Astronaut Jessica Watkins (from item 10; credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)Issue of December 03, 2021
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. Crosspost: ESAC SCI-S Science Seminar featuring Dr. Jocelyn Bell!
2. Crosspost: Madagascar STEM Non-profit Completes a Successful OAD Project
3. Adopting as academics: what we learnt
4. Scientists question Max Planck Society’s treatment of women leaders
5. Record number of first-time observers get Hubble telescope time
6. 'Hole' humanises stories of scientists and activists in Antarctica
7. Discrimination still plagues science
8. Professor sparks outrage by saying women should be kept out of law, medicine and engineering careers
9. Silent achievers: Hidden discoveries in Science
11. Women and the environment: power on the ground and in academia
12. Stereotypes about girls dissuade many from careers in computer science
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
An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/ at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.
1. Crosspost: ESAC SCI-S Science Seminar featuring Dr. Jocelyn Bell!
From: Bryne Hadnott via http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com
By the European Space Agency
This crosspost highlights the incredible talk that Dr. Bell gave last month for the European Space Agency's SCI-S Science Seminar.
Read more at
http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2021/11/crosspost-esac-sci-s-science-seminar.html
See talk at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDVVhYtr_dg
Back to top.2. Crosspost: Madagascar STEM Non-profit Completes a Successful OAD Project
From: Bryne Hadnott via http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com
By the International Astronomical Union's Office of Astronomy for Development
“A team of female scientists from Ikala STEM (Women in STEM – Madagascar) implemented LAMPS (Leveraging Local Astronomy to Promote STEM), a project to directly address the inequality between urban and rural Madagascar in accessing quality STEM education and to showcase the relevance of science in everyday life.”
Read more at
http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2021/11/crosspost-madagascar-stem-non-profit.html
Back to top.3. Adopting as academics: what we learnt
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]
By Tony Ly and Nathan W. Bailey
This month, we’re celebrating an important milestone: one year since a court issued the legal order that made us adoptive parents to our son. In 2016, we took the first step towards adoption when we contacted our local government council in Scotland. In our subsequent journey to becoming adoptive parents, we discovered that the process has unique challenges for academics, arising from common preconceptions around work–life balance and pressures in academia.
Read more at
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03482-7
Back to top.4. Scientists question Max Planck Society’s treatment of women leaders
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]
By Alison Abbott
A group of 145 leading female scientists from across the world has signed an open letter to Germany’s Max Planck Society (MPS), expressing concern over “the highly publicized dismissals, demotions, and conflicts involving female directors of Max Planck Institutes”.
Read more at
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03492-5
Back to top.5. Record number of first-time observers get Hubble telescope time
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]
By Dalmeet Singh Chawla
An unprecedented number of first-time investigators have secured viewing time on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in the years since the agency overhauled the application process to reduce systemic biases.
Read more at
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03538-8
Back to top.6. 'Hole' humanises stories of scientists and activists in Antarctica
From: Heather Flewelling [flewelling.heather_at_gmail.com]
By Sarah Catherall
"I remember the time my father came home from his job as a printer on a Napier newspaper and began talking about the ozone hole over Antarctica. It was the early 1980s, when I was a teen obsessed with boys, skating and swotting for school exams. It felt like a moment - until then, we hadn’t worried too much about the planet and our abuse of it. Afterwards, though, we carried on with our lives, and the only difference was we worried about applying sunscreen a bit more as we learned the gaping ozone hole meant we would get sunburned more quickly.
What I didn’t know back then was that it was thanks to a woman - pioneering US female atmospheric scientist Susan Solomon - that we started to understand what was causing the ozone hole to expand. She blamed this on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), pollution-causing chemicals like those found in refrigeration and repellents."
Read more at
Back to top.7. Discrimination still plagues science
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]
By Chris Woolston
Social protest movements such as #MeToo and #BlackInSTEM have shone a light on the need for greater diversity, equity and inclusion at scientific institutions worldwide. And Nature’s 2021 salary and job satisfaction survey, which drew responses from more than 3,200 working scientists around the world, suggests that there’s much more work to do.
