Fellowship statistics 2023
At this year’s Fellow’s Forum a request was made to get information on the composition of the Fellowship, in terms of age, electoral college, and diversity.
This is a timely request. In 2015, a long-term commitment was made by the Society on its sesquicentennial that by its next significant anniversary (175 years in 2040) it would have transformed itself so that it was relevant to all people of Aotearoa, and in its membership was reflective of the full breadth of the research, scholarly and innovation communities in this country.
A programme was commenced to address under-representation in the Academy, recognising that there are multiple under-represented groups (women; Māori; Pasifika; non-university researchers from CRIs, IROs, business and industry; the GLAM sector). Within this programme, as well as seeking to address some systemic issues such as unconscious bias, there has also been progressive opening up of criteria, guidance material and training over the last four years.
A particular concern was overcoming the pipeline effect – given that the Fellowship (excluding emeriti) is just under 400, if about 15 Fellows were elected annually, it would take 25 years of electing Fellows with different proportionality for that to reflect in the Academy as a whole.
Accordingly, in 2018, the year of the 125th anniversary of women’s suffrage, what can be termed a “pipeline widening” initiative was undertaken. The specific goal for the year was to elect up to 20 women Fellows to be inducted in 2019 (20 was the number of male Fellows in the first cohort in 1919). In practice, 11 women Fellows were elected of a cohort of 20 in total. It was intended that through the initiative the pipeline would be broadened so the proportion of women Fellows in subsequent years would rise, indeed in 2019 the proportion was close to 50%. In 2020, the Waitangi 180 Fellowship initiative sought to do the same for Māori nominees.
The following charts give a depiction of the Fellowship as of 2023:
