Women In Astronomy: AASWomen Newsletter for February 22, 2019

AAS Committee on the Status of Women

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of February 22, 2019
eds: Nicolle Zellner, Heather Flewelling, Cristina Thomas, Maria Patterson, and JoEllen McBride

This week's issues:

1. Facing the Future: The CSWA seeks your input on our community needs in the 2020s!

2. Request for proposal: Request a Woman Scientist platform & database

3. Astronomy society pushes for diversity in US PhD programmes

4. AAAS Joins with 52 Organizations to Launch Societies Consortium on Sexual Harassment in STEMM

5. A disadvantaged background doesn't have to be a barrier to success

6. Women scientists inhibited by funding methods that favor men, researchers say

7. The Secret History of Women in Coding

8. Origins Conference Travel Award

9. The changing career trajectories of new parents in STEM

10. Strengthening Our Science: AGU Launches Ethics and Equity Center

11. What's Keeping Girls From Translating 'Soft Skills' Superiority Into STEM Field Success?

12. Why Is Scientific Sexism So Intractably Resistant to Reform?

13. Job Opportunities

14. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

15. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

16. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

1. Facing the Future: The CSWA seeks your input on our community needs in the 2020s!
From: Cristina Thomas via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

During 2018 the Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy (CSWA) began an effort to gather information about what are seen by our communities as the areas of key importance beyond scientific research that the AAS, its divisions, and its relevant committees (including the CSWA itself) should focus on as we move into the 2020s. The goal is to use this information to (1) develop one or more white papers that will be submitted to the Decadal Survey as a part of the call for papers on an activity, project, or state of the profession consideration and to (2) develop a new strategic plan for the CSWA for the 2020s.

2. Request for proposal: Request a Woman Scientist platform & database
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]

"This Request for Proposal is for UI/UX design, development, deployment, support, and maintenance of the 500 Women Scientists 'Request a Woman Scientist' resource. The database and platform was created and launched in January 2018 to provide a central repository of women scientists and make it easy to find an expert for collaboration, panel participation, scientific conferences, and media requests, among other potential uses. The database is populated by women scientists who volunteer to be a resource and is open to the public via the 500 Women Scientists website. The current database (Google forms) and web interface (Tableau mapping, embedded into Square Space) are stretched beyond their capacity and design. Using the data we have, we would like to build a new platform that optimizes functionality, usability, and expands our capacity to collect and display this information, including in map format and on mobile devices."

3. Astronomy society pushes for diversity in US PhD programmes
From: JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]

Nature covered the recommendations from the AAS Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion. We definitely featured the report when it came out but this is a much bigger platform!

4. AAAS Joins with 52 Organizations to Launch Societies Consortium on Sexual Harassment in STEMM
From: JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]

"Leading academic and professional societies [including the AAS --eds.] announced Feb. 15 the launch of a Societies Consortium on Sexual Harassment in STEMM - science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine - to advance professional and ethical conduct, climate, and culture across their respective fields."

5. A disadvantaged background doesn't have to be a barrier to success
From: John Mather [johncm12_at_gmail.com] and JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]

By Virginia Gewin

"Women from disadvantaged backgrounds or those who are the first person in their family to attend university (first-generation students) can face multiple struggles when pursuing a career in science or engineering. Nature spoke to six researchers about challenges that they have faced, and overcome, to secure opportunities."

6. Women scientists inhibited by funding methods that favor men, researchers say
From: Alessandra Aloisi [aloisi_at_stsci.edu ]

"Women in science could be losing ground because of methods to review requests for research funding that favor men, say two Stanford researchers in a commentary in The Lancet.

In their piece, researchers Jennifer Raymond, PhD, and Miriam Goodman, PhD, explore gender bias in scientific research funding, highlighting a related article by Canadian researchers about an analysis of funding in their country."

7. The Secret History of Women in Coding
From: JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]

Women made many of the advances in computer programming that are still used today and dominated the field. This NY Times feature summarizes those advances and looks at why the number of women coders has decreased so drastically.

8. Origins Conference Travel Award
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]

The 2019 Life Travel Award is open for applications and nominations. This award is for a PhD student or PostDoc fellow to attend a conference on origins and evolution of life, astrobiology, and synthetic biology in 2019. The application deadline is 28 February 2019.

For more information, please see

http://www.mdpi.com/journal/life/awards

9. The changing career trajectories of new parents in STEM
From: JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]

Researchers followed full-time STEM professionals after the birth or adoption of a child and found that almost one-half of mothers and one-quarter of fathers leave full time STEM employment.

Read a nature summary of the article at

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00611-1

Read the original study at

https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/02/12/1810862116

10. Strengthening Our Science: AGU Launches Ethics and Equity Center
From: Maria Patterson [maria.t.patterson_at_gmail.com]

The AGU announced "the launch of the AGU Ethics and Equity Center, a new hub for comprehensive resources and tools designed to support our community across a range of topics linked to ethics and workplace excellence. The Center will provide resources to individual researchers, students, department heads, and institutional leaders. These resources are designed to help share and promote leading practices on issues ranging from building inclusive environments, to scientific publications and data management, to combating harassment, to example codes of conduct. AGU plans to transform our culture in scientific institutions so we can achieve inclusive excellence."

11. What's Keeping Girls From Translating 'Soft Skills' Superiority Into STEM Field Success?
From: Alessandra Aloisi [aloisi_at_stsci.edu ]

"Women outperform men in many of the underlying skills that lead to job success - skills commonly referred to as non-cognitive because, like emotional IQ, creativity, and conscientiousness, they're not clearly predicted by test results.

The demand for soft skills, as they’re also known, was borne out in a 2017 Harvard study that found 'social skill-intensive occupations' - including teaching and some computer science and health care jobs - increased by 12% since 1980 and enjoyed higher wage growth. Positions that demanded lots of brain power but little social aptitude declined."

12. Why Is Scientific Sexism So Intractably Resistant to Reform?
From: John Mather [johncm12_at_gmail.com]

"In the final months of my physics degree, one of my professors asked me into his office - an exciting prospect, given that I assumed we'd be discussing subjects for my potential honours theses. He closed the door, invited me to sit, and declared he'd fallen in love. He wanted to have an affair, he said, and if I couldn't share in that plan he couldn’t continue as my advisor - he'd find my presence 'too distracting'. He was a senior academic, and married; but this was Australia in the late 1970s and the subject of sexual harassment wasn't on any university radar. It seemed this was just one of life's inequities, another hurdle facing being a woman in science. So I made the decision to leave physics - a subject I loved - and in the following academic year switched to computer science at a different university.

[This article is limited access to Medium members. -- eds.]

13. Job Opportunities

- Program Directors, National Science Foundation, Division of Astronomical Sciences https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2019/ast19001/ast19001.jsp?WT.mc_id=USNSF_147

For those interested in increasing excellence and diversity in their organizations, a list of resources and advice is here: https://cswa.aas.org/diversity.html#howtoincrease

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