Women In Astronomy: February 2023

Monday, February 27, 2023

Cross-post: Women and Girls in Astronomy project

By Suzana Filipecki Martins

From 11 February to 8 March 2023, the IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach (OAO) will hold a series of activities to celebrate Women and Girls in Astronomy. This annual project recognises the role of all women in advancing science and encourages youth on and off the gender spectrum to consider careers in the field.

The OAO invites you to join the Women and Girls in Astronomy IAU Outreach Global Project andbring awareness to the importance of gender inclusivity in astronomy. Please answer a few questions via this form: who they are, their career, their passions, what it means to be an astronomer, and why they support gender inclusion in astronomy. Your profile will be featured on OAO’s social media channels and newsletter as a way to encourage youth across the gender spectrum to consider careers in astronomy.

There are also other ways to get involved:

Host a gender-inclusive astronomy outreach event.

It can be a special edition of Meet the IAU Astronomers!, a gender-inclusive stargazing night, and much more! Event organisers are encouraged to register their events in the Astronomy Outreach Event Calendar. Events will be shared on OAO's social media channels.

Invite children and teens to join the Discover an Astronomer Poster Contest

Children and teens from age of 12 to 18 are invited to participate in the Discover an Astronomer Poster Contest. The competition aims to highlight the profile of astronomers from around the world. The best posters or videos will win a BRESSER NANO AR-70/700 AZ telescope, courtesy Sterren Schitteren Voor Iedereen (Stars Shine For Everyone - SSVI), University Ghent - Dept. Physics and Astronomy, Leiden University, and BRESSER. More information on how to participate here.

Finally, follow the OAO's Twitter and Facebook to learn more about astronomers around the world, gender-inclusive activities and projects, share resources, events and more! And don’t forget to join the conversation by using the hashtags #WomenInAstronomy and #WomenInSTEM.

And a small note:

The OAO would like to thank the IAU Executive Committee Working Groups Women in Astronomy and on Astronomy for Equity and Inclusion for their support and guidance on the Women and Girls in Astronomy Outreach Global Project.

Friday, February 24, 2023

AASWomen Newsletter for February 24, 2023

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of February 24, 2023
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Nicolle Zellner, Sethanne Howard, and Hannah Jang-Condell

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

This week's issues:

1. NASA documentary: The Color of Space
2. NASA names moon mountain after pioneering mathematician
3. Despite progress, fieldwork remains a stumbling block for Indian women in science
4. Female scholars more likely than male counterparts to be elected to prestigious US scientific societies, finds study
5. Inclusive astronomy in Guatemala
6. Inspiring Women in Science Awards applications open
7. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
8. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
9. 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.

1. NASA documentary: The Color of Space

From: Nicolle Zellner via https://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

As NASA prepares to return humans to the Moon, the Artemis generation is looking forward to seeing the first woman and the first person of color set foot there. In June 2022, NASA published a documentary, The Color of Space, that focuses on the lives and careers of seven current and former Black astronauts. Stephanie Wilson, Victor Glover, Jeanette Epps, Leland Melvin, Bernard Harris, Robert Curbeam, and Bobby Satcher each spoke about their path to selection as members of NASA's astronaut corps, as well as their training and mission experiences. The panel discussion was hosted by Vanessa Wyche, NASA Johnson Space Center Director and the first Black woman to lead a NASA center.

2. NASA names moon mountain after pioneering mathematician

From: Jeremy Bailin [jbailin_at_ua.edu]

By CNN Newsource staff

"A mountain on the moon now has a name that celebrates Black History Month in a special way.

Scientists named a lunar mountain near the satellite’s South Pole Mons Mouton."

3. Despite progress, fieldwork remains a stumbling block for Indian women in science

From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]

By Sharmila Vaidyanathan

Fieldwork is a vital part of scientific research in many disciplines like evolutionary biology, herpetology, palaeontology, marine biology, and environmental studies. But for female researchers and students, fieldwork continues to pose several challenges. Apart from safety concerns, lack of sanitary facilities, the need to balance family commitments, and dearth of support from authorities come in the way of completing their projects.

Furthermore, issues surrounding fieldwork are not specific to rural or remote areas either. Dr Harini Nagendra, Director, Research Centre & Lead, at the Centre for Climate Change at Azim Premji University, says women in the industry face safety concerns in urban settings, as well. As a precautionary measure, her team members never function alone, especially when conducting door-to-door assessments or exploring peri-urban and less-frequented parts of cities.

4. Female scholars more likely than male counterparts to be elected to prestigious US scientific societies, finds study

From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]

By Natasha Gilbert

Female researchers in mathematics, psychology and economics are 3–15 times more likely to be elected as members of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) or the American Academy of Arts and Sciences than are male counterparts who have similar publication and citation records, a study finds.

