Why We Leave

Reaching to the stars
by Ares Nguyen via flickr

The charge of the Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy is to recommend to the AAS Board of Trustees practical measures that the AAS can take to improve the status of women in astronomy and encourage their entry into this field. We define women to include people who identify as female, including trans women, genderqueer women, and non-binary people who are significantly female-identified. As an organization, the AAS supports and promotes increased participation of historically underrepresented groups in astronomy.

The CSWA has existed for almost 42 years. In that time we have seen a growth in women in the field (although the number of men has also increased alongside this). The linked AIP report found that there was no significant attrition of women between career stages in astronomy. However, attrition does occur for people of all identities, especially those who are underrepresented. We all know someone who left the field at some point.

CSWA Resources for Astronomers

In order to use our time effectively during the CSWA Meet and Greet panel at the 2020 Summer AAS Meeting, we conducted a survey to see what topics we would discuss. There were 14 concerns about being (or knowing) a woman and/or underrepresented minority in astronomy or planetary science (or another STEM field) that our respondents could choose. The top 10 concerns are listed below. The CSWA wanted to make sure that the community is aware of the resources available to them to approach some of these issues and others. Links to the relevant resource pages or blog posts are provided below if available.

Cross-post: Tips to Overcome Imposter Syndrome

Image Credit: errantscience.com

By UW Health

At work, are you afraid colleagues might find out you’re not as capable as they may think? Do you feel like any praise you receive for success is because people are just trying to be nice, not because you actually deserve it? Rather than celebrating increased responsibilities or promotions, do they instead cause anxiety because – in your mind – now you’ll have to work even harder to keep them from learning the truth about your abilities?

Here’s a secret – a lot of people feel that way. In fact, roughly 70 percent of us do at some point in our lives. While change can always cause feelings of doubt, for some people the feelings of inadequacy run so deep that no amount of success or achievement can sway them. And there is a term for it – imposter syndrome.

Health psychologist Shilagh Mirgain explains that imposter syndrome can be debilitating if left untreated. “In addition to causing stress, anxiety and depression, it can impact lives in other ways. Individuals with imposter syndrome may avoid pursuing new job opportunities out of fear. Feelings of shame may make it difficult to speak up for themselves or advocate for what they believe is right.”

Read more at

https://www.uwhealth.org/health-wellness/tips-to-overcome-imposter-syndrome/52943

AASWomen Newsletter for June 21, 2019

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of June 21, 2019
eds: Nicolle Zellner, Heather Flewelling, Maria Patterson, and JoEllen McBride

[AAS has migrated their email system to Microsoft Exchange, so please check your spam folder if you did not receive the newsletter this week. It is no longer possible to subscribe or unsubscribe to the AASWomen newsletter by means of Google Groups. We have updated our subscribe and unsubscribe instructions below. Please follow us on social media for updates and thank you for bearing with us as we work out all the kinks.
Twitter @AAS_Women Facebook https://bit.ly/2PkU9of

Sally Ride, from item 2

This week's issues:

1. Crosspost: Symposium in Honor of the Legacy of Vera Rubin

2. Sally Ride became the first American woman in space 36 years ago today

3. A Push For More Inclusivity In Science

4. US science agencies report ‘shockingly low’ rates of harassment complaints

5. NIH should ask both institutions and investigators to report sexual harassment findings, advisory group says

6. Unintended consequences of gender-equality plans

7. Psychology Today: It’s Not You, It’s Them

8. Where Are All the Working Mothers in STEM?

9. Making space for female scientists' voices online, in the media and in person

10. Why women in tech are being Photoshopped in instead of hired

11. What it's like to be a trans scientist with imposter syndrome - Lady Science

12. An interview with the CLEAR Lab’s Queer Science Reading Group

13. Job Opportunities

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

Cross-post: Summary of the 2018 LPSC WiPS Event "Overcoming Impostor Syndrome"

The Women in Planetary Science blog recently posted a summary of the discussion from their 2018 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference event. The post includes stories and a summary of strategies for combating impostor syndrome. 

Read more at:

https://womeninplanetaryscience.wordpress.com/2018/07/02/summary-of-the-2018-lpsc-wips-event-overcoming-impostor-syndrome/

The Women in Planetary Science blog has a number of announcements and stories relevant to the Women in Astronomy community. If you're not already a reader of the blog, we encourage you to take a look!

