I attended the Chicago macroevolution conference as a student. Here are the pages of the program. Vrba indeed made a splash (sad to see how few of the speakers are still with us)
Yep. At one point one of the other speakers (who I will not name, but not Ayala) put his arm around her shoulders, which she angrily shook off. The other important woman paleobiologist active at the time was Jeniffer Kitchell, who also did a lot of innovative work.
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Although very stark to see that she's the only woman on the program. Indeed, n women = n sexual harassers (Ayala), which says a lot