Report on women in IR (WIR 2021) at SIGIR 2021

Abstract

The SIGIR'21 Women in IR event 1 , co-organized by SIGIR WIR co-chairs, Nazli Goharian (US East Coast) and Hannah Bast (Central Europe), took place on July 13-14 and was attended by ~70 participants. Due to Covid-19, SIGIR'21 was held online. To accommodate all the time zones, we organized two sessions (A and B) on the same topics. Session A, which was scheduled at a good time for the US and Europe, was well attended by around 52 participants. Session B, which was aimed for Asia-Pacific, had only around 15 participants, where several already attended the earlier session. The low attendance of Session B caused a significant delay in the start of the session which impacted negatively the session due to the very late / middle of night of the organizers physical location. This year's theme was " Community Engagement & Influence " covering two topics: 1. Gender pay disparity and the community feedback and input which were captured via a survey and presented during the session, and 2. A presentation and discussion on the notion of hero culture. Date : 13--14 July, 2021.