A distinguished group of women chemists have started an online protest at Change.org denouncing the lack of women speakers at a major conference on theoretical chemistry. The 15th Annual Congress of Quantum Chemistry to be held in June 2015 in Beijing, China, announced a preliminary roster of 24 invited speakers. Not one of the speakers on the list was a woman.
Professors Emily Carter of Princeton, Laura Gagliardi of the University of Minnesota, and Anna Krylov of the University of Southern California, started the online protest, which is entitled, “Stop Gender Discrimination in Science.” They wrote, “Feeling as fed up and frustrated as we do? Add your voice to ours by signing this open letter denouncing this biased practice, which we had hoped would be obsolete long ago.”
The petitioners recommend boycotting the conference. More than 1,600 people have signed the online petition.
The organizers of the conference have stated the list of speakers was preliminary and that there will be women among those invited to speak before plans for the conference are completed.