Astronomy Leadership: Applications, Interviews & Jobs

 

 I didn’t get the job. That’s how this post was supposed to start, but a strange thing happened as I was contemplating the future of my career in astronomy (but more on that later). This was supposed to be a post about the job application process, the invitation I received at the beginning that made all the difference, the boost I got from an anonymous blogger talking about why women don’t apply for high level jobs, the virtual shove I got from my husband at a crucial moment, the help, advice, and encouragement I got from other senior women. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Some of you may know that I was a professor at the University of Memphis with expertise in solar coronal spectroscopy. My department was evolving from physics, where the staff had many different specialties, to materials science. Those of us who worked in other sub disciplines were becoming more and more marginalized. I was unhappy with this trend and was looking to get out. My good friend, Pat Knezek, had just taken the job of deputy director of the NSF Astronomy Division. She asked me if I had ever considered a job as an NSF rotator. I started at NSF in September 2013.

Some of you may also know that I was CSWA chair for many years. It was during that tenure that I met Don Kniffen, a CSWA member. Don was there with me when I (with CSWA’s support) decided to blog about my own experience with sexual harassment. I came out as a victim in February 2011. Through my position at NSF Astronomy, I got back in touch with Don after a hiatus of several years. It was at about the same time that Arecibo Observatory ended up back on my radar. I had spent two years there as a grad student – not happy years, mind you – but I didn’t hear much about Arecibo while I was doing solar physics.

In a very real sense, CSWA provided the means and NSF provided the opportunity for the next step in my career. Because their jobs are temporary by definition, NSF rotators are always thinking, “What’s next?” I was no exception, so I was looking out for possibilities when I attended the AAS meeting in Seattle in January 2015 (OMG – that was this year!). It was there that I ran into  Don. After an exchange of pleasantries, he asked me a question that simply had to be a joke – “You’re not interested in the job at Arecibo, are you?” I laughed. Knowing my unhappy history with Arecibo, I’m sure Don was expecting an answer like, “Not just no, but hell no!” It was a surprise to both of us when I answered, “Wait, are you serious?”

Unreported Sexual Harassment at AAS Meetings: An Example

This week’s guest blogger is Nicole E. Cabrera Salazar, an NSF Graduate Research Fellow and Chateaubriand Fellow at Georgia State University. Nicole is studying the feasibility of finding exoplanets around young Sun-like stars using spectroscopy. After she defends her thesis, she will be leaving academia to pursue a career in public outreach, focusing on equity and inclusion of underrepresented groups in STEM.

 

I’m writing this post because after a week of depressing conversations with other female astronomers about sexual harassment, it has become clear to me that we need to keep bringing these issues to light. I chose not to remain anonymous in order to put a name and a face to this problem and show that harassment has real consequences for real people. I do not judge anyone’s right to choose anonymity, because it has taken me years to work up the courage to speak publicly. By attaching my name to this post, my harasser will know exactly whom I’m referring to if and when he reads this, and I’m glad. I hope that reading this instills remorse and shame in all of the perpetrators out there. You know who you are.

 

I was 21 when I attended my first AAS winter meeting in Long Beach in 2009. I had just completed the REU that had convinced me to pursue a career in astronomy, and I had the full support of my REU adviser. I was nervous about going to the AAS on my own, with so many researchers who would be scrutinizing my work. My adviser met me at the undergrad reception and made sure to encourage me and introduce me to people he knew, and I felt very relieved that I didn’t have to network by myself.

 

At my poster the next day, my adviser came up with two fellow postdocs he knew. One of them was particularly friendly and seemed very interested in my work. He asked lots of questions about my observing methods and the reduction pipeline I had coded, and I was so happy and proud that a real scientist (other than my adviser) regarded me as a legitimate scientist as well. The interaction boosted my confidence, and as a female minority who was already feeling the effects of imposter syndrome, it made me feel more prepared to interact with the Chambliss judges who came by later to judge my poster. Wow, I thought, this is what it’s like to be a real scientist!

 

I kept running into this man at the conference, which seemed odd considering just how many people attend the AAS winter meeting every year. I realize now that this was probably not a coincidence, but again, every interaction was friendly and professional, and we talked mostly about my research and my studies. I may be more naïve than most people, and I especially was at that age, but no red flags were raised.

Women of Color in Astronomy and Astrophysics

"Women of Color in Astronomy and Astrophysics" was a joint effort of the AAS Committee on the Status of Minorities in Astronomy (CSMA) and the AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy (CSWA). It was written by Dara Norman, Jedidah Isler & Hakeem Oluseyi (CSMA) and Nancy Morrison, Caroline Simpson & Laura Trouille (CSWA). It is especially powerful because it describes strategies for overcoming the barriers that have kept the percentages of Women of Color in the sciences so low.

