Assessing Gender and Geographic Diversity Progress in Coastal Geoscience and Engineering Prestige Academic Roles

Over recent decades, strides have been made towards increasing the representation of underrepresented groups in geosciences. Nevertheless, notable disparities remain in prestige academic roles, defined here as journal editorial boards, conference organizing committees, and society boards, particularly concerning gender and geographic diversity. Focusing on the subdiscipline of coastal geoscience and engineering, this study evaluates current gender and geographic representation in these prestige roles, measures the progress rate in female representation, and explores strategies to close diversity gaps. Our findings indicate that women and individuals from the global south are underrepresented in these roles compared to their presence in professional society memberships or journal contributions. Although the representation of women in prestigious roles often showed improvement in 2024 compared to 2016, it still falls below the average representation of women in 2024. If current trends persist, only 20% of journal boards are projected to attain gender parity within the next ten years, while over half may regress or take over a century to achieve parity. Survey results reveal substantial variability in recruitment practices, with few organizations actively prioritizing diversity through efforts to achieve geographic representation and gender balance. We leverage these findings to provide actionable recommendations for improving recruitment strategies for prestige roles, stressing the importance of diversity as a catalyst for reduced bias, enhanced creativity, and increased rates of innovation. Ongoing monitoring of minority group representation within academic prestige roles is required to document the success of initiatives to secure continued progress towards equitable representation.