Milestone reached: Gender equity in post contributions

A View by Alice Laciny, for the Blog team

As frequent readers of the Myrmecological News Blog (MNB) will probably already be aware, we are committed to advancing equity and diversity within the blog’s editorial team, content contributors, and the scientific myrmecological community as a whole.

Therefore, we are now happy and proud to announce that we have reached our goal of gender equity in MNB contributions: As of August 2021, a total of 167 posts were contributed to MNB by females compared with 161 by males! Moreover, also the geographic diversity of contributors increased (see map below).

Of course, while celebrating this milestone, we are aware that our work has only just begun.

As highlighted in the recently published paper “Myrmecology, Gender, and Geography: changing demographics of a research community over thirty years” (Lucky et al. 2020), female myrmecologists still continue to face professional and social barriers, despite currently promising demographic trends. 

At MNB, we will therefore continue to strive for balanced gender representation, while also focusing on increasing contributions from members of underrepresented groups and historically excluded backgrounds. The voices of researchers from multiple ethnic backgrounds, as well as from the LGBTQ+, disabled, and neurodiverse communities deserve to be amplified. The inclusion of many different perspectives will not only benefit myrmecologists from hitherto marginalized groups but also ultimately help us all to expand our horizons, foster creativity, and bring forth novel research approaches.

In the future, we will keep working towards our goal of having our blog reflect the true multitude of identities and experiences present within myrmecology. After all, our community should be just as diverse as the fascinating ants we love to study!

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