Gender equity has been a pervasive societal issue from the earliest recorded human history. Ancient Greek philosophers referenced a commonly accepted hierarchy in which women were viewed as physiologically, intellectually, and spiritually inferior to men. By the late 19th century and early 20th century, advocacy groups in US and around the world formed to pioneer the women's rights movement. On August 18th, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution granted voting rights to women. As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of this milestone, we can see much progress has been made around the world in regards to political, economic, educational, athletic, and religious parity. However, a lot of work remains which requires constant vigilance and effort from all members of society.

One of the greatest areas of inequity is in the STEM (science technology engineering and medicine) career disciplines. Women earn 57% of bachelor's degrees, over 62% of master's degrees, and 53% of degrees such as PhDs, medical degrees, and law degrees in the United States. With a pipeline such as this, there is no lack of qualified women leaders in the STEM arena; however, several recent reports have shown that the progress to equity is slow (Frank, Zhao, Sen, & Guille 2019; Kaplan et al., 2018; Tecco, 2015). This manifests in a variety of ways including unequal representation on governing boards, journal editorial boards, feature speakers at conferences, elected officers, committee chairs, award winners, and reduced project funding and wages. Several studies of effective businesses have found that a diversified board is more successful in retaining corporate talent, maximizing productivity, enhancing decision-making, and reducing “group think”(Hersh, 2016; Nielsen, Bloch, & Schiebinger, 2018; The Belbin Team VB, 2018). Despite this, the percentage of women on boards overall in the US is just 11–12% and has barely increased in the last decade based on the published data by the organization 2020 Women on Board. According to the report The State of Women in Healthcare: 2015 (Tecco, 2015), although women make up 78% of the healthcare workforce, they only make up 27% of board members at top 100 hospitals. Out of 46 Fortune 500 healthcare companies, there are only three women CEOs (Molina Healthcare, Mylan, and Aetna)

The field of cytometry is not immune to these issues. In 2008, a group of women ICCS members noticed the lack of gender diversity in the ICCS council and in the composition of speakers at the annual meetings. This small group of women had already forged great mentoring relationships in the society and felt that formalizing these relationships and expanding the scope would benefit and support the growing number of women ICCS members. They approached the ICCS leadership to request an informal networking meeting to galvanize the women in the society. The mostly male (80%) council unanimously endorsed the idea. In 2009, women members of ICCS began an informal networking meeting accompanied by a presentation with discussion. Male ICCS members were invited to increase awareness of bias in the workplace and become motivated to mentor and sponsor women in their institutions. With a generous grant from the Wallace Coulter Foundation, the gathering has become a formal session during the annual ICCS meeting featuring internal and external speakers. A variety of topics have been presented, including unconscious bias in gender roles, highlights of Sheryl Sandberg's book Lean In, work and the will to lead, work-life balance, the importance of networking, insights and advice from ICCS women members, and mentorship and sponsorship. Attendance has grown each year and the event is now a very valued part of the annual meeting. In 2018, a Women in Cytometry (WIC) task force was formally established by ICCS to increase visibility and directly address the issues of gender equity in the society on an ongoing basis.

WIC provides a forum for women supporting other women. Since the inception of WIC over a decade ago, we have formalized a mentorship program for leadership development and support of the growth of junior members, both professionally and personally, focusing on topics such as negotiation, successful work-life balance, and recognizing and responding to discrimination and harassment. The mentorship program plays an especially important role in promoting gender equity. According to The State of Women in Healthcare: 2015 (Tecco, 2015), a lack of access to mentors is still a barrier for women, with 40% responders without mentors and 85% without female mentors. Additionally, only 40% of those surveyed believed it would be advantageous to have a female manager. In another report, it was shown that men achieve better economic outcomes than women in career negotiations, but this gap is reduced when the negotiator had experience and was aware of the biases inherent in these types of discussions surrounding gender roles (Mazei et al., 2015). This highlights the importance of having a group of mentors committed to supporting not only the individual, but also gender equity in their professional societies and institutions. It is crucial that women support each other in the workplace for progress to continue. The WIC mentorship program is an important asset to addressing this need in our field.