 

This document is part of the 2013 conference entitled, “Seeking Solutions: Maximizing American Talent by Advancing Women of Color in Academia.” It is reprinted here with permission from the National Academy of Sciences, Courtesy of the National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.

 

Introduction

 

Women of color (WoC) are at the intersection of race and gender. While they experience issues that arise for both women and minority groups, they are often overlooked in efforts on behalf of either category, to the detriment of their persistence in academia [1]. The next section of this article enumerates barriers that face WoC in astronomy, starting with those that particularly affect career establishment (early graduate student to postdoctoral) and moving to those that impact later career stages. Later sections describe steps toward solutions to these problems, measures taken by the American Astronomical Society (AAS), and lessons learned from academic programs.

 

Confessions of a Female Faculty Candidate

The below is an anonymous guest post submitted by an astronomer on the faculty job market for the first time.  

I am a woman in her early 30’s in astronomy, and this is my first time applying for faculty jobs. Here’s what I knew beforehand. I knew statistically that I’d be likeliest to “leak” from the research pipeline at this exact juncture: reaching up to barely touch the lowest rung of junior professor. I knew that women falsely identify limitations as lying within when they truly lie without: that Impostor Syndrome is especially rampant among us. And I knew the process would be fraught with rejection. Despite educating myself, I have been grappling with profound feelings of inadequacy that are very gendered. There are statistics of women leaving science at this stage, but a lived experience isn’t fully expressed with statistics: what does it feel like to be a woman grappling with this professional transition with all her might? My mental health provider had to remind me that there is a context for this struggle beyond my own scientific record and the scary academic job market. If I’m feeling this stuff, so are other women. It’s so hard to hang in there. She said, “if you could talk about this to other women at your same stage, what would you say? What would you like to hear?” I’d want to hear how it feels to other women, to normalize my own experience. My experience as a white, middle-class, cisgendered woman is a privileged one, and is not universal: distinct emotional costs exist for people residing at other intersections. My experiences are reflective of my social status, and ought to be read that way. 

Gender Parity in NSF Astronomy Research Programs

 

During my first year as a Program Officer in NSF’s Astronomy Division, I was able to compile data on the success rates of different opportunities in the Individual Investigator Programs. As chair of CSWA, one of my top priorities was to look for gender differences.

 

The results* for Astronomy are summarized in the table. The top line is for the Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Grants (AAG), our main grant program. PIs are mainly (but not exclusively) senior and mid-career scientists. There is both good news and bad news here. The good news is that the percentage of female awards (19 +/- 2%) is equal to the percentage of females in the pool (19 +/- 1%). The bad news is that the percentage of women in astronomy at the senior and mid-career levels is still so low. The next line in the table is for Faculty Early Career Development, the CAREER program, which generally makes less than 10 awards per year. The following line is for the NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowships (AAPF), which currently makes 9 awards per year. Although the numbers are smaller and the uncertainties are larger, the results for both of these programs agree with those of the AAG. If we do weighted averages of all three programs, we again find that the percentage of female awards (22 +/- 2%) is equal to the percentage of females in the pool (22 +/- 1%).

The Best Part of My Week

Two years ago I made the transition from academic science to data science. There are many aspects of industry that mesh better with my working style. However one very important industry practice that I feel is lacking in academia (at least for many of the people I have spoken to) are mechanisms for regular evaluation and feedback — especially for graduate students and postdocs.

Lately I've been facilitating workshops on the Impostor Syndrome and having many conversations with people about my process of dealing with and overcoming my own impostor feelings. For me a huge problem with my experience in graduate school was a constant nagging fear that I wasn't performing at an adequate level. There are so few metrics by which to measure success; if I didn't published N papers, make any major discoveries, or win any prizes or grants — how was I to know if I was ‘cutting it?’ And even if I did accomplish some of these milestones, there were always stories of other people who did it more, better, and faster. This was the perfect breeding ground for my impostor thoughts.

Perspectives from computer science: Silent Technical Privilege

On Friday, October 3 MIT hosted a symposium addressing the well-known story told by Virginia Valian in Why So Slow?  It was a big hit with the audience of more than 200 students, staff and faculty who came to hear an outstanding panel talk about the problems and solutions. Why did we hold this symposium and what did we learn?

Two years ago, computer scientist Tess Rinearson wrote a blog On Technical Entitlement in which she poignantly discussed the challenges of being a female student in a male-dominated field.  This is a familiar, distressing story, with a twist: namely, her story inspired a male computer science student to reflect on his own technical privilege - on how being an Asian male gave him unearned privilege that helped him to compensate for deficiencies.  As Philip Guo said, "Nobody every says you only got into MIT because you're an Asian man."  He spoke up about micro-inequities, stereotype threat, and silent technical privilege.  Man bites dog is news, so Guo was interviewed on NPR.

