Following Jonathan Eisen's recent blog post about the tremendously poor representation of female speakers at the upcoming CSHL Evolution of Sequencing meeting, I was curious about something. Namely, how representative are female scientists in senior roles at prominent genome centers/institutes?

So I found 10 places which all have at least 10 people listed in senior roles (e.g. Faculty or Project leaders), including our own Genome Center. In all but one case, the gender ratio exceeds the pitiful 8.5% of female speakers at the Evolution of Sequencing meeting.

While it is still depressing that not a single institute has more than 40% of senior roles filled by women, it is a clear sign that there is a great pool of talented female genome scientists out there. Conferences should therefore have no excuses for single-digit percentages for female speakers.