference books.
What they found
By 2005, women filled half of the poster slots and most applied sessions. Yet they gave only one in four invited speeches and one in three basic-research talks.
In short, women were visible in everyday sessions but scarce on the main stage.
How this fits with other research
Rutherford et al. (2007) looked at the same 30 years of ABA programs but counted total attendance instead of gender. Their curve shows a steep rise in applied talks right after the BCBA credential began. Kleinert et al. (2007) adds the gender lens: the surge included many women, yet the top-tier slots stayed male.
MSáez-Suanes et al. (2023) later reviewed every BCBA supervision study. They found piles of opinion papers and almost no data. The 2007 gender tally helps explain why: women were already doing the clinical work, but the field still channels them away from high-status research and speaking roles.
Callahan et al. (2019) and Zayac et al. (2021) both asked what makes an "exemplary" BCBA. They list warmth, creativity, and cultural skill—traits parents love. Kleinert et al. (2007) hints that women often bring these strengths, yet they remain under-represented in the very positions that define field leaders.
Why it matters
If you supervise RBTs or mentor new BCBAs, check who gets the spotlight at your local conference. Invite talented female staff to co-present or submit symposia. Track your own CEU line-ups: aim for gender balance in invited speakers. Small booking choices today can shrink the gap the data caught in 2005.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
We examined women's participation, relative to men's, at the annual meetings of the Association for Behavior Analysis (ABA) between 1975 and 2005. Among our findings are upward trends in female presenters across formats (e.g., posters), types of authorship (e.g., first authors), and specialty areas (e.g., autism). Where women have attained parity, however, they are still often underrepresented, given their percentage of membership. Women also participate less than men as sole and invited authors and discussants and in the domains of basic research and conceptual analysis, but participate more than men in the applied domain. Data from the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior and the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis show parallel but delayed trends toward parity in basic and applied research, whereas data from The Behavior Analyst show only modest gains in the conceptual domain. We discuss the gender disparities in ABA's more prestigious categories of participation (e.g., invited addresses) and across its content domains, as well as in science in general, and the role of social and cultural factors in producing the disparities and how behavior analysts might aid in correcting them.
The Behavior analyst, 2007 · doi:10.1007/BF03392154