Saw this paper again since it was published in Mar 2024 red journal. Looked at some of the numbers. The breakdown amongst ASTRO faculty was 1573 men and 1169 women. The data they reference for all
ASTRO members was 3766 men and 1574 women. 74% of all female ASTRO members were faculty at an ASTRO meeting between 2018 - 2021!? I understand that not every ASTRO faculty would be an ASTRO member, but even if pulling from non-ASTRO members how far would that number change? And 2742 individual faculty, over 4 years 685 individuals? Not sure how the same faculty members were handled across the analysis should they have given multiple talks/moderator/etc across the time period. Still found that to be a bit surprising, so if the numbers are questionable the following analyses may not hold.
But accepting those numbers 70.5% male ASTRO membership vs 59.9% male ASTRO faculty, if put that in a 2x2, the p-value is < 0.00001; i.e. women may be considered
over-represented as ASTRO faculty.
As for "manels", the percentage declined from 25.6% to 8.2% over 2018 - 2021 at ASTRO meetings. If ASTRO members were picked randomly for the 2021 meeting, you would expect 24.4% of all 4 person panels to be all men compared with 8.2% actual (p=0.0004; ie may be biased
against men). But if selecting only from the pool of previous ASTRO faculty (~60/40 split) at random, would expect 9.1% of panels to be all men (p=NS for 2021).
For the converse the percentage was relatively stable over time from 11.3% to 7.5% over 2018 - 2021. If ASTRO members were picked randomly for the 2021 meeting, 0.62% of 4 person panels would be all women compared with 7.5% actual (p = 0.0054, ie may be biased
in favor of women) . However, if selecting from the pool of previous ASTRO faculty at random, would expect 3.2% of panels to be all women (p = 0.19).
These results seem more consistent with deliberate ASTRO policy. Which I understand to be the case. But contra the conclusions of the paper, not sure "further efforts are necessary to continue to improve gender diversity and the representation of women in our field, including the elimination of manels whenever possible." Mission accomplished.