  We present a study on the gender balance, in speakers and attendees, at the
recent major astronomical conference, the American Astronomical Society meeting
223, in Washington, DC. We conducted an informal survey, yielding over 300
responses by volunteers at the meeting. Each response included gender data
about a single talk given at the meeting, recording the gender of the speaker
and all question-askers. In total, 225 individual AAS talks were sampled. We
analyze basic statistical properties of this sample. We find that the gender
ratio of the speakers closely matched the gender ratio of the conference
attendees. The audience asked an average of 2.8 questions per talk. Talks given
by women had a slightly higher number of questions asked (3.2$\pm$0.2) than
talks given by men (2.6$\pm$0.1). The most significant result from this study
is that while the gender ratio of speakers very closely mirrors that of
conference attendees, women are under-represented in the question-asker
category. We interpret this to be an age-effect, as senior scientists may be
more likely to ask questions, and are more commonly men. A strong dependence on
the gender of session chairs is found, whereby women ask disproportionately
fewer questions in sessions chaired by men. While our results point to laudable
progress in gender-balanced speaker selection, we believe future surveys of
this kind would help ensure that collaboration at such meetings is as inclusive
as possible.
