Prominent Women in Behavior Analysis: An Introduction.

Abstract

Today is an exciting time for women in behavior analysis. Over the years, multiple articles have documented increases in women’s participation in behavior analysis (e.g., McSweeney and Swindell 1998; McSweeney et al. 2000; Myers 1993; Poling et al. 1983; Simon et al. 2007). Contemporary data, however, depict an even more striking degree of participation. For example, 82.2 % of Behavior Analyst Certification Board® (BACB®) certificants are female,1 including 68.3 % of those who are certified at the doctoral level (i.e., BCBA-D™). These data represent a 148 % increase in female certificants over the last 15 years. The Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI) reported that 52 % of their full members in 2014 were women (personal communication ABAI, April 7, 2015).2 Female authors accounted for 55.5 % of authors who published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA) in 2014. These data represent a 142 % increase since the first volume of JABA was published in 1968. In addition, 27.1 % of authors who published in the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (JEAB) in 2014 were female. These data represent a 115 % increase since the average from 1978 to 1982. Given the representation of women in behavior analysis, a demographic population that is typically a minority in other scientific disciplines (National Science Foundation 2015), has increased substantially over a relatively short period of time (~20 years), we thought it an important time to provide accounts from the perspectives of prominent women who experienced behavior-analytic academic training and professional environments over this period of time and get advice based on what they learned.