At the executive meeting (11/2019), the AONSA executive committee approved the following statement.

• AONSA strives to achieve gender balance in all its institutions and activities bearing in mind other cultural diversity needs and its existing obligations to geographic and academic discipline representation where appropriate.

• AONSA award committees will have both male and female representation.

• AONSA will ensure reasonable representation of the AOCNS organizing committee will be female and that plenary, keynote and invited speakers together with session chairs will include females.

• Those seeking support from AONSA for, meetings, workshops and schools will have to demonstrate their efforts to address agender balance including targets for gender equality

For AONSA to achieve these targets it is necessary for each of the member societies to reflect on the diversity of their membership and to proactively target early career researchers to address gender balance.