Women In Astronomy: AASWomen Newsletter for January 12, 2018

AAS Committee on the Status of Women AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of January 12, 2018
eds: Nicolle Zellner, Heather Flewelling, Christina Thomas, and Maria Patterson

This week's issues:

1. New Initiatives Offer Jobs, Funding to Women Only
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]

The Max Planck Society and the Australian government are taking direct approaches to address gender disparities in academic science: fund more research by female scientists and increase the number of research groups led by women each year.

2. Gender Discrimination in Science is Especially Common
From: Heather Flewelling [heather_at_ifa.hawaii.edu]

By: Cary Funk

"As the national conversation about how women are treated in the workplace continues, a new Pew Research Center report finds that half of women working in science, tech, engineering and math (STEM) jobs report experiencing discrimination at work due to their gender, more than women in non-STEM jobs (41 percent) and far more than men working in STEM jobs (19 percent)."

3. A Different Take on Sexism in Science
From: Heather Flewelling [heather_at_ifa.hawaii.edu]

By: Clair Lehmann, Debra Soh

"Recently Scientific American ran a blog post by John Horgan, which argued that science is sexist at its core. Horgan wrote: Is science sexist? Of course it is, in two ways. First, women in science (including engineering, math, medicine) face discrimination, harassment and other forms of maltreatment from men. Second, male scientists portray females as males’ intellectual inferiors. These two forms of sexism are mutually reinforcing. That is, male scientists use science to justify their sexist attitudes toward and maltreatment of women. Then, when women fail to thrive, the men say, See? Women just aren’t our equals."

4. Perceptions about what it takes to succeed in STEM fields may keep women out
From: Heather Flewelling [heather_at_ifa.hawaii.edu]

"Why do large gender disparities exist in certain fields but not others? Research suggests that many factors perpetuate gender disparities, including implicit and explicit biases, a lack of role models and quality mentoring—and broad stereotypes about gender roles."

5. A Scientist's Gender Can Skew Research Results
From: Heather Flewelling [heather_at_ifa.hawaii.edu]

By: Richard Harris

"The results of an IQ test can depend on the gender of the person who's conducting the test. Likewise, studies of pain medication can be completely thrown off by the gender of the experimenter. This underappreciated problem is one reason that some scientific findings don't stand the test of time."

6. Does gender matter?
From: Heather Flewelling [heather_at_ifa.hawaii.edu]

By: Ben A. Barres

"When I was 14 years old, I had an unusually talented maths teacher. One day after school, I excitedly pointed him out to my mother. To my amazement, she looked at him with shock and said with disgust: “You never told me that he was black”. I looked over at my teacher and, for the first time, realized that he was an African-American. I had somehow never noticed his skin colour before, only his spectacular teaching ability. I would like to think that my parents' sincere efforts to teach me prejudice were unsuccessful. I don't know why this lesson takes for some and not for others. But now that I am 51, as a female-to-male transgendered person, I still wonder about it, particularly when I hear male gym teachers telling young boys “not to be like girls” in that same derogatory tone."

Read more at

https://www.nature.com/articles/442133a

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Friday, January 12, 2018

AASWomen Newsletter for January 12, 2018