March is Women's History Month, and this year's theme is Women in STEM.
As part of my university's festivities, we had a panel discussion
entitled, "Lipsticks and Lab Coats: Women’s Challenges and Journeys in STEM."
Despite not being a wearer of either lipstick or a labcoat,
I was invited to participate on the panel, and got a free lunch out of
the deal.
The discussion touched on many of the issues that I've come to be very
familiar with through my involvement with CSWA:
unconscious and conscious bias, gender policing,
lack of support for childcare, leaky pipelines,
trying to lead while being a woman, two-body problems,
and work-family balance, just to name a few. I have to remind myself
at events like these that although I feel like I'm re-treading the same
ground over and over again in discussing these issues, that's not
true for everyone.
One of the things that I truly appreciated and enjoyed about the panel
was hearing about all the panelists' journeys to where they are today.
We were asked to discuss not just the challenges we faced along the way,
but also why we loved our jobs and what skills and strengths helped
us in our paths. It reminded me of why I became a scientist: the love
of discovery, of exploration, of problem-solving.
At the same time, there were several of us who could speak to being
the lone woman in her department at some point along the way.
Despite all our talents and skills, there's a real lack of
senior women faculty in our university. Many of our departments
have achieved gender balance, or nearly so, among our graduate students,
but our women students have few role models because of the lack
of gender parity in the faculty. Solving that issue is going to take
more than a panel discussion, however.
For my own part, I've been hosting a Women in Physics and Astronomy
Tea on a semesterly basis. The next one will be a little late for
Women's History Month, but better late than never. I'm doing my best
to be a role model for these students, by showing them by example that
they can do what they love and get a successful career out of it, and
their gender doesn't have to get in the way.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Women Faculty: Hiring & Retention
Today's guest blogger is Annika Peter. Annika studies dark matter and gravitational dynamics and is currently finishing up a postdoctoral position at UC Irvine. She is moving to a faculty position in the Departments of Physics and Astronomy at The Ohio State University.
About a decade ago, some top-tier universities starting realizing that they were not hiring or retaining very many women faculty in their science and engineering departments. MIT is particularly famous (or infamous) for having had so few women on its faculty as recently as the late 1990’s. This realization is an indication that the AIP’s finding of a lower proportion of women at PhD granting institutions than colleges and universities as a whole is in part because they simply were not hiring and retaining women at rate one would have expected based on PhD completion rates. Since then, these universities have undergone self-studies to identify concrete steps they can take to improve the retention of women faculty, and have implemented a number of changes. Here are links to a few of those universities’ reports and findings:
-MIT: 1999 report; 2011 progress report
-Princeton: 2003 report
-The NSF funded ADVANCE (Increasing the Participation and Advancement of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Careers) programs at a suite of universities.
-Information on UC Irvine’s ADVANCE Program can be found here.
About a decade ago, some top-tier universities starting realizing that they were not hiring or retaining very many women faculty in their science and engineering departments. MIT is particularly famous (or infamous) for having had so few women on its faculty as recently as the late 1990’s. This realization is an indication that the AIP’s finding of a lower proportion of women at PhD granting institutions than colleges and universities as a whole is in part because they simply were not hiring and retaining women at rate one would have expected based on PhD completion rates. Since then, these universities have undergone self-studies to identify concrete steps they can take to improve the retention of women faculty, and have implemented a number of changes. Here are links to a few of those universities’ reports and findings:
-MIT: 1999 report; 2011 progress report
-Princeton: 2003 report
-The NSF funded ADVANCE (Increasing the Participation and Advancement of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Careers) programs at a suite of universities.
-Information on UC Irvine’s ADVANCE Program can be found here.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Mind the Gender Gap
A recent Nature article discusses problems with the hiring and retention of women in science and engineering.
The National Science Foundation finds that while female scientists have made steady gains in recent decades they face persistent career challenges. US universities and colleges employ far more male scientists than female ones and men earn significantly more in science occupations.
Saturday, March 23, 2013
AASWomen for March 22, 2013
AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy
Issue of March 22, 2013
eds. Caroline Simpson, Michele Montgomery, Daryl Haggard, and Nick Murphy
This week's issues:
Issue of March 22, 2013
eds. Caroline Simpson, Michele Montgomery, Daryl Haggard, and Nick Murphy
This week's issues:
1. Obstacles to Institutional Change
4. 6 Tips for Surviving a Postdoc
5. Good Beach Reading: The Feminine Mystique
6. More Options, Not Inability, Explains Why Fewer Women Have Science Jobs
7. Call for Submissions for new project: Grandma got STEM
8. IUPAP Working Group on Women in Physics: Supporting Women in Physics in Developing Countries
9. 2014 OUSTA Award of the Society for College Science Teachers
10. Female Visitor Programme seeks applicants
12. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter
13. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter
Friday, March 22, 2013
Obstacles to Institutional Change
A thoughtful reader made this observation about my article in the 2013 January/February AAS Newsletter:
[T]here is one sentence in your piece that grabbed my attention, and I would argue brings up a point far more substantive than grammar and political correctness: "One grumpy, misogynistic tenured faculty member can cause many difficulties, but he cannot prevent change."
