Issue of October 11, 2013
eds: Michele M. Montgomery, Daryl Haggard, Nick Murphy, & Nicolle Zellner
This week's issues:
1. Results from AASWOMEN Invitational Issue
2. PC is for "please, cookie!"
3. Nailing the Tech Interview: Advice from Both Sides of the Interview Table
4. Why So Few? High School Foundation II
5. Career Profiles: Astronomer to Physics Department Head
6. Gender bias in professional networks and citations
7. Ten Ways to Overcome Impostor Syndrome
8. Both Men and Women Should 'Uncover' Family Responsibilities at Work
9. Why are so few Nobel prizes going to women?
10. Five Women Who Should Have Won the Nobel Prize
12. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN Newsletter
13. Access to Past Issues of the AASWOMEN Newsletter
1. Results from AASWOMEN Invitational Issue
From: The Editors [aaswomen_at_aas.org]
Last month, AASWOMEN sent out its annual invitational issue to encourage readers to invite new colleagues in their departments to subscribe to our newsletter. This year, members of the AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy (CSWA) contacted colleagues in multiple nations because inclusivity in our field must be a global effort.
Prior to the invitational issue, AASWOMEN had 1050 active subscribers. Since then our number has increased to 1128 for net gain of 76 new subscribers. The CSWA facebook page went from 767 to 798 likes. The Women in Astronomy blog has also increased its readership, with 9500 visitors in September compared to about 4000 a year before.
We thank everyone who forwarded our invitation issue to other members of the astronomical community. The increase in numbers shows how important inclusivity issues are.
Back to top.2. PC is for "please, cookie!"
From: Hannah Jang-Condell via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com
Recently, I was talking with a colleague about a class he was teaching. He said, "and the book was written by [prominent physicist]. She's a woman physicist, you know," (emphasis mine) and he gave me a Look. It was the kind of Look that said, "hey, see? I just praised a women scientist, proving I'm not biased. Give me a cookie!"
I'm never quite sure how to respond to this kind of thing. Because, on the one hand, it's great that they recognize women's accomplishments. But on the other hand, if I give them a cookie this time, they'll continue to expect cookies every other time they make some small gesture. Not to mention it makes me feel singled out. Why do I need to be the one to give approval?
To read more, please see
http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2013/10/pc-is-for-please-cookie.html
Back to top.3. Nailing the Tech Interview: Advice from Both Sides of the Interview Table
From: Jessica Kirkpatrick via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com
A year ago, I made the transition from astrophysicist to data scientist. One of the harder parts of making the transition was convincing a tech company (during the interview process) that I could do the job. Having now been on both sides of the interview table, I’d like to share some advice to those wishing to break into the tech/data science industry. While this advice is applicable to candidates in general, I’m going to be gearing it towards applicants coming from academia / PhD programs.
Most tech companies are interested in smart, talented people who can learn quickly and have good problem solving skills. We see academics as having these skills. Therefore, if you apply for internships or jobs at tech companies, you will most likely get a response from a recruiter. The problem is that once you get an interview, there are a lot of industry-specific skills that the company will try to assess, skills that you may or may not have already.
To read more, please see
http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2013/10/datascienceinterview.html
Back to top.4. Why So Few? High School Foundation II
From: Joan Schmelz via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com
The 2010 report entitled, Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), reviews GPAs and high-stakes testing. The graph above shows students' average GPA in high school math and science combined over time, by gender. High school girls now also earn higher GPAs in math and science, on average, than their male peers do. It is also important to note that average GPAs in math and science for all students are improving over time.
To read more, please see
http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2013/10/why-so-few-high-school-foundation-ii.html
Back to top.5. Career Profiles: Astronomer to Physics Department Head
From: Laura Trouille via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com
The AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy and the AAS Employment Committee have compiled dozens of interviews highlighting the diversity of career trajectories available to astronomers. The interviews share advice and lessons learned from individuals on those paths.
Below is our interview with Edmund Bertschinger, an astronomer turned tenure track faculty and chair of the Physics Department at MIT. If you have questions, suggestions, advice to share, etc. about this career path, please leave a comment below.
To read more, please see
http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2013/10/career-profiles-astronomer-to-physics.html
Back to top.6. Gender bias in professional networks and citations
From: Nancy Morrison [nmorris_at_utnet.utoledo.edu]
In at least one scholarly discipline, international relations, papers by men are cited disproportionately to their numbers in the field. David Lake, author of a guest blog post in The Washington Post's The Monkey Cage, describes his own experience with the "citation gap" and makes conjectures regarding the reason for it: (1) men may devalue the work of female scholars; and (2) professional networks tend to be segregated by gender, and people tend to cite other members of their own networks. The post then argues that, even if there were no sexism and no unconscious bias, societal attitudes would lead to gendered professional networks. " ... this homophily does not require or imply any active prejudice or hostility, just a slightly higher probability of two men or two women establishing a professional relationship than a man and a woman - replicated many times over." The post concludes with recommendations for action by male and female professionals.