Philip Guo's story resonated with many of us at MIT (where he earned his bachelors degree), so we organized a symposium to bring visibility to the topic.  This was an interdisciplinary effort involving Women's and Gender Studies, the Institute Community and Equity Office, the Office of Minority Education, and Computer Science.  It was well attended, with more than 200 people present, to understand how bias and other factors lead to the marginalization and underrepresentation of women and minorities in STEM fields.  I was the moderator and there were 5 panelists.

Jane Stout, Director of the Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline of the Computing Research Association (CERP/CRA), is a social psychologist who presented her research on factors explaining the underrepresentation of women in some STEM fields.  Her analysis was powerfully supported by two MIT students, Jean Yang and Tami Forrester.  They shared examples of explicit and implicit bias and how they coped with the challenges.  Every faculty member in a STEM field should hear stories like theirs, along with the advice offered by the rest of the panel on how to prepare our students to face social as well as intellectual challenges.  Intel's Gabriela Gonzalez shared with us how important it is to go beyond data to tell personal stories.  In Mexico, she noted, engineering is not regarded as a man's field; engineers solve problems, and this is a desirable profession for women and men.  In the US, engineering culture is different.  Donna Milgram, Executive Director of the National Institute for Women in Trades, Technology and Science (IWITTS), cited examples of schools that significantly increased the percentage of women in STEM, and noted the elements of their success: having gender-balanced outreach efforts, making STEM appealing to those who want to improve the world, and using an inclusive curriculum.

For me, the main lesson was this: our students have compelling stories of how to cope with the continuing challenges of inequity and exclusion.  Giving them voice, and supporting them with mentoring and sponsorship, is a great way to advance equality.  Speaking of which, Jean Yang has produced a wonderful annotated bibliography for those who would like more information.  You can also follow the conversations on twitter at #techprivMIT and read a news report of the symposium at Boston.com.

Survive Academia with this One Simple Trick!

Cross-posted from Astrobetter:

Dr. Sarah Ballard completed her PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics at Harvard University in 2012 and is now a NASA Carl Sagan fellow at the University of Washington. She’s written articles for the Harvard Crimson and for the Women in Astronomy blog about parental leave, values affirmation, and the intelligence of groups.  On her website, she also provides some resources for running your own Impostor Syndrome workshop.  Follow her on Twitter at: @hubbahubble

Local scientists discover the technique they don’t want you to know about!
(Sarah Rugheimer at left, Sarah Ballard at right)

Where Are All the Women?

The below is an op-ed piece reproduced from UC Berkeley's The Daily Californian by physics PhD student Kate Kamdin. Kate is the head coordinator for UC Berkeley's Society of Women in the Physical Sciences and was on the organizing committee for the 2014 West Coast Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics. Kate gave a wonderful talk at CUWiP where she summarized research regarding the "gender gap" of women in the physical sciences: Mind the Gap: A Statistical Approach to Understanding Gender Inequality in the Physical Sciences.

In 2010, only about 20 percent of students with bachelor’s degrees or doctorates in physics were women, lagging far behind biology, chemistry, math and earth sciences. Only 8 percent of full physics professors are women. To address this underrepresentation, UC Berkeley hosted the West Coast Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics with more than 150 female students in attendance. In light of the press from the conference, I was asked to write about my experience as a woman in physics and why women in physics should stay in physics. I’d like to say now, before you read any further, that I am not here to tell women in physics to stay in physics. Women, I’m sure, are tired of being told what to do.

Values Affirmation and You: What You Deeply Care About Affects Your Ability to Do Science (Now Featuring Peer Review!)

Today I am sharing a guest post from Dr. Sarah Ballard. Dr. Ballard completed her PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics at Harvard University in 2012 and is now a NASA Sagan fellow at the University of Washington.

It was only several years into graduate school that I learned that language already existed to describe my academic experience in science. I’m an unusual astronomer in some ways, having arrived in the field only after devoting my early undergraduate studies to Peace and Conflict Studies and Gender Studies. I was inculcated in the early years of college with language that describes the human experience. I was literally tested on phrases such as “intersectionality of oppression” and “safe space.” Value is assigned in these disciplines, in the form of grades, to a student’s ability to articulate ideas of bias and privilege. I wrote essays in exam rooms, after poring over assigned articles, on how wrongs get righted within human group dynamics. I thought and wrote about the activities people undertake to restore feelings of dignity and agency to underserved groups: this was once my major. 