This reader's reaction to my provocative sentence was thoughtful and important. The writer continued,
In my service as an academic administrator at multiple institutions over the years, I have, not frequently, but still on multiple occasions, encountered situations where the single largest impediment to a proposed action to improve the status of women in an astronomy department has been the views of a female faculty member who was vocally against the proposal. I don't pretend to understand why, other than the facile "people are only human, and half of those are female." Perhaps some women are so (often justifiably) bitter from past experiences that they subconsciously are feeling "I suffered to get here and so must all others." (Ouch! -- I hope this is wrong.)
Women who are overtly against proposals to improve the status of women swing a disproportionate and often unrecognized amount of power: the dissent of only one women is quite enough to sway the votes of otherwise well-intended men, who correctly reason that on this subject, a woman has more experience. Of course, we must not discount the possibility that the woman's reasoning and view, even if in the extreme minority, is entirely correct in some or many cases, and the males just don't see this! But no one of either gender has infallible judgement plus a crystal ball, and in the admittedly limited number of situations I've personally experienced, hindsight of years later showed that the proposed action to improve the status of women, opposed by a woman, turned out to be correct.
So your quoted sentence can be taken by many as a none-too-subtle claim that only males are a problem in advancing the status of women in academia, and at some level I offer friendly disagreement.
My colleague is right to challenge any implication that men are the only problem (although this was not the intent of my statement). Women can retard departmental efforts toward gender equity equally or moreso to men not only because their personal experience carries weight, but also because to oppose them could be viewed as an attack on women, which those seeking to advance the status of women are trying to avoid.
I have rarely seen this happen. When it does, how should one - a senior colleague, a departmental leader, or a junior colleague - respond?
One might try to shift the focus away from gender and towards inclusion and respect for all. How best to do so in such cases is a good question, for which I seek advice from readers of this column.
[T]here is one sentence in your piece that grabbed my attention, and I would argue brings up a point far more substantive than grammar and political correctness: "One grumpy, misogynistic tenured faculty member can cause many difficulties, but he cannot prevent change."
This reader's reaction to my provocative sentence was thoughtful and important. The writer continued,
In my service as an academic administrator at multiple institutions over the years, I have, not frequently, but still on multiple occasions, encountered situations where the single largest impediment to a proposed action to improve the status of women in an astronomy department has been the views of a female faculty member who was vocally against the proposal. I don't pretend to understand why, other than the facile "people are only human, and half of those are female." Perhaps some women are so (often justifiably) bitter from past experiences that they subconsciously are feeling "I suffered to get here and so must all others." (Ouch! -- I hope this is wrong.)
Women who are overtly against proposals to improve the status of women swing a disproportionate and often unrecognized amount of power: the dissent of only one women is quite enough to sway the votes of otherwise well-intended men, who correctly reason that on this subject, a woman has more experience. Of course, we must not discount the possibility that the woman's reasoning and view, even if in the extreme minority, is entirely correct in some or many cases, and the males just don't see this! But no one of either gender has infallible judgement plus a crystal ball, and in the admittedly limited number of situations I've personally experienced, hindsight of years later showed that the proposed action to improve the status of women, opposed by a woman, turned out to be correct.
So your quoted sentence can be taken by many as a none-too-subtle claim that only males are a problem in advancing the status of women in academia, and at some level I offer friendly disagreement.
My colleague is right to challenge any implication that men are the only problem (although this was not the intent of my statement). Women can retard departmental efforts toward gender equity equally or moreso to men not only because their personal experience carries weight, but also because to oppose them could be viewed as an attack on women, which those seeking to advance the status of women are trying to avoid.
I have rarely seen this happen. When it does, how should one - a senior colleague, a departmental leader, or a junior colleague - respond?
One might try to shift the focus away from gender and towards inclusion and respect for all. How best to do so in such cases is a good question, for which I seek advice from readers of this column.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Up Against the Boards
This blog is close to home for me, from University of Maryland. It is about a study by UMd faculty member Waverly Ding showing the lack of women on corporate boards. Along with co-authors Fiona Murray of MIT and Toby E. Stuart of University of California Berkley, she analyzed survey data of 6,000 U.S. scientists in the biotech industry over a career span of 30 years. In a paper in the Academy of Management Journal, they find that women at the professorial rank are almost 50% less likely to serve on corporate boards and start new companies than equivalent men.
The study included controls for professional accomplishments and other academic factors to make the best possible apples-to-apples comparison. About 30% of PhD earners in this field are women, but only 7% of those women serve on corporate boards. This percentage on boards is about half that of that for male scientists. Board membership is particularly important in this area of science because research is often tied to corporate needs and funding. "Beliefs that women lack leadership and business savvy, and are not capable of helping new ventures attract investment, block their advancement in these areas", according to Dr. Ding.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Good Beach Reading: The Feminine Mystique
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan has been called the book that changed the consciousness of a country—and the world. Originally published in 1963, this trailblazing book that changed women’s lives is still just as relevant 50 years later.
For the first time in my academic career, I spent Spring Break at the beach. I took not only The Feminine Mystique, but also A Room of One’s Own and The Mercury 13. I came away with a healthy dose of 20th century feminism as well as inspiration. Betty Friedan not only informed me of things I knew little about (the shift backwards in the Women’s Magazines from stories about “Career Women” in the 1930s and 40s to stories about the “Happy Housewife” in the 1950s and 60s; the Madison Avenue campaign to make women fall in love with household appliances), but also put into perspective the issues I was familiar with (the Seneca Fall Women’s Rights convention; the college “Mrs. Degree”). The book is also very well written. If you are headed to the beach this spring, or even if you’re not, The Feminine Mystique is worth a read.
Saturday, March 16, 2013
AASWomen for March 15, 2013
AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of March 15, 2013
eds. Caroline Simpson, Michele M. Montgomery, Daryl Haggard, and Nick Murphy
This week's issues:
Issue of March 15, 2013
eds. Caroline Simpson, Michele M. Montgomery, Daryl Haggard, and Nick Murphy
This week's issues:
1. Top 10 Ways to be a Better Advisor to Graduate Students
2. Academia [and the "endogamous" marriage habits of physicists]
3. Think About Expectations for Women in Undergraduate Science
4. National Women's History Month
5. NSF Report: Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science
6. Women in Science: Women's Work
7. NSF: ‪Innovation in Graduate Education Challenge‬
8. Women in Math and Science Quiz
10. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter
11. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
ADVICE: Top 10 Ways to be a Better Advisor for Graduate Students
A
graduate student recently asked me for advice on how to deal with problems she
was having with her research advisor. It occurred to me that I had already
written extensively on this very subject. It was one of the first tasks I took
on when I became a CSWA member and an editor of the AASWOMEN Newsletter. In
fact, the Top 10 Ways to be a BetterAdvisor for Graduate Students was the issue that inspired the CSWA Adviceweb page, but that was back in 2006! A whole generation of grad students had
come and gone, but the advice we came up with back then still appears to be relevant.
The graduate student mentioned above thought it was helpful for her case.
CSWA
members discussed ways to make sure this advice remained available to the
current generation of grad students and advisors. We decided to try a once-per-month
blog post, i.e., an advice column. We’re starting with the Top 10 Ways to be a Better Advisor for Graduate Students. If you
have points to add to our Top 10 list or other topics that we should cover in
future posts, please leave a comment or contact any CSWA member.
How
do we learn to be a good advisor? Our grad students don't come with an
instruction manual, but perhaps they should! Sometime we learn to be a bad
advisor because we had a bad advisor. Sometime we expect our students to know
everything we do. Sometimes we make the same mistakes over and over again.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Academia and Family Structure
Today's guest blogger is Annika Peter. Annika studies dark matter and gravitational dynamics and is currently finishing up a postdoctoral position at UC Irvine. She is moving to a faculty position in the Departments of Physics and Astronomy at The Ohio State University.
A number of studies indicate that, at the faculty level, a large proportion of women physicists and astronomers are partnered with other academic scientists (especially other physicists!). The exact numbers are hard to come by---a lot of the time, all physical scientists are lumped together in studies, even though there are hints that there are major differences across fields (with Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research finding that physicists have the most “endogamous” marriage habits). I have found only one survey specific to physicists, and it is not especially recent (1998 to be specific). Moreover, I have not yet been able to find cohort studies that examine family structures at a variety of career stages, or studies of the reasons why both men and women leave the academic track. I am also interested to see if there is greater or lesser selection pressure on dual academic couples. In my experience, a high percentage of women in physics and astronomy are coupled with other academic scientists at just about all career stages, but I would like to see some cold, hard numbers on this.
A number of studies indicate that, at the faculty level, a large proportion of women physicists and astronomers are partnered with other academic scientists (especially other physicists!). The exact numbers are hard to come by---a lot of the time, all physical scientists are lumped together in studies, even though there are hints that there are major differences across fields (with Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research finding that physicists have the most “endogamous” marriage habits). I have found only one survey specific to physicists, and it is not especially recent (1998 to be specific). Moreover, I have not yet been able to find cohort studies that examine family structures at a variety of career stages, or studies of the reasons why both men and women leave the academic track. I am also interested to see if there is greater or lesser selection pressure on dual academic couples. In my experience, a high percentage of women in physics and astronomy are coupled with other academic scientists at just about all career stages, but I would like to see some cold, hard numbers on this.
