Women In Astronomy: March 2022

Thursday, March 31, 2022

Celebrating the Pioneering Women of Astronomy and Space Exploration

By Nicolle Zellner, co-Chair of the CSWA

We stand on the shoulders of giants! March is Women's History Month, and this blog has honored women in science with multiple posts. It's hard to forget the pioneering work of those early female astronomers who worked as computers at the turn of the 20th Century, whether in the United States at Harvard or abroad at the Vatican.

Sisters Emilia Ponzoni, Regina Colombo, Concetta Finardi and Luigia Panceri mapped
the positions and brightness of 481,215 stars for the Vatican. Photo Credit: On Being (Flickr)

Other women tested the limits of aviation and space flight. Bessie Coleman, Jackie Cochran, Valentina Tereshkova, Sally Ride, Mae Jamison, Ellen Ochoa, and Eileen Collins flew fast, long, and high—breaking the air and space ceilings for all of us. Wally Funk, an original First Lady Astronaut Trainee, became the oldest woman to fly in space in July 2021. The next people on the Moon will include the first woman and the first person of color. Perhaps the final frontier really will be for everyone.

Bessie Coleman "dared to dream".
Photo credit: Alamy

But if it weren't for the calculations (and just plain physics!), humans wouldn't travel safely into space and home again. On her experience working as a 'human computer' at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Macie Roberts commented, "you have to look like a girl, act like a lady, think like a man, and work like a dog." Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson were just some of the brain power behind those early NASA spaceflights.

Generations later, these women continue to inspire those of us who are reading their stories today. Those stories have been told in a variety of media, including The Glass Universe (review), Hidden Figures, Silent Sky, The Mercury 13, Right Stuff, Wrong Sex, and Rise of the Rocket Girls. Do you know of others? Post them in the comments section.

We should continue to support and recognize women and the work we all do. Helen Ling, a software engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the 1950s and 1960s, once said "...if you hire [men] under you, they're uncomfortable, you're uncomfortable. So I just hired women just out of college. I thought that if you didn't give them a chance, they'll never get a chance."

The same could be said when standing on the shoulders of giants. Thanks, pioneers, for giving us all a chance.

Friday, March 25, 2022

AASWomen Newsletter for March 25, 2022

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of March 25, 2022
eds: Heather Flewelling, Nicolle Zellner, Alessandra Aloisi, Jeremy Bailin and Sethanne Howard

[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. --eds.]

This week's issues:

1. Expanding Space in Astrophysics: A Wikipedia Edit-a-thon
2. New Graduate-Student Mentoring Program with NHFP Fellows
3. Out in Astronomy — A Panel Discussion
4. The rise of citational justice: how scholars are making references fairer

5. Gender Differences in Self-Estimated Intelligence: Exploring the Male Hubris, Female Humility Problem
6. Seattle-area high school senior awarded $250,000 for gravitational wave research
7. Job Opportunities
8. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter
9. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter
10. 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.

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1. Expanding Space in Astrophysics: A Wikipedia Edit-a-thon
From: Bryne Hadnott via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

Join APS and Physical Review D for a special event held in conjunction with the APS April Meeting 2022—Expanding Space in Astrophysics: A Wikipedia Edit-a-thon.

This virtual event will be held on Sunday, April 10, 12:00 p.m to 3:00 p.m. ET, where we will create Wikipedia pages about inspiring women and historically marginalized groups in astrophysics. Sound fun? Please RSVP by April 7, using this registration link (https://april.aps.org/events/wiki-edit-a-thon). Please note: You do not need to be a registered attendee of the April Meeting to attend.

Thursday, March 24, 2022

Expanding Space in Astrophysics: A Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

Written by Alexandra Lau

Join APS and Physical Review D for a special event held in conjunction with the APS April Meeting 2022—Expanding Space in Astrophysics: A Wikipedia Edit-a-thon.

Wikipedia is the fifth most popular website in the world, with more than 32 million views a day. Despite this, according to the Wikimedia Foundation, as of 2020 fewer than 20% of its English-language biographies are about women. The statistics for historically marginalized groups are no better.

During the virtual event, we’ll work together to create and improve Wikipedia pages that highlight the accomplishments of women and other historically marginalized groups in astrophysics.

After you register, you will receive instructions on April 8th about how to join the event that weekend. Everyone is welcome, regardless of Wikipedia editing experience.

We ask participants to do a couple of things after you register and before the event on April 10:

1. Create a Wikipedia account
2. Got suggestions for pages to create? Let us know via the RSVP form or Tweet us at #apsaprilwiki.
3. See this tutorial to learn how to edit a Wikipedia page. This is optional since you'll learn how during the event.

We hope to see you all there!

Friday, March 18, 2022

Aaswomen-Newsletter-for-March-18-2022

AAS Committee on the Status of Women AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of March 18, 2022
eds: Heather Flewelling, Nicolle Zellner, Alessandra Aloisi, Jeremy Bailin, and Sethanne Howard

[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. Be well! --eds.]

This week's issues:

1. Cross-Post - Women are creating a new culture for astronomy

2. Cross-post: 120 3D-Printed Statues of Women Redefine What Scientists Look Like

3. Review of the NASA Hubble Fellowship Program

4. Impact of Satellite Swarms and member survey � deadline extended

5. Lisa Kewley named director of the Center for Astrophysics, effective July 1, 2022!

6. NASA criticized.

7. Canadian women making an impact in astronomy and physics

8. Conference demographics and footprint changed by virtual platforms

9. Conversation with women at the NRAO

10. Virtual poster session on Galaxy Evolution

11. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter

12. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter

13. Access to Past Issues

An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.

This week's issues:

1. Cross-Post - Women are creating a new culture for astronomy

2. Cross-post: 120 3D-Printed Statues of Women Redefine What Scientists Look Like

3. Review of the NASA Hubble Fellowship Program

4. Impact of Satellite Swarms and member survey � deadline extended

5. Lisa Kewley named director of the Center for Astrophysics, effective July 1, 2022!

6. NASA criticized.

7. Canadian women making an impact in astronomy and physics

8. Conference demographics and footprint changed by virtual platforms

9. Conversation with women at the NRAO

10. Virtual poster session on Galaxy Evolution

11. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter

12. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter

13. Access to Past Issues

An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.

Thursday, March 17, 2022

Crosspost: 120 3D-Printed Statues of Women Redefine What Scientists Look Like

Written by Jack Tamisiea for Smithsonian Magazine

For Women's History Month, the Smithsonian teamed up with Light Hill Partners to create the "#IfThenSheCan" exhibit, a series of 120 orange statues featuring prominent women in STEM. Credit: WTOP News.

Some of the brightest minds in science and technology are visiting the Smithsonian this month. But instead of a one-night lecture circuit, these scientists, who do everything from design rockets to create shark sanctuaries, will be stationed around the National Mall in the form of life-sized, 3D-printed sculptures.

Featuring 120 bright orange statues of contemporary female scientists, “#IfThenSheCan – The Exhibit” is the largest collection of statues of women ever assembled at a single location at one time. To celebrate the Smithsonian’s Women’s Futures Month, the statues will be displayed in the Smithsonian Gardens and in several Smithsonian museums between March 5 and 27.

The exhibit is part of Lyda Hill Philanthropies’ IF/THEN initiative that aims to inspire middle school age girls to pursue STEM careers. The statues portray researchers from all facets of science, technology and engineering. For the advancement of their fields, these women crawl into bear dens in Alaska, excavate artifacts from swamps and scour the desert for cryptic lizards.

Read the rest of the article at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/national-museum-of-natural-history/2022/03/08/120-3d-printed-statues-of-women-redefine-what-scientists-look-like/

And if you're on the East Coast, be sure to check out the exhibit outside of the Smithsonian Castle at the National Mall!

Crosspost: Women Are Creating a New Culture for Astronomy

Written by Ann Finkbeiner for Scientific American

Ekta Patel, a Miller postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley, wants other women in the field to know that they can be themselves and be great scientists.

Some years ago I made up a list of things I was tired of reading in profiles of women scientists: how she was the first woman to be hired, say, or to lead a group, or to win some important prize. I had just been assigned a profile of a splendid woman astronomer, and her “firsts” said nothing about the woman and everything about the culture of astronomy: a hierarchy in which the highest ranks have historically included only scientists who are male, white and protective of their prerogatives. My list evolved into the “Finkbeiner test,” and to abide by it, I pretended we had suddenly leaped into a new world in which gender was irrelevant and could be ignored. I would treat the person I was interviewing like she was just an astronomer.

Later, working on another story, I started hearing about a cohort of young women astronomers who were the ones to call if I wanted to talk to the field’s best. If the top of the scientific hierarchy now included large numbers of women, I wondered whether they might live in a post–Finkbeiner test world—that is, whether they were just astronomers, not “women astronomers.” I turned out to be 180 degrees wrong. True, they are at the top, but they are outspokenly women astronomers, and they are remaking astronomy.

Check out the rest of the article at the link below and learn more about the next generation of women astronomers creating a culture of inclusivity and belonging. And look out for a quote from CSWA chair, Nicolle Zellner!

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/women-are-creating-a-new-culture-for-astronomy/

Friday, March 11, 2022

AASWomen Newsletter for March 11, 2022

AAS Committee on the Status of Women AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of March 11, 2022
eds: Heather Flewelling, Nicolle Zellner, Alessandra Aloisi, Jeremy Bailin and Sethanne Howard

[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. Be well! --eds.]

This week's issues:

1. Perspectives of Early Career Astronomers Through the Lenses of Diversity, Work-Life Balance, and Mentoring

2. AAAS IF/THEN Ambassadors

3. Where are the women teaching physics? – An interview with Dr Abbey Waldron

4. IAU Women in Astronomy International Women's Day Presentation "Enterprising Women in Astronomy"

5. Want to promote diversity in science? Offer better support.

6. Women in science should be the norm, not the exception

7. Job Opportunities

8. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter

9. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter

10. Access to Past Issues

An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/ at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.

Thursday, March 10, 2022

Perspectives of Early Career Astronomers Through the Lenses of Diversity, Work-Life Balance, and Mentoring

Perspectives of Early Career Astronomers Through the Lenses of Diversity, Work-Life Balance, and Mentoring: A recap of the AAS238 CSWA Splinter Session

By Jessica Mink, Amber Stuver, and Heather Flewelling

The 2021 documentary, Picture a Scientist, exposed the harassment and discrimination that women of all career levels experience in STEM. One part of the Strategic Plan of the Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy (CSWA) is to collaborate with the other inclusion and diversity advocacy groups within the American Astronomical Society (AAS) to address gender-based discrimination, which concerns all of us. Leakage from the career progression pipeline has been a major concern for all of us, so we thought that a public discussion of obstacles and strategies for early career astronomers would be a good initial topic.

For this splinter session, we included the following panelists:

SGMA: Adam L.W.Harvey - graduate student

CSWA: MelindaSoares-Furtado - postdoc

WGAD: JackieMonkiewicz - postdoc

DPS PCCS: Serina Diniega - scientist

During the splinter session, we asked the panelists a series of questions and have summarized the key points of the discussion as bulleted points below.

How can diverse categories of astronomers be supported in their education to complete their degrees?

Get help finding co-mentors who are more capable of advising you along whatever axes are relevant
Find people like yourself and support each other. Make this easy. Community is very important, but often lacking.
Support them! Find other people who are closer to their status.
Careers shouldn't be in the hands of only one close advisor.
Time to graduation should be allowed to grow without penalty.
Students who need to take off time shouldn't be penalized.
Academic culture is a problem. There are a lot of obstacles and challenges that don’t need to be there. Bring actionable discussion on how people should act

What advice do you have for a mentor who is working with astronomers who identify along a different axis than they do? What should they know that many don’t seem to have thought about? What qualities of a mentor make them effective?

Good mentors provide affirmation. Unsatisfactory mentoring can lead to a toxic relationship.
If you are a mentor, use Google to find failure modes of mentoring marginalized groups, to help you learn how to be a better mentor
Advisors often keep moving the goalposts. Set them, and leave them there. Grad school does not work like earlier schooling, but more like the work world. As such, you can do your best and it may not be not good enough
There’s a myth of innate talent: People have it or never will. You're cut out or not cut out. But graduate school is not a priesthood. Once you're in, you’re all wheat, not chaff.
It's too easy for advisors to drop the ball. Things all too often fall through if they only affect the student., because the academic system does not necessarily reward work which does not directly contribute to an advisor’s academic record
It is on you as a mentor to figure it out, don’t put it on the student

Have you ever felt unsafe/threatened at any point in your career? How can the astronomy community come together to prevent things like this from happening to others?

Support your students to keep them out of bad situations or get them out so that they don’t have to skip activities if they've been harassed at them.

It’s hard to call out bad behavior, but it hurts scientists' careers if they avoid conferences or other work related events because they don’t feel safe

Coming out as non-binary led to social isolation, which affected performance. There’s a need to be discussed and addressed.
Conferences / workplaces / research groups need a code of conduct, reporting mechanisms, enforcement of the code of conduct, and consequences need to be imposed on those who don’t follow it.
Codes of conduct with enforcement and consequences can come from funding agencies. That’s where the power is.
Help people who’ve been harmed to succeed in their career

Is there anything that you feel that you cannot do or say that your peers can for fear that it will affect your career? How have you dealt with it?