This post is the last of an interesting series on the citation gap in the field of political science. Has similar research been done in astronomy?
To read this article, please see
Back to top.7. Ten Ways to Overcome Impostor Syndrome
From: Johanna Teske [jkteske_at_email.arizona.edu]
By Joyce Roche
Many successful women suffer from impostor syndrome. Impostor syndrome is the feeling that you’re a fraud—that you’re somehow less qualified than your peers, less deserving of success, and that you'll be "found out" if you don’t work longer and harder than everyone else.
Despite the fact that I've been a corporate vice president, a president, a CEO, and have served on the boards of four Fortune 500 companies, I struggled for many years during my career before I no longer needed external validation to believe I was doing a great job. Just about every new accomplishment came with the stultifying doubt that I did not deserve the success and that sooner or later I would be discovered as an impostor.
To read more, please see
http://shriverreport.org/10-ways-to-overcome-impostor-syndrome-joyce-roche
Back to top.8. Both Men and Women Should 'Uncover' Family Responsibilities at Work
From: Johanna Teske [jkteske_at_email.arizona.edu]
By KJ Dell'Antonia
Of course people cover up aspects of themselves on the job. The workplace is generally no place for a rehash of a drinking binge or to flaunt your Axl Rose tattoo (depending, of course, on the workplace). But when people cover up their families' needs, they're putting family responsibility in the category of "things we don't talk about at work," and the results are wide reaching.
Kenji Yoshino, a professor at New York University's law school and author of the book "Covering," and Christie Smith, a principal at Deloitte, recently looked at the question of who covers up family associations at work, along with the ways people feel a need to cover their sexual orientation, race, socioeconomic background and gender. They found that a broad range of people, including straight white men, avoid talking about family with colleagues, and that “covering” makes those employees disinclined to stand up for others whose family needs come up at work, less likely to vocally support family-friendly policies, and can even lead them to avoid those who are more open about their family needs.
To read more, please see
Back to top.9. Why are so few Nobel prizes going to women?
From: Rick Fienberg [rick.fienberg_at_aas.org]
By Susan White and Rachel Ivie
On Tuesday the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences will announce the winners of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics. Since 1901, when Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was named the first recipient, a total of 193 people have been honored as Physics Laureates.
In 1903, one of the very first Prizes in went to Marie Curie, and in the 110 years since, the only other woman to win the distinction was Maria Goeppert Mayer, whose prize was announced in 1963, prior to the Kennedy assassination. In the 50 years since, 114 men have won. All the men have deserved it, of course. The prize recognizes the very best scientists and most important discoveries of the day. But with only 2 out of 193 winners, women have won only about 1 percent of the time. So why are so few prizes going to women?
To read more, please see
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-white/blind-ambition_2_b_4039523.html
Back to top.10. Five Women Who Should Have Won the Nobel Prize
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu>]
By Anna Leahy and Douglas Dechow
It's Nobel Prize season! The three big science categories -- physiology or medicine, physics, and chemistry--were just announced on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Of the eight science winners, how many are women? Zero!
That's the usual number of women in the annual mix. No female scientist has been awarded a Nobel Prize since 2009. In "The Nobel Prize: Where are All the Women?" we wrote about the paucity of women among Nobel laureates in the sciences and about some of the women who had been awarded the prize. "In more than a century, only 15 women have been awarded the Nobel Prize in a science category," we wrote. While we document there some of the ways that the deck is stacked against women, women have made and continue to make significant contributions to science.
To read more, please see
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anna-leahy/women-nobel-prize_b_4074382.html
Back to top.11. Job Opportunities
For those interested in increasing excellence and diversity in their organizations, a list of resources and advice is here: http://www.aas.org/cswa/diversity.html#howtoincrease
-Gemini Observatory has an opening for one Science Fellow at each of Gemini North, Hilo, Hawaii, and Gemini South, La Serena, Chile sites. For more information about these positions please go to: http://jobregister.aas.org/job_view?JobID=46080 http://www.gemini.edu/jobs
Back to top.12. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
To submit an item to the AASWOMEN newsletter, including replies to topics, email aaswomen_at_aas.org
All material will be posted unless you tell us otherwise, including your email address.
When submitting a job posting for inclusion in the newsletter, please include a one-line description and a link to the full job posting.
Please remember to replace "_at_" in the e-mail address above.
Back to top.13. Access to Past Issues
http://www.aas.org/cswa/AASWOMEN.html
Each annual summary includes an index of topics covered. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to aaswlist+unsubscribe@aas.org.
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