Friday, March 09, 2018

Frustrated by YAMMMMs: Yet another mostly male microbiome meeting

UPDATE 3/9/2018 - See Comments.  Carly Rosewarne coined the term last year ...
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A while back I coined the term "YAMMM" - yet another mostly male meeting - to reflect my frustration in seeing meetings where most of the presenters were male:

What to do when you realize the meeting you are speaking at is a YAMMM (yet another mostly male meeting)?

I have since written dozens of posts about such meetings.  Sadly this is not an unusual thing.  Fortunately there has been a growing movement in many communities, including in science, to critique and not support such "MANELs".  Progress is definitely being made.  But it is piecemeal and in my opinion we must still keep up the fight for meetings and conferences to better reflect the diversity of people doing interesting and important work that should be heard.  I am sure many fields still are seeing slow progress in this area but one that frustrates me personally is the microbiome arena.  So today I am coining a new term - YAMMMM (note the extra M).  Yet Another Mostly Male Microbiome Meeting.

I decided to update my mini image about this so I went to world and entered some common male names and some numbers for them.

Charles: 10
Robert: 20
Joseph: 20
David: 5
John:10
Doug: 20
Michael: 5
James: 20
William: 10
Jake: 5
Sam: 5
Richard: 10
Chris: 20
Anthony:5
Paul: 5
Mark: 5
Donald: 10
Brian: 5
Kevin: 10
Edward: 10
Timothy: 15

And Voila:
 

I then added a little header




So if you see a YAMMMM - please feel free to use this image.




2 comments:

  1. Leaving this article here too - I used the term YAMMMM in my piece from last year. Not sure if I coined it or not �� Carly Rosewarne (@microbialme) https://npjbiofilmscommunity.nature.com/users/36624-carly-rosewarne/posts/15921-we-re-in-a-state-of-dysbiosis-gender-inequity-on-microbiome-conference-speaker-panels

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is awesome. I think you probably did coin it.

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