According to the United States National Science Foundation 2015 report on women, minorities and persons with disabilities in science and engineering [1], 56.5% of college enrollees are women. Of the roughly 2.3 million freshmen who intend to major in biological and agricultural science, 63.2% are female. About 48% of people employed in life sciences are female. Of these 53.1% have doctoral degrees and 63% are technologists and technicians. Fewer than 25% of full professors are female. Of academic institution faculty, 47% of males have federal support, while 40% of women receive such support. The gender gap in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) participation is wider in almost every other region of the world [2].. Several factors have been proposed to contribute to the progressively smaller female representation in positions of increasing seniority and success in STEM disciplines. Both male and female scientists cite historical bias in training of, and degrees awarded to, male scientists as explanations for the unequal participation of women in physics and biology, but men almost never cite present-day discrimination as a contributory factor [3]. Indeed, only in the last decade or so have doctoral degrees awarded to women reached parity with those awarded to men [4]. Yet, female scientists continue to encounter manifestations of sexism, defined by the online Merriam-Webster dictionary as: ‘1: prejudice or discrimination based on sex; especially: discrimination against women, 2: behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex’ [5], at all stages of their careers. A recent study [6] analysed the performance, outspokenness, and perceived subject mastery of undergraduates in an introductory biology course. Teachers rated the males as more outspoken. When students were asked to nominate which of their peers seemed to have mastered the subject matter best, males received more nominations than females, independent of their actual performance on exams. The bias was stronger among males – for a male to nominate a female versus a male, her grade point average (GPA) needed to be 0.765 higher than the male nominee's. Females nominated females and males at the same rate per GPA. The three to four most-nominated students in each of the three classes that were studied were male, despite the most-nominated females having better grades than some of the most-nominated males. Across 18 academic fields, the terms ‘brilliant’ and ‘genius’ were disproportionately used by students to describe male rather than female instructors [7]. Faculty also rate male students more favourably than female students. Identical science laboratory manager job application materials were sent to biology, chemistry and physics professors. Materials were assigned either a male or female applicant name. Male and female faculty, regardless of their field, age or tenure status, viewed the female applicant as less competent than the (identical) male applicant, and offered her a significantly lower salary and less career mentoring [8]. Despite an increase in the proportion of biology or life sciences degrees awarded to women [1,4], proportionately fewer academic positions are held by or offered to women. An older study indicated a bias by both male and female faculty to hire a male job applicant into an academic department over an identical female, and to judge the male applicant's job experience as more satisfactory [9]. By contrast, a more recent study found evidence of bias towards women, where male and female biology faculty voted about 2:1 in favour of hiring a female over an identical male applicant [10]. A recent news feature article in Nature cites data that although 45% of PhDs in biology were earned by women between 1999 and 2003, only 26% of applicants for academic jobs were female. Those who did apply, however, were more likely to receive interviews and to be the first to be offered the job than men, and were more successful in tenure applications than men [11]. Although the pay gap between men and women is closing, female biologist salaries were only 77% of those of male biologists in 2008. In 2012, only 30% of NIH grants went to women, and the size of each grant was only 83% of those of men [11]. One important potential boost to early science careers, the NIH Director's Early Independence Award, for which host institutions nominate applicants, was awarded to proportionally (relative to applicants) twice as many males as females in 2015 [12]. Women publish fewer papers than men, and are under-represented in the prestige positions of first and last author. A recent analysis of scholarly articles spanning the sciences and humanities revealed that only one-in-five authors is female. Women represent almost 30% of authors in molecular and cell biology but are under-represented in the last author position, at approximately 15% [13]. Start-up support is significantly lower for female than male PhD basic scientists, where males received more than twice the funding for salary and other support, research technicians, equipment and supplies – a disparity not explained by years of experience or level of NIH support to the host institution [14]. Female physicians with faculty appointments also experience unequal career advancement: when adjusted for years since residency, scientific authorship, NIH funding and clinical trial participation, women are less likely to be full professors [15]. Perhaps not surprisingly, women are less satisfied with their careers as scientists than are men [16]. By analysing attendance at the most recent HIV cure-specific conference (the Seventh International Workshop on HIV Persistence During Therapy) and authorship of presented abstracts, we sought to determine whether there was evidence of gender bias in the selection, and type, of abstracts accepted by the conference.