The recently published letter to the editor by Donnenberg et al in Cytometry Part A highlighted the gender imbalance on the journal's editorial board (Donnenberg, Muller, Houston, & Holden, 2019) and further illuminated the current gender disparity in the cytometry community. This prompted us to look at the composition and leadership roles in ICCS. Despite a near equal representation of men and women in ICCS membership, this gender ratio is not always reflected in leadership, editorial board, session chairs, and invited speakers. We sought to look at the effectiveness of the steps that have been taken since 2009 to make ICCS a more gender equitable society. Has WIC and its sponsored activities made a difference? Data were collected and stratified annually by number of women/totals of women and men from 2006 to 2019 with respect to several categories: Cytometry B editorial board, Wallace Coulter Award recipients, ICCS leadership (specificially President and Vice Present), ICCS annual meeting Session Chairs and Speakers (Table 1). Demographic information of the membership was only available for the year of 2019. Similarly to Cytometry A, the percentage of women on the editorial board for Cytometry B was relatively low at less than 30% until 2017 and reached 35% in 2019. Leadership positions have significantly improved to near 50% over the last few years with a high of 60% in 2017.

Leadership positions in ICCS include the executive committee and council members. The executive committee has historically consisted of President, Vice-President, Past President, and one Senior Councilor. With growth in membership and activities of the society, in 2015 the decision was made to expand the senior councilor role to three positions: Senior Councilor for Education, Advocacy, and Quality. In addition, ICCS has a number of councilors at large. Nominations for leadership positions are accepted from the membership and finalized by the Nominating Committee. All positions, except President and Past President, are voted on by society membership. The elected position of Vice President is particularly impactful on the society as elected individuals will spend a total of 6 years serving the society in three roles. They will spend 2 years as Vice President, leading the program committee and influencing speaker and topic selection for the annual meeting. This is followed by 2 years as President leading the society. Finally, this individual will spend 2 years as Past President, remaining on council as an advisor. Due to the significant role of President and Vice President in the society, we listed the gender of these roles from 2006 to 2019. If we consider the past 14 years, the proportion of women serving in the role of vice president has shifted significantly over time. While men accounted for all Vice Presidents from 2006 to 2011; during the following years of 2012 to 2019, a remarkable 75% of Vice Presidents have been women.

Session chairs often see large fluctuations, suggesting a benefit to working with the Program Committee to consistently invite qualified women to chair sessions at the annual meeting. A trend toward parity was seen with invited speakers since 2010 but has not been maintained in the last few years. The most glaring disparity is Wallace Coulter Awardees, with only 14% representation by women.

WIC has made a significant contribution to the society and aims to identify issues and develop programs to continue to advance gender equity. As these issues are not unique to our field, we plan to collaborate with other organizations that are committed to closing the gap. We will work together to role model organizational professionalism and ethics, including analysis and discussion of structural inequities within our organization (Leung, Barrett, Lin, & Moyer, 2019). There are also plans to collaborate with the board of ICCS to institute programs that address diversity as a whole. We must continually raise awareness of inequity to the whole of the society to achieve lasting success. As Melinda Gates said, “As you lift up women, you lift up humanity.” In this spirit, we hereby petition the editorial board of Cytometry B to increase diversity in representation as an empowering gesture to all members of ICCS.

从最早的人类历史记载开始，性别平等一直是一个普遍存在的社会问题。古希腊哲学家引用了一种普遍接受的等级制度，在这种等级制度中，女性被视为在生理、智力和精神上不如男性。到 19 世纪末和 20 世纪初，美国和世界各地的倡导团体成立，以开创妇女权利运动。1920 年 8 月 18 日，美国宪法第 19 条修正案授予妇女投票权。在我们庆祝这一里程碑 100 周年之际，我们可以看到世界各地在政治、经济、教育、体育和宗教平等方面取得了很大进展。但是，还有很多工作要做，需要社会所有成员时刻保持警惕和努力。

最大的不平等领域之一是 STEM（科学技术工程和医学）职业学科。在美国，女性获得了 57% 的学士学位，超过 62% 的硕士学位，以及 53% 的博士学位、医学学位和法律学位等学位。有了这样的管道，STEM 领域不乏合格的女性领导者；然而，最近的几份报告显示，股权进展缓慢（Frank、Zhao、Sen 和 Guille  2019；Kaplan 等人，  2018 年；Tecco，  2015 年））。This manifests in a variety of ways including unequal representation on governing boards, journal editorial boards, feature speakers at conferences, elected officers, committee chairs, award winners, and reduced project funding and wages. 几项关于有效企业的研究发现，多元化的董事会在留住企业人才、最大化生产力、加强决策制定和减少“集体思考”方面更成功（Hersh，  2016 年；Nielsen、Bloch 和 Schiebinger，  2018 年；贝尔宾团队VB，  2018 年）。尽管如此，根据2020 Women on Board组织公布的数据，美国整体董事会中的女性比例仅为 11% 至 12%，并且在过去十年中几乎没有增加。根据报道医疗保健领域的女性状况：2015 年（Tecco，2015 年），尽管女性占医疗保健劳动力的 78%，但在前 100 家医院的董事会成员中，她们只占 27%。在 46 家财富 500 强医疗保健公司中，只有三位女性 CEO（Molina Healthcare、Mylan 和 Aetna）

细胞计数领域也不能幸免于这些问题。2008 年，一群女性 ICCS 成员注意到 ICCS 理事会和年会发言者的组成缺乏性别多样性。这一小群女性已经在社会上建立了良好的指导关系，并认为将这些关系正式化并扩大范围将有利于和支持越来越多的女性 ICCS 成员。他们联系了 ICCS 领导层，要求召开一次非正式的网络会议，以激励社会中的女性。大多数男性（80%）的理事会一致支持这个想法。2009 年，ICCS 的女性成员开始了一次非正式的网络会议，并伴随着介绍和讨论。男性 ICCS 成员受邀提高对工作场所偏见的认识，并有动力在其机构中指导和赞助女性。在华莱士库尔特基金会的慷慨资助下，这次聚会已成为 ICCS 年度会议期间的正式会议，内部和外部演讲者都参与其中。提出了各种主题，包括对性别角色的无意识偏见，Sheryl Sandberg 书中的亮点前瞻、工作和领导意愿、工作与生活的平衡、网络的重要性、ICCS 女性成员的见解和建议，以及指导和赞助。出席人数每年都在增加，该活动现在已成为年会非常重要的一部分。2018 年，ICCS 正式成立了女性细胞学 (WIC) 工作组，以提高知名度并持续直接解决社会中的性别平等问题。

WIC 为支持其他女性的女性提供了一个论坛。自 WIC 十多年前成立以来，我们已经正式制定了一项指导计划，以促进领导力发展和支持初级成员在专业和个人方面的成长，重点关注谈判、成功的工作与生活平衡以及认可和回应等主题歧视和骚扰。指导计划在促进性别平等方面发挥着特别重要的作用。根据女性医疗保健状况：2015 年(Tecco, 2015)，缺乏导师仍然是女性面临的障碍，40% 的响应者没有导师，85% 的回应者没有女性导师。此外，只有 40% 的受访者认为拥有一位女性经理是有利的。在另一份报告中，男性在职业谈判中取得了比女性更好的经济成果，但当谈判者有经验并意识到这类围绕性别角色的讨论中固有的偏见时，这种差距就会缩小（Mazei 等人，  2015）。这凸显了拥有一组导师的重要性，他们不仅致力于支持个人，而且还支持其专业社会和机构中的性别平等。女性在工作场所相互支持对于继续取得进步至关重要。WIC 指导计划是满足我们领域这一需求的重要资产。

Donnenberg 等人最近在Cytometry Part A中发表的致编辑的信强调了该期刊编辑委员会的性别失衡（Donnenberg、Muller、Houston 和 Holden，  2019) 并进一步阐明了流式细胞术界当前的性别差异。这促使我们研究 ICCS 的组成和领导角色。尽管 ICCS 成员中男性和女性的代表几乎相等，但这种性别比例并不总是反映在领导层、编辑委员会、会议主席和受邀演讲者中。我们试图研究自 2009 年以来为使 ICCS 成为一个更加性别平等的社会而采取的措施的有效性。WIC 及其赞助的活动是否有所作为？从 2006 年到 2019 年，每年按女性人数/女性和男性总数对数据进行收集和分层，涉及以下几个类别：细胞术 B编委、Wallace Coulter 奖获得者、ICCS 领导层（特别是主席和副主席）、ICCS 年会主席和发言人（表 1）。成员的人口统计信息仅在 2019 年可用。与 Cytometry A 类似，Cytometry B 编委的女性比例相对较低，到 2017 年不到 30%，到 2019 年达到 35%。领导职位有过去几年显着提高到接近 50%，2017 年达到 60% 的高位。

