Studies suggest there are few Black astronomers and physicists in Canada and the United States due to discrimination and micro-aggressions (from Item 5, credit: Arya Djenar/CBC) Issue of June 24, 2022
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Nicolle Zellner, Alessandra Aloisi, and Sethanne Howard
[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. Be well! --eds.]
This week's issues:
1. Crosspost: Science as a way to heal and connect
2. Biden picks first woman, person of color as science adviser
3. Scientists Don’t Belong on Pedestals: Interview with Science Historian Patricia Fara
4. Celebrating 50th Anniversary of First African-American Woman to Earn Physics PhD
5. Where are all the Black astronomers and physicists? Racism, isolation keeping many away
6. ‘Ignored and not appreciated’: Women’s research contributions often go unrecognized
7. Gender Disparity in Publishing Six Months after the KITP Workshop "Probes of Transport in Stars”
9. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
10. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to 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: Science as a way to heal and connect
From: Bryne Hadnott via http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com
“Lindy Elkins-Tanton has two launches on her calendar this year.
Most prominent is the launch of the Psyche spacecraft. Elkins-Tanton, a Regents Professor in Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration and vice president of ASU’s Interplanetary Initiative, is the principal investigator of the Psyche mission.
But before that is the book launch. On June 7, Elkins-Tanton’s memoir, “A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman”, will be released. It is the story of science as a place of healing, as a way of building a life philosophy - finding meaning through the wonders of the world and the universe around us.”
Read more at
http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2022/06/crosspost-science-as-way-to-heal-and.html
Back to top.2. Biden picks first woman, person of color as science adviser
From: Jeremy Bailin [jbailin_at_ua.edu]
By Seth Borenstein
“President Joe Biden nominated the former head of two federal science and engineering agencies to be his science adviser, who if confirmed by the Senate, will be the first woman, person of color and immigrant to hold that Cabinet-level position. Biden nominated engineer and physicist Arati Prabhakar … to the science adviser job, which also includes running the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.”
Read more at
https://apnews.com/article/biden-covid-science-technology-health-8a4b5a21b31337c8e71b64ec895bf866
Back to top.3. Scientists Don’t Belong on Pedestals: Interview with Science Historian Patricia Fara
From: Heather Flewelling [flewelling.heather_at_gmail.com]
By Sophia Chen
“The past is messy. Politicians, movies, and schoolteachers might have you believe that events unfolded one way, but the truth is far more complex and contradictory, as Patricia Fara well knows. “Every person who goes back can fish out a completely different set of facts and tell a completely different story,” said Fara, a historian of science at Cambridge University in the UK. This applies not only to wars and political movements, but also to the lives of scientists, along with their discoveries. Fara has spent her career unearthing new ways of viewing scientific history, and she has written about women’s contributions to science dating back to the Enlightenment period. Her writing often emphasizes the contributions of translators, teachers, and technicians—previously unrecognized people whose work was crucial to the global development of science.”
Read more at
https://aps.org/publications/apsnews/202206/fara.cfm
Back to top.4. Celebrating 50th Anniversary of First African-American Woman to Earn Physics PhD
From: Heather Flewelling [flewelling.heather_at_gmail.com]
By Donnell Walton
“In 1972, Willie Hobbs Moore became the first African-American woman to receive a PhD in physics in the United States. On the 50th anniversary of this historic moment, we celebrate her, and I remember my personal, albeit brief, friendship with her.”
Read more at
https://aps.org/publications/apsnews/202206/legacy-moore.cfm
Back to top.5. Where are all the Black astronomers and physicists? Racism, isolation keeping many away
From: Jeremy Bailin [jbailin_at_ua.edu]
By Nicole Mortillaro
“Canadian astrophysicist Louise Edwards is used to answering some of the universe's toughest questions. But at the moment she's trying to answer this one: How many Canadian Black astronomers does she know?”
Read more at
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/black-astronomers-canada-1.6494702
Back to top.6. ‘Ignored and not appreciated’: Women’s research contributions often go unrecognized
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]
By Holly Else
“Women are less likely to be named as authors on articles or as inventors on patents than are their male team mates, despite doing the same amount of work, according to an analysis of how research contributions are recognized. This is partly because women’s contributions to research are “often not known, not appreciated or ignored”…
The results ... hold true for almost all research fields and career stages in the United States. And although the study focused on women, the authors say they saw similar patterns for people from other groups that are marginalized in science.”
Read more at
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01725-9
and
Read the peer-reviewed study at
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04966-w
Back to top.7. Gender Disparity in Publishing Six Months after the KITP Workshop "Probes of Transport in Stars”
From: Jeremy Bailin [jbailin_at_ua.edu]
By Meridith Joyce, Jamie Tayar, Daniel Lecoanet
“Conferences and workshops shape scientific discourse. The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) hosts long-term workshops to stimulate scientific collaboration that would not otherwise have taken place. One goal of KITP programs is to increase diversity in the next generation of scientists. In this analysis, we examine gender trends in authorship of papers generated as a result of the KITP program ‘Probes of Transport in Stars’, which ran from October 11th, 2021 to December 17th, 2021. While 38% of workshop participants were women, only 19% of publications produced between December 1st, 2021 and June 3rd, 2022 had female first-authors. Further, of these early publications, 61% had all-male author lists. Among publications resulting from the KITP program, the proportions of both male first-author papers and papers with all-male author lists are higher than predicted by models that take into account the gender distribution of the KITP participants. These results motivate more thorough investigations of collaboration networks at scientific conferences and workshops. Importantly, they also suggest that programs, conferences, and workshops of any kind need to take steps beyond those implemented in this KITP program to enable more diverse collaborations and address gender disparities in science.”
Read more at
https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.10617
Back to top.8. 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
- Scientific Data Analyst for the Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph Team on the MAVEN mission orbiting Mars, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO https://jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDetail/?jobId=39804
Back to top.9. 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.10. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
Join AAS Women List through the online portal:
To Subscribe, go to https://aas.simplelists.com and in the "Subscribe" area, add in your name, email address, select "The AASWomen Weekly Newsletter", and click subscribe. You will be sent an email with a link to click to confirm subscription.
To unsubscribe from AAS Women by email:
Go to https://aas.simplelists.com in the "My account and unsubscriptions", type your email address. You will receive an email with a link to access your account, from there you can click the unsubscribe link for this mailing list.
Back to top.11. 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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