Read more at
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03043-y
Back to top.8. Professor sparks outrage by saying women should be kept out of law, medicine and engineering careers
From: Heather Flewelling [flewelling.heather_at_gmail.com]
By Brooke Migdon
“Every effort must be made not to recruit women into engineering, but rather to recruit and demand more of men who become engineers. Ditto for med school, and the law, and every trade,” Boise State University Professor Scott Yenor said at a conference in October.
Read more at
Back to top.9. Silent achievers: Hidden discoveries in Science
From: Heather Flewelling [flewelling.heather_at_gmail.com]
By Dr Karl Kruszelnicki
The field of science is meant to be based upon data and logic - but you might be surprised to find out that this doesn't always save Science from being discriminatory.
Margaret Rossiter, the Professor of the History of Science at Cornell University has written about the “undercutting, undercounting and minimising of the presence of women”.
Read more at
Back to top.10. NASA Astronaut Jessica Watkins Becomes the First Black Woman to Join International Space Station Crew
From: Alessandra Aloisi [aloisi_at_stsci.edu]
By Elizabeth Gamillo
“NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins will be the first Black woman to complete a long-term mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for the forthcoming SpaceX Crew-4 launch, the space agency announced in a statement. The launch is scheduled for April 2022 and will be Watkins's first voyage into space.”
Read more at
Back to top.11. Women and the environment: power on the ground and in academia
From: Alessandra Aloisi [aloisi_at_stsci.edu]
By Nuria Pistón, Míriam Starosky, Ana Souza, and Mariana M. Vale “In 2020, we began teaching a course on women, science and the environment to undergraduate and graduate ecology students at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. The course included lessons from many Brazilian women who lead social movements. We selected speakers on the basis of our networks and knowledge of the field, and we drew on their experiences to build the content. The inspiration for this course came from a talk delivered by two women at ECO 2019, an event organized by graduate students to discuss graduate life and research. They used the trajectories of four often-overlooked female scientists to address the challenges faced by women as graduate students, and the scarcity of women in senior positions in our department.” Read more at
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03524-0
Back to top.12. Stereotypes about girls dissuade many from careers in computer science
From: Alessandra Aloisi [aloisi_at_stsci.edu]
By Allison Master, Andrew N. Meltzoff, and Sapna Cheryan “Stereotypes about what boys and girls supposedly like aren’t hard to find. Toy advertisements send signals that science and electronic toys are intended for boys rather than girls. Computer scientists and engineers on television shows and movies are often white men, like the guys on “The Big Bang Theory.” Policymakers, teachers and parents sometimes subscribe to these stereotypes, too. They might spread them to children.Efforts to combat these stereotypes often focus on boys’ and girls’ abilities. But as researchers who specialize in motivation, identity and cognitive development, we think society has largely overlooked another harmful stereotype. And that is the notion that girls are less interested than boys are in STEM.” Read more at
https://news.yahoo.com/stereotypes-girls-dissuade-many-careers-134151590.html
Read the peer-reviewed article at
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/48/e2100030118
Back to top.13. 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
- Senior Software Engineer, Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD https://recruiting2.ultipro.com/SPA1004AURA/JobBoard/57b96f30-6a4b-42cc-8f73-d417a17b54e9/OpportunityDetail?opportunityId=c80ad539-c096-4831-9573-36d810ee1ae7
- DiRAC Postdoctoral Fellowship, DiRAC Institute, University of Washington, Seattle, WA https://apply.interfolio.com/98319
- Joint DiRAC/Rubin Postdoctoral Positions, DiRAC Institute, University of Washington, Seattle, WA https://apply.interfolio.com/98720
- Outreach Coordinator, Dudley Observatory and Siena College, Loudonville, NY https://siena.interviewexchange.com/jobofferdetails.jsp?JOBID=139974
Back to top.14. 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.15. 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.16. 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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