AASWomen Newsletter for June 18, 2021

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of June 18, 2021
eds: Heather Flewelling, Nicolle Zellner, Maria Patterson, Jeremy Bailey, and Alessandra Aloisi

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

This week's issues:

VanguardSTEM + SeRCH Foundation
host Hot Science Summer (Item #4)

1. Crosspost: Retroactive Name Changes in Astronomical Publications
2. Women of Arecibo: Dr. Thankful Cromartie
3. Ethics and Authorship in the AAS Journals 
4. VanguardSTEM + SeRCH Foundation hosting Hot Science Summer to FUND BIPOC science projects
5. Zonta International awards promising women aerospace researchers with 2021 Amelia Earhart Fellowship
6. Google Doodle celebrates 99th birthday of Italian astrophysicist Margherita Hack
7. Katherine Johnson’s memoir charts her bold trajectory to NASA and beyond
8. A push for a shift in the value system that defines "impact" and "success"
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 of the AASWomen Newsletter

Crosspost: Retroactive Name Changes in Astronomical Publications

 By Macy Huston via astrobites

If you’re active on astronomy Twitter, you’ve probably seen a lot of discussion lately about academic journals’ policies about retroactively changing names on publications. The labor and roadblocks in the process can add a great deal of difficulty to the academic lives of transgender and nonbinary* researchers. Many transgender people change their name from that assigned at birth to one that better fits their gender, but if they do so after having any work published they may face a difficult situation. In some journals, one can retroactively have publications corrected to show their true/chosen name. For other journals, people are left with the choice between either revealing their deadname and outing themselves, or no longer claiming certain past work on their CVs. Additionally, some cisgender astronomers may change their names for reasons such as marriage or religion. 

There are two parts to resolving the disconnection between publications with different names. First, it can be difficult to find all of a person’s past work by searching their current name, if certain publications still use their old name. But, even with this problem resolved, the problem of outing trans people remains when their old name is visible. So the second part of the solution is to have the instances of their previous name changed on old papers. 

Some recent discussions were sparked by a series of tweets from Dr. Elspeth Lee. Her experiences caught the attention of many friends and allies, who have since been pushing for change (more on that later).

I have been informed that the policy of the publisher of MNRAS (OUP) is to update the HTML of a paper, but not the PDF for trans individuals. 1/4

— Elsie Lee (@EleeAstro) May 27, 2021

Read the rest of the article on astrobites website at

https://astrobites.org/2021/06/11/name-changes/

Your Unconscious Gender Bias Could Kill You

Today’s guest blogger is Stella Offner. She is a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University.
 

If you’ve been a long-time (or even recent reader) of AAS Women, you will be familiar with the many perils of unconscious bias (1). You will be aware that unconscious bias related to gender can result in unintended discrepancies in women’s salary, citation count, award recognition, funding, mentoring opportunities, and of course, flat-out discrimination.  All these things are bad for women generally and for equality in science, specifically. Just in case you are still not convinced that gender bias is not a big deal and doesn’t apply to you, did you also know that your unconscious gender bias could kill you? Seriously.

Unconscious Bias: A Legacy of Patriarchy

After my June post on Unconscious Bias, Kelly left an intriguing comment. She wanted to know where this bias comes from and why it is present. I get this question frequently, so I thought I would take this opportunity to reply in more detail. Unconscious bias is one of the many unfortunate legacies of patriarchy*. Not so sure you believe me? Well, just think about it. We have lived in a civilization that has been dominated by patriarchy for over 5,000 years! The rules, conscious and unconscious, are written into the very fabric of our society. Not only do we live and breathe by these rules, but so did our ancestors, going back for many generations.

Patriarchy imposes unnatural double standards. Let’s take a common example: your family name. Other than pregnancy/motherhood, nothing has generated more comments on our blog or feedback on AASWOMEN than items about changing or not changing your name when you get married. Here are some examples of what women have told me: