Issue of September 25, 2020
eds: Heather Flewelling, Nicolle Zellner, Maria Patterson, Alessandra Aloisi, and Jeremy Bailin
[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. Be well! --eds.]
This week's issues:
1. Government Executive: The Future of Space is Female
2. Major Physics Publisher Goes Double Blind
3. Diversity in science: next steps for research group leaders
4. The US National Academy of Sciences can now kick out harassers. So why hasn't it?
5. Fixing the Leaky Pipeline: Hispanic Heritage Month
6. COVID's Surprising Toll On Careers Of Women Scientists
7. Boiling points: 8 ways in which The Leadership reveals STEMM’s gender problems
8. Math-intensive fields have a gender problem: The men are worse at math
10. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter
11. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter
12. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter
1. Government Executive: The Future of Space is Female
From: Matthew Greenhouse [matt.greenhouse_at_nasa.gov]
"Kathy Lueders had just sent two men into space on a private spacecraft - an extraordinary accomplishment nearly a decade in the making - when she received a call from the head of NASA this summer.
There was a sudden opening in the agency's human spaceflight division, and she was being offered the top job. Lueders, a highly respected manager at NASA, had led a separate program to get astronauts onboard a commercial vehicle and to the International Space Station (ISS), ending a nine-year drought in crewed spaceflight from American soil. Now she was being offered the opportunity to lead the entire division - NASA's most critical - at a time when public interest in space was again growing, when a mission to return to the moon was on the horizon."
Read more at
https://www.govexec.com/technology/2020/09/future-space-female/168739
Back to top.2. Major Physics Publisher Goes Double Blind
From: JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]
"...suspicions of unfair bias are often voiced in the scientific community, and publishers across the globe have been toying with different options to tackle the problem. Now, IOP Publishing (IOPP), a prominent publisher of physics research, has announced a major shift in its peer-review methods, which, they say, could offer better chances of impartial evaluation. By the end of 2021, IOPP journals will make their default peer-review option 'double-blind.' In double-blind review, neither reviewers nor authors know each other's identities."
Read more at
https://physics.aps.org/articles/v13/148
Back to top.3. Diversity in science: next steps for research group leaders
From: Maria Patterson [maria.t.patterson_at_gmail.com]
"Sparked by the global reaction to the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in May, universities, departments and faculty members rapidly issued statements and policies highlighting their commitment to diversity and equity in academia. Conversations on how to create a more equitable research environment erupted on social media, and data on the lack of diversity in academia were thrown into stark relief."
Read more at
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02681-y
Back to top.4. The US National Academy of Sciences can now kick out harassers. So why hasn't it?
From: Heather Flewelling [flewelling.heather_at_gmail.com]
By Giuliana Viglione
"Last year, the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) voted overwhelmingly to amend its by-laws so that it could expel members for harassment or other types of misconduct. Nearly 16 months later, no one has been ousted and no one has used the new system to report known harassers within the NAS's membership, Nature has learned."
Read more at
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02640-7
Back to top.5. Fixing the Leaky Pipeline: Hispanic Heritage Month
From: Maria Patterson [maria.t.patterson_at_gmail.com]
"This is the second blog from the SWE Latinos Affinity Group as a part of our 2020 Hispanic Heritage Month content. In this article, we will talk about the statistics of Latinx folks in STEM academics and careers and the phenomena called the Leaky Pipeline/Broken Pathway.
Women and racial minorities are commonly underrepresented in the STEM field. According to The State of U.S. Science and Engineering (2020), only 29% of the science and engineering workforce was women despite making up roughly 52% of the national population (National Science Board, National Science Foundation, 2020). With even less representation, Latinx and Hispanic folks make up 16% of the United States' population, but only 8.6% of the STEM workforce identify as Hispanic/Latino."
Read more at
https://alltogether.swe.org/2020/09/fixing-the-leaky-pipeline-hispanic-heritage-month
Back to top.6. COVID's Surprising Toll On Careers Of Women Scientists
From: Alessandra Aloisi [aloisi_at_stsci.edu]
"COVID-19 is claiming an unexpected career toll among scientific researchers, and particularly on women, new research shows.
If you are female, have young children, or work in a lab, you are more likely to feel the career-crunching effects dealt by the pandemic, according to a new study from Harvard Business School professors Kyle R. Myers, Karim R. Lakhani, and eight colleagues from institutions including Yale and Northwestern, published in the journal Nature Human Behavior in July."
Read more at
Back to top.7. Boiling points: 8 ways in which The Leadership reveals STEMM’s gender problems
From: Alessandra Aloisi [aloisi_at_stsci.edu]
"There's no shortage of barriers that ensure that the upper ranks of STEMM are majority male. The acclaimed documentary 'The Leadership' takes a long, hard look at the challenges facing women in science - and offers crucial takeaways about gender bias along the way.
The 'likeability' and not being 'difficult' trap - For women, there’s an inverse relationship between success and likeability. The fate of figures such as Hillary Clinton prove that the more ambition a woman exercises, the less palatable she may be perceived to be. In The Leadership, brilliant female scientists reveal the hostility they’ve encountered during field work, often undertaken in remote, high-pressure locations."
Read more at
Back to top.8. Math-intensive fields have a gender problem: The men are worse at math
From: Alessandra Aloisi [aloisi_at_stsci.edu]
"Educators and scientists alike are trying to increase the representation of women (and especially women of color) in the male-dominated, math-intensive fields of physics, engineering, and computer science (PECS). These fields have some of the worst gender imbalances of all college majors, with about four men for every one woman."
Read more at
Back to top.9. Job Opportunities
For those interested in increasing excellence and diversity in their organizations, a list of resources and advice is here:
https://aas.org/comms/cswa/resources/Diversity#howtoincrease
- Dunlap Postdoctoral Fellowships, University of Toronto https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/fellowship/16689
- Postdoctoral Position in Radio Polarimetry, University of Toronto https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/16692
- Assistant Professor, Physics and Astronomy, Rice University, Houston, TX https://jobs.rice.edu/postings/24588
- Postdoctoral research positions, Dept of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, NJ https://www.princeton.edu/acad-positions/position/17501
Back to top.10. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
To submit an item to the AASWOMEN newsletter, including replies to topics, send email to aaswomen_at_lists.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.11. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
Join AAS Women List by email:
Send an email to aaswomen_at_lists.aas.org. A list moderator will add your email to the list. They will reply to your message to confirm that they have added you.
Join AAS Women List through the online portal:
Go to https://lists.aas.org/postorius/lists/aaswlist.lists.aas.org and enter the email address you wish to subscribe in the 'Your email address' field. You will receive an email from 'aaswlist-confirm' that you must reply to. There may be a delay between entering your email and receiving the confirmation message. Check your Spam or Junk mail folders for the message if you have not received it after 2 hours.
To unsubscribe from AAS Women by email:
Send an email to aaswlist-leave_at_lists.aas.org from the email address you wish to remove from the list. You will receive an email from 'aaswlist-confirm' that you must reply to which will complete the unsubscribe.
Leave AAS Women or change your membership settings through the online portal:
Go to https://lists.aas.org/accounts/signup to create an account with the online portal. After confirming your account you can see the lists you are subscribed to and update your settings.
Back to top.12. Access to Past Issues
https://aas.org/comms/cswa/AASWOMEN
Each annual summary includes an index of topics covered.
Back to top.
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