The paper finds that since 2019, female researchers have comprised around 40% of new members in both prestigious academies1. Historically, across disciplines in each academy, there have been substantially fewer female researchers than male ones. Before the 1980s, female members comprised less than 10% of total academy membership across all scientific fields.

Read the peer-reviewed study at

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2212421120

5. Inclusive astronomy in Guatemala

From: Jeremy Bailin [jbailin_at_ua.edu]

By IAU Office for Astronomy Development

"Inclusive astronomy in Guatemala will produce astro educational materials in Mayan languages, Spanish, braille, sign language and 3D astronomical models. It will target girls and persons with visual and hearing disabilities in remote areas of the country."

6. Inspiring Women in Science Awards applications open

From: Jeremy Bailin [jbailin_at_ua.edu]

Applications for the Inspiring Women in Science Awards 2023 are now open. Deadline: May 8, 2023.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. Access to Past Issues

https://aas.org/comms/cswa/AASWOMEN

Each annual summary includes an index of topics covered.

Thursday, February 23, 2023

NASA documentary: The Color of Space

As NASA prepares to return humans to the Moon, the Artemis generation is looking forward to seeing the first woman and the first person of color set foot there. In June 2022, NASA published a documentary, The Color of Space, that focuses on the lives and careers of seven current and former Black astronauts. Stephanie Wilson, Victor Glover, Jeanette Epps, Leland Melvin, Bernard Harris, Robert Curbeam, and Bobby Satcher each spoke about their path to selection as members of NASA's astronaut corps, as well as their training and mission experiences. The panel discussion was hosted by Vanessa Wyche, NASA Johnson Space Center Director and the first Black woman to lead a NASA center.

Title slide, The Color of Space (credit: NASA)

More information about The Color of Space can be found here. NASA plans to have viewing events through fall 2023, which will be adverised on NASA's Eventbrite page.

View NASA's Black History Month Image Gallery.

Friday, February 17, 2023

AASWomen Newsletter for February 17, 2023

AAS Committee on the Status of Women

Issue of February 17, 2023

eds: Jeremy Bailin, Nicolle Zellner, Sethanne Howard, and Hannah Jang-Condell

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

This week's issues:

1. Cross-post: A woman’s place is in science

2. International Day of Women and Girls in Science, 11 February

3. We Need More Women in Science and Leadership

4. Lazy movie stereotypes that put women off science

5. Job Opportunities

6. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

7. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

8. 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.

Thursday, February 16, 2023

Cross-post: A woman’s place is in science

By the editors of Nature Physics

In December 2013, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution recognizing that gender equality can only be achieved if women and girls have unfettered access to science and technology as an essential tool to their empowerment. The International Day of Women and Girls in Science was born.

Since its first observance in 2016, the day has had an annual theme, and the one for 2023 is ‘Innovate. Demonstrate. Elevate. Advance. Sustain. (I.D.E.A.S.)’. Similarly to previous themes, it links gender equity in science to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Although the relationship to SDGs around themes such as clean water or clean energy is clear, its connection to SDG 1 — ending poverty — may be less obvious.

A World Bank report found that educating girls is one of the most successful ways to promote economic growth and to end intergenerational poverty (World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development; World Bank, 2012). This feels particularly poignant only months after girls and women in Afghanistan were, once again, banned from attending school or university.

Many girls who are interested in science do not grow up to be scientists. There are many reasons for this, but societal perceptions are among them. Women scientists are still seen as the exception — or the odd one out. And who wants to be that? Perhaps broadening our definition of a woman in science can normalize science as a pursuit for girls and women.

Read more at

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-023-01971-2

Friday, February 10, 2023

AASWomen Newsletter for February 10, 2023

Dara Norman, item 1.
Credit: NOIRLab

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of February 10, 2023
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Nicolle Zellner, Sethanne Howard, and Hannah Jang-Condell

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

This week's issues:

1. NOIRLab’s Dara Norman President-Elect of the American Astronomical Society
2. Former NSF director France Córdova honored
3. Building a future of scientific progress and gender equality
4. The essentiality of diversity in STEM education
5. What Does It Mean To Be A “Woman In Science”?
6. Not blaming women is key to increasing their presence in tech professions
7. Editorial: Using our voices
8. Biologist fired for sexual misconduct gets money from private donors to start new lab
9. Job Opportunities
10. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
11. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
12. 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.

Friday, February 3, 2023

AASWomen Newsletter for 03 February, 2023

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of February 3, 2023
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Nicolle Zellner, Sethanne Howard, and Hannah Jang-Condell

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

This week's issues:

1. Crosspost: NASA astronaut Sally Ride statue to be unveiled in Los Angeles on July 4
2. We just had an astronomical cross-quarter day: Ground Hog's Day: 2/2/2023
3. Women Scientists at Mount Wilson Observatory during the Early Years
4. Special Report: Diversity and STEM: Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities 2023
5. Phoebe Waterman - first woman to use a large telescope for her thesis work.
6. Evidence that Saturn's moon Mimas is a stealth ocean world
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.

1. Crosspost: NASA astronaut Sally Ride statue to be unveiled in Los Angeles on July 4

From: Nicolle Zellner via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

By Elizabeth Howell for space.com

"An Independence Day ceremony will bring a little more space to a presidential museum.

A statue of former NASA astronaut Sally Ride will be unveiled July 4 outside the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum, situated west of her hometown of Los Angeles, as part of a series of female-focused monuments designed by filmmaker Steven Barber."

2. We just had an astronomical cross-quarter day: Ground Hog's Day: 2/2/2023

From: Sethanne Howard [sethanneh_at_msn.com]

By Sethanne Howard

02/02/2023 if the first cross quarter day of the year 2023. There are four quarter days (two equinoxes and two solstices) that divide the year into quarters. Cross-quarters are half way between those four days. Each one relates to an ancient holiday. Ground Hog's Day (in the United States) is the first cross quarter day of the year. These are ancient astronomical divisions of the solar year. The other cross-quarter days are May 1, Aug 2, Nov 1.

3. Women Scientists at Mount Wilson Observatory during the Early Years

From: Jeremy Bailin [jbailin_at_ua.edu]

By Mount Wilson Observatory

"In this four-part series, Eun-Joo Ahn, astrophysicist and History of Science Doctoral Candidate at UC Santa Barbara, tells the story of the forgotten women scientists in the first decade of Mount Wilson Observatory – the work they did, the contributions they made, the cultural and institutional terrain they faced, focusing on Louise Ware and Jennie Belle Lasby.”

4. Special Report: Diversity and STEM: Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities 2023

From: Jeremy Bailin [jbailin_at_ua.edu]

By NSF Science Board

A diverse workforce provides the potential for innovation by leveraging different backgrounds, experiences, and points of view. Innovation and creativity, along with technical skills relying on expertise in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), contribute to a robust STEM enterprise. Furthermore, STEM workers have higher median earnings and lower rates of unemployment compared with non-STEM workers. This report provides high-level insights from multiple data sources into the diversity of the STEM workforce in the United States.

The press release was issued 01/31/2023. "Today, the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, or NCSES — part of the U.S. National Science Foundation — released Diversity and STEM: Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities 2023, the federal government's latest and most complete analysis of diversity trends in STEM employment and education. The new report shows more women, as well as Black, Hispanic, American Indian, and Alaska Native people collectively, worked in STEM jobs over the past decade, diversifying that workforce, and are earning more degrees in science and engineering fields at all levels compared to previous years. However, those groups — as well as people with disabilities — broadly remain underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics when compared to their overall distribution in the U.S. population, reflecting the larger equity challenges our nation faces."

5. Phoebe Waterman - first woman to use a large telescope for her thesis work.

From: Sethanne Howard [sethanneh_at_msn.com]

By Melissa Joskow, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian

"Phoebe Waterman was breaking down those barriers. Though Waterman had spent time as a “computer” at the Mt. Wilson Observatory in California, in 1911 she applied, and was accepted to Berkeley’s graduate school for astronomy. By this time, Annie Jump Cannon’s spectral classification system was becoming the world-wide standard. For her Ph.D. thesis, Waterman tested whether Cannon’s system still applied for the spectra of very hot stars when examined in different ways. She was directed to use the Lick 91-centimeter (36-inch) refractor and its premier spectrograph in California, and even modify it, to take these new spectra and verify the universality of Cannon's system. Waterman thus became the first woman to use a very large telescope by herself to conduct research for her thesis"

6. Evidence that Saturn's moon Mimas is a stealth ocean world

From: Sethanne Howard [sethanneh_at_msn.com]

By Alyssa Rhoden, Southwest Research Institute

"Simulations suggest that Saturn's smallest, innermost moon could have an expanding, geologically young ocean. When a scientist discovered surprising evidence that Saturn's smallest, innermost moon could generate the right amount of heat to support a liquid internal ocean, colleagues began studying Mimas' surface to understand how its interior may have evolved. Numerical simulations of the moon's Herschel impact basin, the most striking feature on its heavily cratered surface, determined that the basin's structure and the lack of tectonics on Mimas are compatible with a thinning ice shell and geologically young ocean."

Thursday, February 2, 2023

Crosspost: NASA astronaut Sally Ride statue to be unveiled in Los Angeles on July 4

By Elizabeth Howell for space.com

Image from space.com article.
Image credit: Steven Barber via collectSPACE.com

An Independence Day ceremony will bring a little more space to a presidential museum.

"There's just so many great science female icons that we can build," said Barber, who also designed a bronze statue of Ride that was dedicated in June 2022 at the Cradle of Aviation Museum on Long Island, in the greater New York City area.