Let me describe to you here why this is relevant to you, an astrophysicist. Let me describe a way that you can leverage the knowledge other fields accrue about imperfect human functioning under high pressure. Let me make the argument to you that reflection on self-worth can alleviate distress and underperformance in yourself, your colleagues, your mentees.

Raising the Bar in Physics Graduate Education

By Meg Urry, Yale University (Department of Physics and Department of Astronomy) 

The following is adapted from a keynote address given at the APS Conference on Graduate Education in January, 2013.  

Reproduced from the June 2013 Issue of Status: A Report on Women in Astronomy

I am pleased to be addressing (and attending) this conference and I also know this audience is deeply committed to graduate education, so you probably don’t need to hear what I am going to say. Nonetheless, I thought a keynote address should be provocative, so I’ve done my best to push some buttons...

The invitation to speak tonight came shortly after the election last November. Front and center in the news was the Republican party’s concern about the shifting demographics in the United States: talking heads and columnists described the vanishing white male, the increasing diversity of the American population, and the sense that modern political parties have to adjust accordingly.

The Awesomest 7-Year Post-Doc

This week a Scientific American Blog Post by Radhika Nagpal, professor of Computer Science at Harvard made a circulation among my academic Facebook friends, and I thought I'd share it with this community.

Her advice on how she "Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-Track Faculty Life" can be summarized in the below seven things she did in her first seven years of her faculty appointment at Harvard:

• I decided that this is a 7-year postdoc.
• I stopped taking advice.
• I created a “feel-good” email folder.
• I work fixed hours and in fixed amounts.
• I try to be the best “whole” person I can.
• I found real friends.
• I have fun “now”.

While I am not sure if her mindset is as easy to adopt in other subject areas (like astronomy) where the alternative/industry options are less plentiful and the transition out of academia is less obvious, I am happy to hear that someone who only works 50 hours a week was able to obtain tenure at Harvard.

Chairing Review Panels

Enough time has gone by that I can now tell this story without fear of breaching confidentiality. I “recently” chaired a NASA proposal review panel. The identity of the panel members is generally confidential; you don’t know the participants ahead of time, and you don’t discuss the results after the panel business is complete. I have participated in these reviews since I started in solar physics – almost 25 years ago. My name comes up every two or three years, and I head to DC. The panel spends several days reviewing proposals, and comes up with a ranking for NASA. The process usually works pretty well.

In all the years I have been doing this, I have never been part of a panel that was chaired by a woman. (Since the panel membership is not public domain, I only have information on the panels I have served on.) I have noticed a trend – the panel chairs used to be more senior than me, then about my level, and recently, younger than me. These chairs can be reasonably effective or not particularly effective; in some cases, the NASA discipline scientist takes over most of the chairing duties, so the panel still gets the job done.

A few months after participating in the panel review process, I happened to run into the NASA discipline scientist at a conference. The situation was right to have a quiet word about this business of chairing panels. It did not take me long to realize that I had walked right into a trap! Always on the lookout for panel members, he immediately asked if I would chair a panel in the next round of reviews. I was expecting to do this in two to three years, not two to three months. But I had asked for it, and here was an opportunity. I simply had to agree to chair the panel.

CSWA Townhall - Recap

The CSWA hosted a Town Hall meeting at the Indy AAS meeting on Tuesday, June 6, from 12:45 to 1:45 in Wabash Ballroom 3.  Around 40 people, including three previous CSWA chairs, were in attendance to listen to current chair, Joan Schmelz, present information about unconscious bias, stereotype threat, and impostor syndrome.  The presentation was designed to elicit audience discussion on topics included in the 2010 AAUW report "Why So Few?", some of which is summarized here.

What Can I Do? CSWA Town Hall

I often get questions from graduate students and postdocs related to how they can help CSWA. They know they don’t have the time to commit to being a full-fledged committee member, but they believe in what we’re doing and want to do something to support women in astronomy & help create a female-friendly workplace. We have had some great suggestions from CSWA members, CSWA alums, and AASWOMEN readers. Today’s suggestions is especially timely because the CSWA Town Hall, “Unconscious Bias, Stereotype Threat, and Impostor Syndrome,” is taking place TODAY, Tuesday, June 4, at 12:45 - 1:45 pm in Wabash Ballroom 3 of the Indiana Convention Center.

Today’s suggestion: Invite your department chair/boss/research supervisor to attend the CSWA Town Hall.

Hope to see you there!