I had the pleasure of presenting the results from the recent demographics survey of US astronomers led by CSWA member Prof. A. Meredith Hughes. I won't recap those results here since we have already blogged about them (see here and here for some highlights). What I did want to highlight, however, was how the CSWA data are unique! With a 20 year baseline and nearly 100% participation rate, we can understand what has changed, and what has not with regard to the participation of women in astrophysics. The speakers from other countries mostly presented data gathered by their national science foundations for all of science, or (at best) physics (including astronomy). Of course those were also quite interesting, but it left me hoping that at least some of the larger European countries might conduct national surveys similar to the CSWA demographics survey. (If one looks at science as a whole, the statistics tend to be dominated by life sciences, where the participation of women is quite different than in astronomy -- astronomers need their own survey!) Importantly, the CSWA survey isn't run by a national science agency: It consists of a few devoted individuals sending letters to the heads of various departments and institutes, and then compiling and analyzing the responses.
For me, the standout talk was by Johanna Andersson, the Head of Equality Work at Chalmers University in Sweden. She described being invited by a faculty member to sit in on a scientific review panel, and immediately noting the different adjectives used to described the work of men and women. The work of men would often be described as deep, whereas the work of women would be narrow. Men would be broad, women would be unfocussed. Men would be independent, women would be isolated. Men would be full of potential, women would be inexperienced. The pairs of adjectives fascinated me, and I reflected on the letters of support I have written over the years.
