Friday, July 21, 2023

AASWomen Newsletter for July 21, 2023

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of July 21, 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: How centuries of sexism ecluded women from science - and how to redress the balance
2. Female physicists aren’t represented in the media – and this lack of representation hurts the physics field
3. Who was the first woman in astronomy?
4. The Only Women in the Room
5. Women are more likely than men to share personal details when teaching
6. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
7. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
8. 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: How centuries of sexism ecluded women from science - and how to redress the balance
From: Nicolle Zellner via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

By Karly Pitman for Nature

A review of "Not Just for Boys: Why we need more women in science" by Athene Donald, Oxford University.

Despite growing numbers of women participating in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), barriers to entry and retention remain prevalent.

Read more at

http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2023/07/crosspost-how-centuries-of-sexism.html

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2. Female physicists aren’t represented in the media – and this lack of representation hurts the physics field
From: Jeremy Bailin [jbailin_at_ua.edu]

By: Carl Kurlander and Chandralekha Singh

"Christopher Nolan’s highly-anticipated movie “Oppenheimer,” set for release July 21, 2023, depicts J. Robert Oppenheimer and his role in the development of the atomic bomb. But while the Manhattan Project wouldn’t have been possible without the work of many accomplished female scientists, the only women seen in the movie’s trailer are either hanging laundry, crying or cheering the men on.

The Manhattan Project would not have been possible without the work of physicist Lise Meitner, who discovered nuclear fission. Meitner used Einstein’s E=MC² to calculate how much energy would be released by splitting uranium atoms, and it was that development that would prompt Einstein to sign a letter urging President Franklin Roosevelt to begin the United States’ atomic research program."

Read more at

https://theconversation.com/female-physicists-arent-represented-in-the-media-and-this-lack-of-representation-hurts-the-physics-field-207697

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3. Who was the first woman in astronomy?
From: Sethanne Howard [sethannen_at_msn.com]

By: Sethanne Howard

One might think that is an easy question to answer. A web search shows a wide variety of answers wandering over a thousand years from Hypatia to Maria Mitchell. This is not particularly precise. I would like to put forth the one who I think was the first one whose name we know and work we have. Her name in Sumerian was En Heduanna - the Ornament of Heaven. She was the first astronomer/priestess of the city of Ur in ancient Sumer. She lived circa 2334 BCE, some 4,000 years ago.

Ur is a major dig site in Irag near the tip of the Persian Gulf. In its heyday it was a port city with major connections around the known world. En Heduanna ran the city and maintained the lunar calendar by tracking the Moon. Her story is told in the book "The Hidden Giants" available from Amazon. A brief precis of her story is on the web site http://4kyws.ua.edu . Her story is also published in the peer reviewed Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, 2017, V. 103, issue 2, p 21 by Sethanne Howard. Over 42 of her poems have been translated into Engllish and are available on the WWW.

Read more at:

http://4kyws.ua.edu

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4. The Only Women in the Room
From: Sethanne Howard [sethanneh_at_msn.com]

By: A Mighty Girl staff, July 15 2023

A famous photo shows the control room at Kennedy Space Center on the day of the historic Apollo 11 launch packed with hundreds of men in white shirts and skinny black ties — and, among them, a single woman sits at a console. As Apollo 11 began its flight to the moon on July 16, 1969, 28-year-old instrumentation controller JoAnn Hardin Morgan became the first woman ever permitted in the launch firing room, which is locked down in advance of a space flight. Morgan, who was the first female engineer at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, would go on to have a 40-year-long career at NASA. While she encountered challenges along the way, including being "the only woman there for a long time" and spending the first 15 years working "in a building were there wasn't a ladies rest room," Morgan says that "I had such a passion that overrode anything else, the lonely moments, the little bits of negative. They were like a mosquito bite. You just swat it and push on."

Read more at:

https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=25702

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5. Women are more likely than men to share personal details when teaching
From: From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]

By: Tanvi Dutta Gupta

Research shows that when faculty members choose to disclose hidden, potentially stigmatized identities to their students—such as mental health issues or an LGBTQ+ identity—it can be powerful for undergraduate students looking for representation. But there are gendered differences in who chooses to disclose, according to a study published today in PLOS ONE.

Read more at

https://www.science.org/content/article/women-faculty-members-share-more-about-themselves-when-teaching-new-study-reveals

and

https://phys.org/news/2023-07-stem-instructors-women-disclosure-concealable.html

Read the journal article at

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0287795

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6. 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.

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7. 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.

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8. Access to Past Issues

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

Each annual summary includes an index of topics covered.

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