Saturday, March 9, 2013
AASWomen for March 8, 2013
AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy
Issue of March 8, 2013
eds. Caroline Simpson, Michele Montgomery, Daryl Haggard, and Nick Murphy
This week's issues:
Issue of March 8, 2013
eds. Caroline Simpson, Michele Montgomery, Daryl Haggard, and Nick Murphy
This week's issues:
1. CSWA seeking new committee members
2. Meg Urry Elected President of the AAS
3. Women in Science: Challenges and Opportunities
4. (Re)starting the Discussion about Hiring Practices
5. First time away from the kids? Whoop it up!
6. Feathering the Intellectual Nest
7. The Finkbeiner Test: What Matters in Stories about Women Scientists?
8. Special Section in Nature on Women in Science
9. Should we replace work-life-balance with autonomy?
10. Call for Nominations for the 2013 IUPAP Young Scientist Medal in the field of Astrophysics
12. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter
13. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Feathering the Intellectual Nest*
A few weeks ago, for almost 48
hours, I didn’t grade, read, or think (much) about department issues. Crazy, huh?
The semester had just started and I should have been preparing new class
lecture notes, finishing up projects from the past semester, or otherwise trying
to “pre-organize” so that I don’t feel like I’m putting out proverbial fires
every day over the next few months. But that
weekend? Forget it. That weekend was for me - and a few of my girlfriends.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
First time away from the kids? Whoop it up!
Today’s guest blogger is Evgenya
Shkolnik. Evgenya is a tenure-track astronomer at Lowell Observatory, where she
studies exoplanets, young low-mass stars, and star-planet interactions. She
also is the mother of three young children: Reuben (age 6), Sima (age 4), Leona
(age 1.8). Below is an email exchange Evgenya had recently with her friend Kim,
a geophysicist.
Hi Evgenya,
I need advice/help from a veteran. In two weeks, I'll be
heading out to Dublin for a week-long conference and leaving my kids for the
first time ever. I'm not too concerned about Sam but I'm worried about
how Beatrix is going to deal with my absence. She's almost 2 so won't really
understand that I'm just temporarily away. How have your littlest ones coped
when you've been away? Any tips? Colin will be with them and I've got my Mom
coming out to stay while I'm away so I'm hoping that offers enough distraction.
Also, Beatrix still nurses a few times a day so I'm worried that my absence
will be traumatizing. And, how do you personally cope with being away from your
kids for extended periods? I'm missing them already and I haven't even left
yet!! I think I'm going to need therapy after this! Any words of wisdom, or
consoling, are greatly appreciated.
All the best,
Kim
Kim
Monday, March 4, 2013
(Re)starting the Discussion about Hiring Practices
Many of us received the following email from the AAS, containing a letter from David Helfand (AAS president) about hiring practices. I thought I'd repost it here, to provide a space for discussion about this topic.
What do you think?
- Should we revamp our letter of recommendation system?
- Should we set a deadline for faculty positions as we do for postdocs (Feb 15)?
- Should departments cut down on the number of in-person campus interviews?
- How can we create a more sustainable relationship between the number of PhDs and the job opportunities available?
- What support should we be providing to better prepare our PhDs for the full range of interesting careers?
Letter from Dr. Helfand:
For a significant fraction of our membership, February is probably not their favorite month. Despite being the calendrical midget with the smallest number of days, for those on the job market it probably produces the largest amount of anxiety. Indeed, the entire job search process seems to consume a larger number of months, a larger expenditure of resources, a larger amount of time, and a larger quantity of emotional energy than it did the last time I applied for a job 36 years ago. Should we reduce this burden? And, if so, how do we go about doing that? I certainly don't know the answer(s), but I think it is time to start asking the question(s).
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Friday, March 1, 2013
AASWomen for March 1, 2013
AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy
Issue of March 1, 2013
eds. Caroline Simpson, Michele Montgomery, Daryl Haggard, and Nick Murphy
This week's issues:
Issue of March 1, 2013
eds. Caroline Simpson, Michele Montgomery, Daryl Haggard, and Nick Murphy
This week's issues:
1. March is Women's History Month
2. The Ph.D. Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists
3. "Why So Few?" a short presentation about the 2010 AAUW report
4. Taking time to think about expectations for women in undergraduate science
5. What does it mean to be smart?
6. Men and Women, Like Totally, Talk Differently?
7. Women in science: challenges and opportunities
8. The Spring 2013 Gazette is available online
9. The 2013 Blewett Fellowship
10. Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching
11. 2013 Rocks!
13. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter
14. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter