By Matt Harrington, BCBA · Behaviorist Book Club · Research-backed answers for behavior analysts
The WIBA Hall of Fame was established by Women in Behavior Analysis to formally recognize the contributions of women pioneers to the field of behavior analysis and to create a historical record of those contributions for current and future practitioners. It was founded in recognition of the systematic underrepresentation of women's contributions in the canonical historical narrative of behavior analysis — despite the field being majority female at the practitioner level, historical recognition has disproportionately featured male contributors. The Hall of Fame corrects this imbalance by formally documenting and celebrating the contributions of women whose work shaped the science and practice of behavior analysis.
The first class of WIBA Hall of Fame inductees was announced at the live Nashville event in 2021. The inductees were selected by the WIBA Hall of Fame Selection Committee based on their documented contributions to behavior analytic research, practice, training, or the development of the field's professional infrastructure. The specific inductees and their contributions are detailed on the WIBA website and in the associated conference materials. BCBAs who want to learn about these individuals are encouraged to review the original announcement materials, which document each inductee's specific contributions to the field.
Applied behavior analysis is a majority-female field at the practitioner level, with estimates suggesting that 70 to 75 percent of BCBAs are women. This demographic composition contrasts with historical patterns in leadership recognition: keynote speakers at major conferences, editorial board composition at flagship journals like JABA, and the historical figures most prominently taught in training programs have historically overrepresented male contributors relative to their proportion in the field. This gap between workforce demographics and recognition patterns is what organizations like WIBA and the Hall of Fame initiative were created to address.
Code 1.07 requires that behavior analysts protect the dignity of all individuals they interact with professionally. Code 1.10 requires nondiscrimination in professional interactions — behavior analysts should not discriminate based on sex, gender, or other protected characteristics in any professional context, including supervisory relationships, organizational decisions, and professional advocacy. These provisions apply not just to clinical settings but to the professional environments that BCBAs participate in and help to shape. BCBAs who are attentive to representation inequities in professional recognition, leadership, and training materials are applying the spirit of these ethics code provisions in their broader professional lives.
Many of the clinical methods that BCBAs use regularly were developed or significantly advanced by women researchers and practitioners whose names are underrepresented in standard training narratives. Understanding the full attribution history of these methods provides context for why they were developed, what problems they were designed to solve, and how they evolved. This context enriches the practitioner's conceptual relationship to the methods and supports more adaptive application to novel clinical challenges. Additionally, an accurate understanding of who built the field provides a more complete intellectual foundation for understanding behavior analysis as a scientific and professional enterprise.
BCBAs in supervisory and training roles can incorporate this history by including readings by and about women contributors in supervision curricula, discussing the development of methods with attribution to the researchers — including women — who created them, and using resources like the WIBA Hall of Fame as direct training material for professional identity development discussions. For female supervisees in particular, seeing their gender reflected in the field's history can strengthen professional belonging and identification with the scientific tradition. Supervision conversations that connect clinical methods to their historical development build disciplinary knowledge alongside technical skills.
Carol Pilgrim is a prominent behavior analyst with a distinguished research record in the experimental analysis of behavior, particularly in the areas of stimulus equivalence and verbal behavior. She has held leadership positions in major behavior analysis professional organizations and has been a consistent advocate for the accurate representation of women's contributions to the field. Her involvement in the WIBA Hall of Fame event reflects her broader commitment to advancing equity in professional recognition and ensuring that the field's history is told with full attribution to all who contributed. Her career exemplifies the integration of rigorous scientific work and active professional citizenship.
Training programs should audit syllabi and reading materials to assess how thoroughly women and other underrepresented contributors are represented alongside the male figures who dominate standard historical accounts. When teaching foundational methods — naturalistic teaching, early intensive behavioral intervention, specific assessment methodologies — instructors should attribute the development of these methods to the researchers who created them, including women, rather than teaching methods as if they arose from the work of a small set of historically prominent male figures. Visual timelines, reading lists, and case examples should all be examined for representation and updated to reflect the actual diversity of contributors to the field.
BCBAs can support equity-focused organizations in behavior analysis through professional membership, financial contributions, participation in events and programming, volunteer leadership on committees, and social network promotion of the organization's work and initiatives. Using professional purchasing decisions — conference attendance, publication subscriptions, continuing education selection — to favor organizations that demonstrably advance equitable representation sends market signals that reinforce positive organizational behavior. BCBAs in hiring, promotion, and mentorship positions can apply conscious attention to representation in their own organizations, creating institutional cultures that do not depend on external recognition to value the contributions of underrepresented practitioners.
A live induction ceremony — as opposed to a publication announcement or digital recognition — makes historical recognition a community event that connects current practitioners to the field's history in a shared, embodied experience. Attending or watching an induction ceremony creates a different kind of professional memory than reading a list of names: the speeches, the acknowledgments, the responses of inductees, and the presence of a community audience all contribute to a richer encoding of the recognition's significance. Live ceremonies also model the importance that the professional community places on these contributions, signaling to all attendees that historical recognition is a genuine professional priority rather than a peripheral courtesy.
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ on-demand CEUs including ethics, supervision, and clinical topics like this one. Plus a new live CEU every Wednesday.
Ready to go deeper? This course covers this topic with structured learning objectives and CEU credit.
2021 WIBA Hall of Fame — Carol Pilgrim · 0 BACB General CEUs · $0
Take This Course →BACB General CEUs · $0 · BehaviorLive
Research-backed educational guide with practice recommendations
Side-by-side comparison with clinical decision framework
All behavior-analytic intervention is individualized. The information on this page is for educational purposes and does not constitute clinical advice. Treatment decisions should be informed by the best available published research, individualized assessment, and obtained with the informed consent of the client or their legal guardian. Behavior analysts are responsible for practicing within the boundaries of their competence and adhering to the BACB Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts.