ADVICE: When to Raise a Family

CSWA convened a panel at the January 2008 AAS meeting in Austin where astronomers at various stages in their careers described the way in which they made their decisions about when to raise a family and how their choices have had an impact on their careers. The panel was organized by then CSWA Chair, Geoff Clayton (Louisiana State University). Panel members were: Hannah Jang-Condell (University of Maryland & GSFC), Margaret Hanson (University of Cincinnati), Orsola De Marco (American Museum of Natural History), Charles Liu (CUNY) and John Debes (DTM).

One of the most difficult decisions facing professional women is whether to have children and, if so, when. In practice women in astronomy have chosen a variety of solutions, ranging from delaying or interrupting graduate school or postdoctoral fellowships, delaying child rearing until after tenure, or even abandoning the idea of having children. These decisions usually have a considerable impact on the career path of a professional woman. The following points summarize the views of the panelists and members of the audience: When is the best time to have kids?

1. All times are equally good, meaning that you need to have kids when the time is right for you. Women cannot always count on waiting until 'the time is right' to get pregnant. Nature doesn't always oblige on a schedule and if you wait too long into your late 30's or early 40's, it may be too late.

2. If you have a choice in the matter, then having kids during grad school might have the least impact on your career because it is easier to take some time off. When you are a postdoc you are usually on a two-year clock and when you are tenure track, you usually on a five-year clock.

Scouting and Astronomy

I was recently drafted by my son's Boy Scout troop* to help them get their astronomy merit badge. It turns out to be quite an endeavor! The requirements can be summarized as follows:

1. Learn how to pack for observing.
2. Learn about light pollution.
3. Learn about how telescopes work.
4. Identify 10 constellations at 8 stars
5. Learn how planets move across the sky.
6. Learn about the moon.
7. Learn about the sun and other stars.
8. Visit a planetarium or observatory.
9. Learn about careers in astronomy.

We're planning a weekend camping trip to one of my university's observatories, and almost as many parents as kids are planning to go.

Out of curiosity, I tried looking up requirements for an equivalent Girl Scout merit badge for astronomy, since activities like the ones described above would be great for getting any kid interested in astronomy, regardless of gender. Now, keep in mind I know little about Girl Scouts, since I only have boys, and I never did much with them when I was young, either.

I found very little in the way of any useful information. All I managed to find was something called "Sky Search" for Junior Girl Scouts, who are 4th-5th graders. By contrast, the Boy Scout troop I'm working with has 6th-12th graders. For this, they need to do six activities from a list that includes

1. Learn to use a star map
2. Identify planets in the night sky
3. Identify 6 constellations
4. Find the North Star
5. Learn stories about the night sky
6. Learn why some stars are brighter than others
7. Learn when certain constellations are visible only seasonally
8. Learn about the Solar System
9. Learn about the motion of the sun
10. Learn about the moon
11. Visit a planetarium or talk with an astronomer
12. Plan an astronomy night

Not only are each of the requirements less in-depth than the Boy Scout activities, but they have fewer of them to do.

If this is an example of how differently Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts treat the sciences, no wonder there are fewer women in science! Now, perhaps I'm just missing something? Maybe there are good programs out there to introduce astronomy and other sciences to Girl Scouts, and I'm just missing something? It's very easy to look up merit badge requirements for Boy Scouts, but I am finding it very difficult to find similar information for Girl Scouts. This makes it difficult for interested volunteers like myself to offer resources to local Girl Scout troops.

Does anyone out there have better information on how an astromer can help out local Girl Scout troops, especially at the middle school and high school levels, where girls start dropping out of science at high rates?

* And I have to say that I'm so pleased that they are now allowing gays to become Scouts. Now I'm just waiting for them to allow LGBT adult leaders.

AASWomen for June 14, 2013

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of June 14, 2013
eds. Caroline Simpson, Michele M. Montgomery, Daryl Haggard, and Nick Murphy
guest ed. Elysse Voyer

This week's issues:

1. CSWA seeks your help
2. Men, Women and Self-Promotion in Astronomy
3. Unconscious Bias: A Personal Story
4. Challenging the Status Quo in Utah
5. The Versatile PhD

CSWA seeks your help

The CSWA wants your input!  In our telecon today, we discussed ideas for future special sessions at the AAS meeting, ideas for this blog, and ways to better coordinate with committees performing similar service (CSMA and WGLE in astronomy, CSWP and COM in Physics).  In the end, we realized that community input would be our best guide.

The CSWA is an active committee.  We blog a lot, we collect advice, we gather information resources, and we organize special sessions at the biannual meetings of the AAS.  Our activities are similar to, but distinct from, the Committee on the Status of Women in Physics.  We're larger, with 12 members, including a number of postdocs.  We try to make a difference.

Before I ask you readers what you would like to see the AAS and the CSWA do to promote gender equity, I will share some issues that are on my mind, and which may be on yours.  A big one is how to increase the number of women faculty members in astronomy (and especially physics), and to ensure that they thrive and advance.  It's unsatisfying when women are 30% of astronomy prize fellows but only 11% of full professors.  The situation is worse in physics - multiply those percentages by about 0.6 or 0.7.  It's a concern beyond you and me; outgoing Princeton President Shirley Tilghman has been a champion of diversity and equity, and has also struggled to diversify the graduate student, postdoc and faculty populations.  This issue is much on my mind as a department head who has struggled to make a difference, and found that it is slow and difficult.

Guest Post: Men, Women and Self-Promotion in Astronomy

This is a cross-post from Rob Simpson's blog Orbiting Frog.

We’re running the fifth .Astronomy conference later this year in Boston. .Astronomy is a small (and awesome) conference for astronomers, where you must apply to participate. Although the tone is relaxed, spaces at the event are in short supply (there are only 50 places). You don’t have to talk at .Astronomy, and there are only a few speaking slots, but it’s a pretty friendly crowd and you can talk about a wide variety of things. So why did only 2 women submit an abstract (out of 27 female applicants) versus 30 men (out of 65)?

We would like to create a broad group of speakers but it’s hard to select talks that don’t exist. Did we inadvertently create a bias toward male speakers by soliciting abstracts on the sign-up form? If so, that’s a worry because it’s how a lot of conferences do this.

Unconscious Bias: A Personal Story

I have given a seminar on Unconscious Bias a few times recently. Some of you have heard it! During the introduction, I try to convey the idea to the audience that we all have biases, and we are (for the most part) unaware of them. Unconscious bias can have a detrimental effect on job/fellowship applications, proposal/performance reviews, award nominations, and promotions – in short, it comes into play any time we are evaluated. In general, men and women BOTH unconsciously devalue the contributions of women, so it is important to understand that unconscious bias is not discrimination and it is not prejudice. In order to emphasize that this is not a talk about male chauvinist pigs versus feminazis, I tell the story about the discovery of my own unconscious bias.

Challenging the Status Quo in Utah

I read an interesting article in the on-line Daily Herald about efforts to attract more women to science and technical fields at Utah Valley University (UVU) in Orem, Utah.  The study contains a number of specific and reasonable suggestions for how to improve the current situation.

The article is written by Barbara Christiansen about a study by UVU professors Cheryl Hanewicz and Susan Thackeray.  The study was done to address the problem of women scoring lower than men on math and science standards tests when entering UVU.  Here are the numbers:  37% vs 43% women vs men meeting the standards for math and 25% vs 33% for science.   One of the motivations for the study was that the Utah legislature has recently approved $10M to enhance STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education and career opportunities in the state and the desire is apply these funds equitably.