Rich McIlroy

When I studied for my undergraduate psychology degree, I was only one of seven or eight males in a group of around 110 students that year. I may have given it a passing thought as to why there were more females than males, but I certainly did not dwell on it. When studying for my master’s in research methods, the gender split was 50/50. Although I thought it curious that the female bias in the undergraduate course did not translate to the master’s, it was again not something to which I paid much attention. I simply wasn’t thinking about gender at that time (beyond perhaps our lessons on sampling and population representation). I barely even gave it a thought when I moved to the engineering department to study for my doctorate in human factors and transportation, despite the huge gender imbalance in student and staff populations in the faculty.

It is only since completing my doctorate in 2016 and working in a variety of road safety and active travel projects across several countries that I began to grasp the importance of gender equality in research. Just like many other researchers, especially male researchers like me who have been somewhat (or wholly) ignorant of the data gap issue, I really need to know more and do more. Hence my involvement in the CtDG working group.