One can speak before they think, though age brings carefulness. It's hard to talk about discrimination against yourself, but easier about discrimination against others.
It’s hard to talk about having a nontraditional background or being a mother. I tried to blend in like everyone else as a scientist so that I was taken seriously.
Outreach is not always respected as a professional activity.
I’ve been vocal about issues on campus, but not comfortable about pushing for change in my own situation, so I gave up.
Being marked as an activist can be near-fatal to a career. When you do anything other than science, you're seen as distracted.

Have you felt that having a family conflicted with your career advancement? What are/were your concerns? What changes can be made to support astronomers with families?

Strengths come with being a parent in academia, and stubbornness of purpose. Two kids looking up at you can make you feel appreciated.
Banding together helps. Some campuses are better than others. 43% of women leave full-time STEM employment after their first child and 23% of men. An unpublished study finds that this may be as high for women as 70% in the physical sciences. See links to other articles below.
“You can have it all” is not true. Getting a degree, having a disability, having kids - are all full-time jobs.

Question from the panel attendees: What red flags should we look for?

Conferences and journals need to be accessible for neuroatypical individuals. WGAD has several documents that provide advice on how to do this..
80-100 working hours/week for graduate students is absurd, but there are people who believe it. Ask anyone you want to work with whether they believe it. Good: it's awful; maybe work with them. Bad: they know that they can't say they agree, so they squirm uncomfortably; consider whether you want to commit to that institution.
How do people talk about other students? Seeing the best in others is not a fault.
Red Flags for people: personal issues, such as mismatched attitude toward work, and personal issues within work groups as well.
Red flags for institutions: If there are no written policies, there are expectations that can vary for any reason. They also may not have thought about how their institution (or department) works.

Acronym meanings with resource links from above:

CSWA:   Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy
CSMA:   Committee on the Status of Minorities in Astronomy
SGMA: Committee for Sexual-Orientation & Gender Minorities in Astronomy
WGAD: Working Group on Accessibility and Disability
PCCS:    DPS Professional Culture & Climate Subcommittee

Additional Useful Links:

Myth of the Missing Mothers (2009)
Science and gender: Scientists must work harder on equality (2015)
Picture a Scientist, a free PBS/Nova documentary (2021)

Friday, March 4, 2022

AASWomen Newsletter for March 04, 2022

AAS Committee on the Status of Women AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of March 04, 2022
eds: Heather Flewelling, Nicolle Zellner, Alessandra Aloisi, Jeremy Bailin and Sethanne Howard

[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. Be well! --eds.]

Judith Pipher, item 2.
Credit: University of Rochester

This week's issues:

1. Crosspost: Harriet Tubman, Astronomer Extraordinaire

2. Judith Pipher remembered as a trailblazer in the field of infrared astronomy

3. British Council scholarships for women in STEM

4. Interview with T Sivarani: "I Always Thought That I Needed To Be Better Than The Men In Astronomy"

5. United Nations celebrates International Women's Day

6. IAU Enterprising Women in Astronomy event

7. The toll of white privilege: How the dominant culture has discouraged diversity

8. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter

9. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter

10. Access to Past Issues

An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/ at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.

Tuesday, March 1, 2022

Crosspost: Harriet Tubman, Astronomer Extraordinaire

While the last day of Black History Month was technically yesterday, today marks the beginning of Women's History Month. I can't think of a better way to celebrate than by sharing this wonderful piece by Dr. Chandra Prescod-Weinstein on the Black woman astronomer, freedom fighter, and abolitionist, Harriet Tubman. Be sure to check out the Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Project before March 10th for an interactive exploration of Tubman's incredible life story.

Written by Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

The Milky Way splashes across the early evening sky in "Over the Marshes 2" by photographer, Robert Fawcett.

Polaris, the North Star, is so named because it always points toward true north. Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman used the North Star to liberate herself—then went South over and over again, using it to liberate both family and strangers.

Toward the end of his astonishing debut novel of Black queer life during slavery, The Prophets, Robert Jones, Jr.’s “Prophets” declare: “The cosmos is on your side.” At this moment in the text, the reader is called to imagine that our enslaved ancestors were in fact watched over; we are called to remember the stories many of us were raised on, about enslaved folk who followed the Drinking Gourd—the stellar constellation more popularly known as the Big Dipper—to freedom. The Drinking Gourd is notable because of its easy-to-identify shape, which simplifies finding Polaris, the North Star, so named because it always points toward true north.

Polaris was thus a natural compass, especially for enslaved people who were self-liberating, including Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman. The story appears repeatedly throughout popular representations of Tubman: She used the North Star to liberate herself. Then, like a superhero, she went South over and over again, using the North Star to liberate both family and strangers.

Read the rest of the article at: https://msmagazine.com/2022/02/03/harriet-tubman-astronomer-underground-railroad-north-star-nasa/