ICCS 的领导职位包括执行委员会和理事会成员。执行委员会历来由主席、副主席、前任主席和一名高级委员组成。随着社会成员和活动的增长，2015 年决定将高级议员的角色扩大到三个职位：教育、宣传和质量高级议员。此外，ICCS 有许多议员。领导职位的提名由成员接受并由提名委员会最终确定。除会长和前会长外，所有职位均由学会会员投票选出。The elected position of Vice President is particularly impactful on the society as elected individuals will spend a total of 6 years serving the society in three roles. 他们将担任 2 年的副总裁，领导项目委员会并影响年度会议的演讲者和主题选择。接下来是 2 年的总统领导社会。最后，此人将担任前任主席 2 年，继续担任理事会顾问。由于总裁和副总裁在社会中的重要作用，我们列出了从 2006 年到 2019 年这些角色的性别。如果我们考虑过去 14 年，担任副总裁职务的女性比例随着时间的推移发生了显着变化. 男性占 2006 年至 2011 年的所有副总裁；在接下来的 2012 年至 2019 年期间，75% 的副总裁是女性。接下来是 2 年的总统领导社会。最后，此人将担任前任主席 2 年，继续担任理事会顾问。由于总裁和副总裁在社会中的重要作用，我们列出了从 2006 年到 2019 年这些角色的性别。如果我们考虑过去 14 年，担任副总裁职务的女性比例随着时间的推移发生了显着变化. 男性占 2006 年至 2011 年的所有副总裁；在接下来的 2012 年至 2019 年期间，75% 的副总裁是女性。接下来是 2 年的总统领导社会。最后，此人将担任前任主席 2 年，继续担任理事会顾问。由于总裁和副总裁在社会中的重要作用，我们列出了从 2006 年到 2019 年这些角色的性别。如果我们考虑过去 14 年，担任副总裁职务的女性比例随着时间的推移发生了显着变化. 男性占 2006 年至 2011 年的所有副总裁；在接下来的 2012 年至 2019 年期间，75% 的副总裁是女性。如果我们考虑过去 14 年，担任副总裁职位的女性比例随着时间的推移发生了显着变化。男性占 2006 年至 2011 年的所有副总裁；在接下来的 2012 年至 2019 年期间，75% 的副总裁是女性。如果我们考虑过去 14 年，担任副总裁职位的女性比例随着时间的推移发生了显着变化。男性占 2006 年至 2011 年的所有副总裁；在接下来的 2012 年至 2019 年期间，75% 的副总裁是女性。

会议主席经常会出现较大的波动，这表明与计划委员会合作以持续邀请合格的女性在年度会议上主持会议是有益的。自 2010 年以来，受邀演讲者出现了均等趋势，但在过去几年中并未保持这种趋势。最明显的差距是华莱士库尔特获奖者，女性仅占 14%。

WIC 为社会做出了重大贡献，旨在发现问题并制定计划以继续促进性别平等。由于这些问题并非我们领域独有，我们计划与致力于缩小差距的其他组织合作。我们将共同努力，为组织的专业精神和道德树立榜样，包括分析和讨论我们组织内的结构性不平等（Leung、Barrett、Lin 和 Moyer，  2019 年）。还计划与 ICCS 董事会合作，制定整体解决多样性问题的计划。我们必须不断提高整个社会对不平等的认识，以取得持久的成功。正如梅琳达盖茨所说，“当你提升女性时，你就提升了人类。” 本着这种精神，我们特此请愿书的编委流式细胞仪 B增加代表的多样性，作为对 ICCS 所有成员的授权姿态。